Durham Legion Branch 308 Military History & Peacekeeping Museum

10/05/2026

If you still need some dessert, or want to impress your guests at Thanksgiving… our good friends at Abbeyfield Durham Senior Housing have a great bake sale set up just inside the front door at Abbyfield 😀🥧🍰

09/30/2026

October and November have been particularly hard months in Canadian Military history.

110 years ago Canadian soldiers from the 2nd and 3rd Divisions were making final preparations to begin assaults on Regina Trench, a heavily fortified German defensive position dominating the ground behind Courcelette and Thiepval Ridge on the Somme Battlefield. The attack on 1 October ran into uncut wire and skillful German defence resulting in horrendous casualties. Regina Trench wasn't fully captured until 11 November, 1916, by which point the Battle of the Somme was nearly over.

**I don't have any photos of the exact location of Regina Trench, this photo is looking west near Courcelette. You would have to rotate about 110 degrees to see Regina Trench, but it gives a good idea of the general fields of fire the defenders had in this region.

09/29/2026

Mark Zuehlke's Canadian Battle Series is definitely a friend of our Legion museum! Check out his latest article from Legion Magazine. I don't have the notes in front of me now, but the Battle of the Somme claimed numerous soldiers from the Durham area during the First World War.

⚔️🇨🇦 On September 15, 1916, the Canadian Corps launched its second major attack of the Battle of the Somme: Flers-Courcelette.

Attacking on a two-division front backed by roughly 234 field pieces and 64 heavy guns, the 3rd Division seized Mouquet Farm and the Fabeck Graben trench while the 2nd Division captured the Sugar Refinery and the village of Courcelette itself. Six tanks went into battle alongside the infantry — most bogged down in the mud, but their presence proved a powerful psychological weapon against German defenders. Private C.V. Bryden later said, "Without the tanks...we'd have suffered far greater casualties."

The fighting was brutal and close-quarters. As Captain Joseph Chabelle put it: "Bayonet fighting is a bitter struggle to the end, with no mercy shown." By September 22, Canadian troops held ground roughly 450 metres east of Courcelette — but the cost was steep: 7,230 Canadian casualties.

The battle also marked a tactical turning point, with General Arthur Currie pioneering the creeping barrage, instructing that "infantry should be taught to follow the artillery barrage as closely as a horse will follow a nosebag."

📖 Read the full story: https://legionmagazine.com/no-mercy/

09/27/2026

The First World War is still a very real part of daily life in parts of France and Belgium as shown here from our friend Mark 🇨🇦

The Iron Harvest continues just outside Vimy near Thelus.

09/22/2026

Shout out to another small military museum that is absolutely worth a visit when you are in the area. The Georgina Military Museums are a fantastic collection of rare and interesting artifacts. In addition, the staff is knowledgeable and very passionate about preserving Canadian military history 🇨🇦

09/18/2026

The Churchill Tank, named after the 1st Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill, was a heavily-armoured beast of a machine that saw service in Europe and North Africa during the Second World War. This is a rare example of a Mk I Churchill. Canadians only took the Churchill (Mk III) into battle once, at Dieppe where they became hopelessly mired in the loose rocky beach. Overall the Churchill was a very solid-performing armoured vehicle that generally kept crews alive. Many Churchills were adapted for use by the Royal Engineers as specialized assault and logistics support vehicles (AVREs).

09/17/2026

A spectacular copy of the Durham Chronicle from 1919 listing all of the local First World War casualties. We have multiple copies, so I will be framing one so that it can be easily and safely viewed in our museum 🙂🇨🇦

09/14/2026

09/11/2026

A view of the Belgian city of Ypres, looking from roughly the position of Hill 62. Clearly it isn’t hilly countryside like we are used to in our area. Even a slight rise of a few metres gains the title of ‘hill.’