Remembrance/Armistice Day

[Mike Hill]

They can't pass out pins with the poppies anymore because of health and safety. QUOTE]

 

I havn't heard anything so ridiculous in a long time.Thats just sad.

[treequip]

It is our responsibility to ensure that this respect and rememberance is passed on to our children and that they never forget the sacrifices that have been made for all of our futures.

 

Well someone has let the side down in passing on respect.

 

It comes to something when scrotes treat anyone like this, gut to do it to a war veteran is below contempt. The article doesn’t have pictures but let me assure you they are horrific.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/7721798.stm

 

I am moved to tears by this persons actions and I want to be first in the queue to “show my respect” to the perpetrators.

 

Andy

[Buzz]

Sadly this type of incident is all to common and the perpetrators cowardly scum....

[Mike Hill]

Vermin. Really upsetting news,he is a better man than those attackers can ever hope to be.

[Mr Ed]

I get physically choked up with rage when I think of the shocking waste of life in the Great War. The Third battle of Ypres was typical -the Germans lost approximately 260,000 men, while the British Empire forces lost about 300,000, including approximately 36,500 Australians, 3,596 New Zealanders and some 16,000 Canadians from 1915 to 1917. 90,000 British and Dominion bodies were never identified, and 42,000 never recovered. Aerial photography showed 1,000,000 shell holes in 1 square mile.

 

And for what? less than 5 miles gained, which the British subsequently gave up.

 

There will never be a hell deep enough for the generals who continually sent these men to there deaths, and its dispicable the way the government treats the surviving veterans.

 

Let us never forget the POINTLESS sacrifice that these brave men gave.

 

 

 

"I died in Hell

(they called it Passchendaele); my wound was slight

and I was hobbling back; and then a shell

burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell

into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

― Siegfried Sassoon

The horror of the shell-hole area of Verdun was surpassed. It was no longer life at all. It was mere unspeakable suffering. And through this world of mud the attackers dragged themselves, slowly, but steadily, and in dense masses. Caught in the advanced zone by our hail of fire they often collapsed, and the lonely man in the shell-hole breathed again. Then the mass came on again. Rifle and machine-gun jammed with the mud. Man fought against man, and only too often the mass was successful.

 

—General Erich Ludendorff

I stood up and looked over the front of my hole. There was just a dreary waste of mud and water, no relic of civilization, only shell holes… And everywhere were bodies, English and German, in all stages of decomposition.

 

—Lieutenant Edwin Campion Vaughan

 

 

"Good God! Did we really send our men through that?" The man beside him, who had been through the campaign, replied tonelessly, "It's worse further on up."

 

—Lt. Gen. Sir Launcelot Kiggell [5], also quoted in (Leon Wolff, In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign) [6]

"Passchendaele was just a terrible, terrible place. We used to walk along these wooden duckboards - something like ladders laid on the ground. The Germans would concentrate on these things. If a man was hit and wounded and fell off he could easily drown in the mud and never be seen again. You just did not want to go off the duckboards." Pte Richard Mercer, CEF-1CMMGB, 911016

 

I fell in a trench. There was a fella there. He must have been about our age. He was ripped shoulder to waist with shrapnel. I held his hand for the last 60 seconds of his life. He only said one word: 'Mother'. I didn't see her, but she was there. No doubt about it. He passed from this life into the next, and it felt as if I was in God's presence. I've never got over it. You never forget it. Never.

 

—Harry Patch, last survivor of Passchendaele, 12/07/2007

Some of the boys buried here are the same age as me, killed on the same day I was fighting. Anyone of them could have been me. I didn't know whether I would last longer than 5 minutes. We were the Poor Bloody Infantry and we were expendable. What a terrible waste.

 

—Harry Patch 29/7/07[7]

[Ian C]

Great loss of life for nowt, i feel sorry for all those me and women who have dies in the last 100 years, this country is now one big over priced yob ridden shite hole.......they died for what?

[Shansen]

Remembering the vets today over here also.

[Andy Collins]

Gret to see Harry Patch and the other 2 WW1 survivors at the Cenotaph yesterday, its as if they are hanging on as long as possible so WE never forget.

[penfold]

it was humbling to see Henry Allingham, the oldest of the three at 112!!, determined to get out of his wheelchair to lay his wreath but in the end it was too much for him and his escort had to do it for him. I'm a member of the Royal British Legion, although i have never served in the forces that has never been a necessity to join; as long as you have a family link to the armed forces, you can be a member. As a member i got a letter about the latest campaign by the legion which is trying to get the government to do more for the veterans of earlier conflicts as a lot of them are only just surviving above the poverty line;if this campaign is as sucessful as last years about the forces covenant then i can't see gordon brown lasting long.

[TheTreeWiseMen]

On the subject of Armistice Day, a good read, though very sad is 'The Poppy Factory' by William Fairchild. My grandmother used to tell me the story of that day when the postman brought the dreaded telegram informing her that her brother had been lost on the Somme in 1916.....never to be found.

Edited November 12, 2008 by TheTreeWiseMen