PROTOTYPE Bailey Bridge , Sappers, Royal Engineers by Barry Levinson
Donald Bailey & his Christchurch team built the ultimate weapon for the British Royal Engineers in WW2.
The Sappers deployed this ingenious portable bridge which gave the Allied Forces a huge advantage over the enemy.
Sappers are engineers, miners, trench diggers, etc. etc., all to keep an army on the move & their skills have been in use for centuries.
Even Salahadin used their services during the Crusades.
I visited the very first bridge ever built & this prototype is still in use today.
Sir Donald was knighted in 1946 & died in Bournemouth.
I am proud to file this short report on a quiet man who worked & lived near my home in Southern England.
Barry Levinson
Donald Bailey civil engineer
Sir Donald Coleman Bailey, OBE (15 September 1901 – 5 May 1985) was an English civil engineer who invented the Bailey bridge. Field Marshal Montgomery is recorded as saying that without the Bailey bridge, we should not have won the war.
Background
Bailey attended Rotherham Grammar School and The Leys School in Cambridge. He pursued a BEng degree from University of Sheffield and graduated in 1923.
Bailey was a civil servant in the War Office when he designed his bridge. Another engineer, A.M. Hamilton, successfully demonstrated that the Bailey bridge breached a patent on the Callender-Hamilton bridge, though the Bailey bridge was generally regarded as being superior for temporary use.
Bailey was knighted in 1946 for his bridge design. By this time he was living quietly in Southbourne in Bournemouth. Dorothy Barnes, one of the girls at the Southbourne Crossroads bank, which he used regularly was surprised to learn that her unassuming customer had been knighted. Sir Donald died in Bournemouth in 1985. His 1940s home was demolished c 2004 and replaced by flats, although he also had other addresses in Bournemouth, being recorded in 1974 at 14 Viking Close, as Bailey, Sir Donald C. OBE, JP. The house in which Bailey was born, 24 Albany Street, Rotherham is still standing.
During the Second World War, there was a factory making the components for the Bailey Bridge in the neighbouring town of Christchurch, where a section of bridge still remains, at a retail park in Barrack Road. The components were shipped to training grounds in Cumbria, where men learned the difficult technique of assembling them in rivers at night, to simulate combat conditions. There is, as yet, no blue plaque in Bournemouth to commemorate Sir Donald.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery wrote in 1947:
Bailey Bridging made an immense contribution towards ending World War II. As far as my own operations were concerned, with the eighth Army in Italy and with the 21 Army Group in North West Europe, I could never have maintained the speed and tempo of forward movement without large supplies of Bailey Bridging.
Suicide and LGBTTI Youth - Dr Mathijs Lucassen
Dr Mathijs Lucassen speaks about suicide and LGBTTI youth in New Zealand - risk and protective factors, increased risk of suicidal behaviours and two intervention initiatives that aim to prevent suicide.
Presentation at 'LGBTTI Wellness and Suicide: What do we need to change?' - a one-day symposium hosted in Auckland on 27 February 2013 by Auckland DHB, Affinity Services, OUTLine NZ, Rainbow Youth and the Mental Health Foundation.
The slides from this presentation are available at: