It’s always nice to get out of the office and take a little of what we do along to an event and last Friday and Saturday saw us do just that. We joined forces with the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon again this year and took a display to the Armed Forces Day exhibition. Last year we were at the event run by the North Devon Veteran’s Association at Pilton College. This year the event was held at a slightly bigger venue – RMB Chivenor!
Armed Forces Day 2017
Armed Forces Day 2017
The Marines opened up the airfield, once part of the RAF base which was in use until the mid-nineties, to exhibitors and the public in aid of Armed Forces Day on the 24th June. The event itself was held over two days with school children visiting on the Friday and families of the serving marines having a private viewing on the Saturday morning before the gates opened to the general public.
Adam and Sam from the Museum showing some of the students a victory bell made from a piece of a WWII German aircraft
We were set up in a large marquee just off the main runway alongside the North Devon Veteran’s Association and other local organisations including Torrington Museum. We were just inside the marquee which meant we had a spectacular view over the airfield and Taw estuary towards Fremington – when it wasn’t shrouded in mist!
View from the Marquee
Part of the display we put together with the Museum
Since we were at Chivenor we decided to take items from our Chivenor Collections. The Museum took along several items from the Pat Knight Collection which was once housed at Chivenor when it was home to the RAF. These included several bits of crashed aircraft, a piece of shrapnel from a WWII German bomb which came down in the parish of Beaford, an RAF jacket and items from one of the many Air Days the RAF put on during their time at Chivenor.
We took along one of the seven RAF Chivenor Albums which chart the history of Chivenor as a base together with other items including copies of WWII crash reports and accounts of the night a German JU88 mistakenly landed there in 1941 thinking they were in occupied France.
Perhaps one of the biggest highlights of the event was seeing the new search and rescue Coastguard helicopter which spent most of Saturday on the airfield – when it wasn’t called into action.
We had a lovely few days meeting lots of people, many of whom had either served or are currently serving at Chivenor as well as seeing lots of families (many of whom had brought their dog along). But perhaps one of the best parts of the event was getting the opportunity to see the airfield and driving along the runways to get to and from the display area.
You can find more about what we and the Museum got up to over the two days on our Facebook page and Twitter feeds.
For more information about our RAF Chivenor Collection and to read some of the stories and memories of Chivenor as an RAF base click on the Chivenor category or follow the links to the posts below;
…Barum Athena
