Antiques Roadshow

[Segilla]

On last Sunday's programme from Thiepval northern France, Paul Atterbury mentioned coincidences that had happened there.

I vaguely recall one was something to do with a name on the memorial.
Is someone able to provide more details?

[Psybbo]

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Media-and-TV/Question1327465.html

[puternut]

I think the item you are talking about Segilla, was guest1 bought in a photo - not his relative - with the back signed by all the members of a military band that his relative was in.

Guest2 recognised the actual picture as being her great uncle I believe and his name was on the back too.

[Segilla]

Thanks. I've reposted.

puternut. My question is trying to unearth info following the remark that Paul made about Thiepval working its magic[?] again and what those former events were about.

[puternut]

My answer stands. The 'magic' was that these two unrelated people should both turn up there and have an apparent link that nobody could have forseen with one having a picture of the others relative.

[pips1]

puternut is right, the names were all on the inside of a banjo.

[Segilla]

If you read my question it is about coincidences, other things i.e. nothing to do with the banjo and I specifically mentioned the memorial itself.

[Segilla]

I found one of the items I mentioned on the 'Priceless' set of retrospective AR Show DVDs.
Paul Atterbury, a regular visitor to the N. France battlefields was, after his tenth visit walking back to his car with a friend away from the Thiepval memorial when he suddenly felt compelled to go back in and to open the cabinet containing the books listing the names carved on the memorial. He had never done this before. He found a single namesake, 2nd Lt. L J R Atterbury. On returning home he asked his father about him and was told that the man was father's uncle and that he had his watch. Father had been named after L J R.

Atterbury was then filmed at Thiepval standing under the uncle's name, holding the watch and a photo of the man wondering if this was the link which explains why Thiepval means so much to him.
"He must have watched me come ten times, wondering why doesn't he come to visit me? And one day he made me do it."

There now remains one other strange event to be rediscovered, connecting Atterbury to the memorial.