A 100 years on ... a day to remember.

[merehazle]

 

1914 to 1918 the great war.  We owed them so much. Your thoughts and pictures please. We will be lighting a candle and putting it in our front window and turning out our lights between 10pm to 11pm as suggested by the papers.

750,000 Brits killed. And 17 millon on all sides. And the largely untold story of the Africans and Asians that fought alongside Europeans in the trenches. More than a million horses suffered horiffic deaths. And So many dogs were used often to pull guns. 

[merehazle]

  ........

I see it's lambsy is it?

That took you a long time old mate?  Another meeting with this lot below I would guess before you come up with that .

Like him saying nothing was not an option either for lambsy it seems. Being rude was the better option it seems.

Water of a ducks back I can assure you.  And I will at least know when you creep out again. Shortly no doubt. What a team...HEH! 

Now lets see how steve, is getting on. I see at least two are out on him.

Well it's felt like a foreign place on here for a long time. But at least it is amusing how they creep out.  

[**bustysinclaire**]

Caution................................. That is just one pertson's emotional/senitmental opinion because of family sufferings in the War................The great war was proclaimed to be the "War to end All Wars" well it certainly did not accomplish that did it. THERE IS NO PEACE not now and while we depend on others of Mankind there never will be. We are incapable of attaining complete peace and security under our own steam................The Gaza is a fine example of that right now............................People may hide behind the pretext of wanting peace but they clearly don't want it on unselfish and equal terms.

[lambsy_uk]

---

@merehazle wrote:

  ........

I see it's lambsy is it?

That took you a long time old mate?  Another meeting with this lot below I would guess before you come up with that .

Like him saying nothing was not an option either for lambsy it seems. Being rude was the better option it seems.

Water of a ducks back I can assure you.  And I will at least know when you creep out again. Shortly no doubt. What a team...HEH! 

Now lets see how steve, is getting on. I see at least two are out on him.

Well it's felt like a foreign place on here for a long time. But at least it is amusing how they creep out.  

---

Meeting? Don't be so daft!

I had said nothing, this thread had been up for some time and I'd said nothing, but then I won't just sit by as you slaughter someone for no good reason. You talk of being rude; well I suggest you revisit what you said to Creeky and have a think about your own rudeness!

Firstly you assert that his comment was most certainly disrespectful, no 'May' about it, though you do at least qualify that this was 'in your opinion'. 

Then came your rant: "No one said the loss of all those brave servicemen and women in Iraq was any less tragic........."

No, no one said that, but then no one suggested that anyone had said that, Creeky merely asked a question to which a polite reply would have been most appropriate, if you felt a reply was needed!

You continued with more ranting:  "You obviously don't really want to commemorate this particular war. And YOU said the ''start'' of that particular war? A convenient word from you, I wonder why? (not)"

An then: "And YOU come on to a thread like this show disrespect. How dare you?"

What do you mean "how dare you?" This is a discussion board not your front room or lecture theatre!!!

Then you go on: "If it had not been for them YOU  (if you were even alive)  would be speaking German now."

Now this is real guff for there is no evidence that we'd have ended up speaking German just as those in Poland or Slovakia don't speak Russian!

Questioning whether we should commemorate the start of a war or asking about the commemoration of more recent wars is not an offence, it is a question appropriate for a discussion board! Perhaps you should learn to discuss more rather than dictate; have you learned nothing from the past?!!!

[kh-vince]

Hi everyone,

I would like to kindly ask everyone to stick to the topic. Please refrain from interpersonal disputes as they go against our Community Guidelines.

Thank you.

Regards,

rvincent-78
Community Moderator

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

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@**bustysinclaire** wrote:
Caution................................. That is just one pertson's emotional/senitmental opinion because of family sufferings in the War................

---

I don't read it that way at all.  What Clive James is setting out is why commemoration is not glorification, which is central to the discussion on this thread.

All war is competition for resources.  Competition for resources occurs throughout the living world, from the smallest bacteria to the largest whale.   There is no such thing as "unselfish and equal terms".  Never has been, since the first strand of RNA replicated, and never will be even after our nearest star expires and the rock we call home becomes uninhabitable.  None of this means that those who lost their lives at the behest of causes they may or may not have believed in did not lose everything ... and it is for that that we remember them.

[joe_bloggs*]

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon: Suicide in the Trenches

[merehazle]

   Yes thank you. What a pleasent place this has suddenly become.

What passing-bells fro these who die as cattle?

--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the prayers or bells,

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pals;

Their flowers of the tenderness of silent minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen  (1893-1918)

I'll might offer a some Byron later.  Oh, got anymore?  

[upthecreekyetagain]

---

@**caution**opinion_ahead wrote:

I'm reading a book of essays by Clive James at the moment, and one is a speech he gave at a commemoration of Anzac Day in 1988.

I will quote part of what he has to say, as I think it is pertinent to the discussion about whether commemorations glorify conflict or pay homage to those individuals who took part in the conflict.  (As a man whose father survived appalling treatment in a Japanese POW camp, only to be killed in an air crash on his way home to Australia, James is certainly qualified to know about the far-reaching impact war has on individual lives.

" ... In our generation and probably for all the generations to come, the privileged nations no longer fight each other, or will fight each other. It is, and will be, the sad fate of the underprivileged nations to do all that. In the meanwhile the way is open for our children to misinterpret history, and believe that a ceremony like this honours militarism. Except by our participation in this moment of solemnity – the solemnity that always courts pomposity, unless we can forget ourselves and remember those who never lived to stand on ceremony – how can we convince our children that the opposite is true? ..."

"... Militarism, in both the great wars, was the enemy. It was why the enemy had to be fought. Almost all our dead were civilians in peacetime, and the aching gaps they left were not in the barracks but on the farms and in the factories, in the suburbs and the little towns with one pub. ..."

"... When we say that the lives of any of our young men and women under arms were wasted we should be very careful what we mean. We who are lucky enough to live in the world they helped to make safe from institutionalized evil can’t expect any prizes for pronouncing that war is not glorious. They knew that. They fought the wars anyway, and that was their glory. It’s obviously true that the world would have been a better place if the wars had never happened, but it’s profoundly true that it would have been an infinitely worse place if they had not been fought and won. ..."

"... All our dead would rather have lived in peace. But there was no peace. Now there is, and perhaps, in our protected, cushioned and lulling circumstances, one of the best ways to realize what life is really worth is to try to imagine the intensity with which they must have felt its value just before they lost it. Sacrifice is a large word, but no word can be large enough for that small moment. The only eloquence that fits is silence – which I will ask you to observe with me as I fulfil my gladly accepted duty and unveil this plaque.

Battersea Park, 1988"

If you want to read the whole speech, here is a link.

http://www.clivejames.com/books/even/anzac

---

Caution - whilst I might take issue with some of Clive James' words above the highlighted section sums up very well my thoughts.  As an atheist giving one's life for a loved one is a supreme sacrifice, to give it up for an ideal, ('King and Country'), is the ultimate. 

Wars, all wars, inevitably result in the deaths of those who would have lived had that war not taken place but even now, 100 years after the start of the 'War to end all Wars', the word 'war' is sadly still a common part of most people's vocabulary.

In a later post you state, "All war is competition for resources".  Occasionally wars are fought for ideals or against oppression but the saddest part of all wars is that the people who fight them as well as the civilian population are treated as resources by those in control. 

I will not commemorate the start of a war - doing so is not an act of honouring those who died but honouring those responsible for starting the conflict.  There is a world of difference between a commemoration and noting the date of an event.  The 'establishment' led

[**caution**opinion_ahead]

---

@upthecreekyetagain wrote:

---

@**caution**opinion_ahead wrote:

I'm reading a book of essays by Clive James at the moment, and one is a speech he gave at a commemoration of Anzac Day in 1988.

I will quote part of what he has to say, as I think it is pertinent to the discussion about whether commemorations glorify conflict or pay homage to those individuals who took part in the conflict.  (As a man whose father survived appalling treatment in a Japanese POW camp, only to be killed in an air crash on his way home to Australia, James is certainly qualified to know about the far-reaching impact war has on individual lives.

" ... In our generation and probably for all the generations to come, the privileged nations no longer fight each other, or will fight each other. It is, and will be, the sad fate of the underprivileged nations to do all that. In the meanwhile the way is open for our children to misinterpret history, and believe that a ceremony like this honours militarism. Except by our participation in this moment of solemnity – the solemnity that always courts pomposity, unless we can forget ourselves and remember those who never lived to stand on ceremony – how can we convince our children that the opposite is true? ..."

"... Militarism, in both the great wars, was the enemy. It was why the enemy had to be fought. Almost all our dead were civilians in peacetime, and the aching gaps they left were not in the barracks but on the farms and in the factories, in the suburbs and the little towns with one pub. ..."

"... When we say that the lives of any of our young men and women under arms were wasted we should be very careful what we mean. We who are lucky enough to live in the world they helped to make safe from institutionalized evil can’t expect any prizes for pronouncing that war is not glorious. They knew that. They fought the wars anyway, and that was their glory. It’s obviously true that the world would have been a better place if the wars had never happened, but it’s profoundly true that it would have been an infinitely worse place if they had not been fought and won. ..."

"... All our dead would rather have lived in peace. But there was no peace. Now there is, and perhaps, in our protected, cushioned and lulling circumstances, one of the best ways to realize what life is really worth is to try to imagine the intensity with which they must have felt its value just before they lost it. Sacrifice is a large word, but no word can be large enough for that small moment. The only eloquence that fits is silence – which I will ask you to observe with me as I fulfil my gladly accepted duty and unveil this plaque.

Battersea Park, 1988"

If you want to read the whole speech, here is a link.

http://www.clivejames.com/books/even/anzac

---

In a later post you state, "All war is competition for resources".  Occasionally wars are fought for ideals or against oppression ...

---

That is true ... but ultimately ideals are a form of resource, in that those who hold similar ones gather together as a group (not necessarily physically) and groups (in both the human and animal world) are desirable because these increase survival chances for the members, which in turn expands the group, which gives it more access to resources, and so on.

The Cold War was about ideals - communism v capitalism - with each side wanting their ideal expanded because ... they would have more resources.

I don't disagree with what you say and the line between commemoration and glorification is narrow.  Establishments hijack such situations for propoganda purposes, no doubt about it.  It is at the level of the individual with no agenda to ram at anyone else, that commemoration in its place.  

[saasher2012]

They ask me where I've been
And what I've done &seen
But what can I reply
Who knows it wasn't i
But someone just like me
Who went across the sea
And with my head & hands
Killed men in Foreign lands
Though I must bear the blame
Because he bore my name.

[lambsy_uk]

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@**caution**opinion_ahead wrote:

I don't disagree with what you say and the line between commemoration and glorification is narrow.  Establishments hijack such situations for propoganda purposes, no doubt about it.  It is at the level of the individual with no agenda to ram at anyone else, that commemoration in its place.  

---

I think many hijack such situations for their own benefit and agendas. Media for one! Look how the Poppy Appeal became a tool of manipulation; people scorned for not wearing one, people who can't be seen on TV or in public without a Poppy. Then a football team decides to include one as a badge on their shirt, then all are expected to wear one and those that choose not to are demonised. What started as a solomn gesture became a farce!

Imagine if there had been no planned commemoration this year. The BBC would have been scorned, the government scorned, Scouts Association scorned, media groups scorned, churches scorned. So they plan some events and then some get accussed of hijacking, others do deliberately hijack. As much as I feel it right to remember; if only on Remembrance Sunday, I also feel it very wrong to pressure others to fall in line or to scorn those who don't act as others do. Establishments are accused of hijack but I assure you there's plenty of hijacking goes on outside of these places.

[rose2008-2008]

Getting BACK to the thread,,,,,ive said practically the same on the other one about The War Programmes,,,,,,,,,,, RESPECT should be given for people who died for their countries and did their duty!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. DO THE LOT NOWADAYS THE GOOD KICK UP THE A**E THEY DESERVE!!! to make them go and do what millions of people did!!. Theyd be shivering in their shoes and cryin for their MAMMY!!!!!!,,,THEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

[merehazle]

Flanders fields.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely sining, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below,

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived,felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

in Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye  break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

I wrote that.  (well on here).

[saasher2012]

lol. Sorry I didn't put the author of my poem on & when I realised it was to late to edit, I was going to google another later & add it on to that !

[saasher2012]

As promised the author was, Wilfred Gibson.
This one is a Rudyard Kipling poem.


For All We Have And Are
For All Our Children's Fate
Stand Up And Meet The War
The Huns At The Gate.

I put this one in because he lost his only Son in the war which prompted him to write the poem. "My Son Jack"

[upthecreekyetagain]

"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Hermann Goering

[evoman3957]

Don't think too hard on being called

Lest too much you'll love your Life

Don't let the thoughts dwell in your Head

On the finality of being dead

Don't exercise your intelligence

Lest you question the reason why

Don't ask wherein lies the sense

When someone else tells you to die

[**bustysinclaire**]

Good point creeky......