In Issue 11 of In Touch, January 1998, the following short piece appeared.

“In Far away Places.....”

There are Legion Branches in many parts of the world and some are occasionally mentioned in Legion Magazine. Did you know that there is one in Cork, in the Irish Republic? Berlin has a branch, one of 18 in    Germany. In Spain, sun-loving ex-service ex-pats. are catered for in a number of places, including Tenerife in the Canaries. There is a branch and club in Valetta in Malta and San Francisco branch, one of three in the States, played host to a visiting Royal Naval ship a few months ago. Nearer home, Jersey Branch celebrated its 75th anniversary last year and set a target of increasing the number of members from 875 to 1000!

Reading it again recently, I decided to set off on my travels, making use of the Internet, and visit as many as possible of the 100 or so RBL branches, both in the UK and overseas, that are listed on the Legion website. My first stop was Alfriston, a small branch with 73 members, which meet quarterly in this Sussex village. A report of their April meeting was headed Newsletter No. 38. Does this suggest that No.1 appeared over nine years ago, soon after the first issue of our In Touch?

On to Alrewas in Staffordshire, where I found a photograph of the attractive ex-Road Chef clubhouse, where no doubt many of their 330 members meet. You would be welcome to join them, for example, after a visit to the nearby National Memorial Arboretum.

The Tenerife Branch site looks very enticing, with many colourful photographs of social activities and Remembrance including this one of an ocean-side service . It is informative, too, and even includes street maps of the main towns.

The Editor is always asking for contributions for In Touch, so I’ve kept an eye open for anything which he might use. There are odd snippets of Branch information, aspects of their history or things they do and articles and stories that they have published.

To return to the tour, I must mention those visits which have resulted in replies. Many provided email addresses and from them I produced a list of 125 branches, including 71 overseas. I sent emails to all the branches on this contact list telling them about In Touch, which, of course, is available for the world to read on the Internet. I invited them also to make contributions to our newsletter.

Sadly, nineteen were “returned to sender”, probably because the published addresses were out of date. I was disappointed not to have heard from Florida, Berlin, Cork, Hong Kong,Tokyo and a few others . Replies from those contacts who did reply included greetings to our branch members and invitations to visit. There were messages commending either the idea of contacting other branches or on the quality of the In Touch website – all good for the ego!

What will please George is that we have already been given permission to use material that some branches have published, so look out for some fascinating stories. It will be very interesting is to see if any branches use material from our site as they have been told they may.

Keeping archives is one of the difficulties for an organisation like ours which has never had its own premises. An added difficulty was the sale of St Nicholas Church some twenty years ago, which was the one place where some of our records had found refuge.

According to the documents in my possession, our Branch existed in 1935; it may well have existed before then but I have no proof of this. It was re-born in 1946, the AGM being held at the Café Richelieu in Bordeaux on the 17th October.

The members and the activities for the next 18 years were essentially centred in Bordeaux. Apart from attending the usual Remembrance ceremonies, both French and British, there was one outstanding event for that period. The names of the British Bordeaux residents lost during the 1939/1945 war were engraved on the Cenotaph that stood at the door of St Nicholas Church.

After the sale of the Church, the Cenotaph was transferred to the Allied Military Cemetery in Talence. J.M Clark was in the Chair for the last Committee Meeting appearing in the Minutes Book held at the Café Richelieu on the 22nd October 1964.

After this date there were no further meetings due to lack of support, but for the next sixteen years, thanks to J.M. (Jim) Clark, parades were held each year at Talence and St Nicholas Church for the annual Remembrance Service.

Our annual parade and service took place at the Allied Cemetery, Talence on an overcast morning. The service was taken by the Rev Michael Selman and was attended by HM Consul General, Tom Kennedy, the US Consul, Brinton Rowdybush, the Mayor of Talence and representatives of the French Armed Forces, the Royal Naval Association, the Royal Air Force Association, the Bordeaux British Community and RBL members and their friends.

When Jim Clark was about to leave Bordeaux, Tom Payne took over as Chairman and gradually succeeded in building up the Branch until failing health compelled him to relinquish his position and Jack Douay took over and held the post with distinction for the next 20 years. By this time we were in the early 1980s and the trend which had become apparent in the '70s, namely a decrease in the number of British residents in the area and their increase in Dordogne, Lot et Garonne and other rural areas. 

This led to developing ways of communication in order to keep in touch with Members by means of several Newsletters each year, choosing somewhere centrally convenient for most to hold the AGM and lunch, and finally to become more competent with modern technologies, such as the Internet.

Thanks to the Paris and Lyon Branches, who have preceded us in this direction, and offered a helping hand in our beginner's footsteps. We hope that those of our Members who surf the Web will be happy to consult the RBL site to learn of the forthcoming events, read reports of events they were not able to attend, read interesting contributions from fellow Members and send their own contributions.

We exist thanks to the perseverance of our predecessors, now that technology makes everything so much easier, we must not let our Branch fade away.