Battle Anniversaries

Subject: Battle Anniversaries
From: Fiolar
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 05:53 AM

Today July 1st is the anniversary of two famous or infamous battles one at least which has left a legacy of hatred and bitterness which time seems to have done nothing to heal. The Battle of the Boyne was fought on July 1st 1690 (old calendar) and it is still remembered on July 12th. The second saw the start of the Battle of the Somme which took place on July 1st 1916. Thirteen British divisions attacked the German front lines following a bombardement which had lasted five days and in which nearly two million shells had been fired at the German positions. Infantry men each of which carried 66 pounds of kit marched towards the machine guns and wire which were supposed to have been detroyed. At the end of the day British losses amounted to nearly 20,000 dead, almost 36,000 wounded and over 2,000 missing (ie blown to bits) and nearly 600 captured. The "battle" dragged on until Novemeber 1916 and in that time the total estimated casualties for both sides totalled well over one and a quarter million. Allied gains? A strip of land 20 miles long and 7 miles wide. Funny how a minor battle like the Boyne is still remembered and I wonder how many will be marching today to celebrate the Somme?

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Crazy Eddie
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 06:18 AM

Well Fiolar,
David Trimble is over there. But I agree, there has been a lot more reconciliation over that one, there there has been over the other one.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Matt_R
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 11:58 AM

Don't forget that today, July 1st, is the anniversary of the first day's fighting at Gettysburg, 138 years ago. Right about now, John Buford's Spencer repeater-armed dismounted cavalry would have been defending the railroad cut...

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: grumpy al
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 02:22 PM

P.S. sorry finger trouble there. as i was saying do we have to drag these memmories back and possibly resurect old hatred and bitterness which we can only know at second or third hand. hope this makes sense grumpy

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 02:40 PM

Oh, why not, Al?? Sure, and we all need to hate someone or something, ya gotta be bitter about something after all, so we may as well do it in tune with our forefathers -- after all, they must have been smarter than we are since they're dead now.

I mean... that makes sense doesn't it??

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Melani
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 03:07 PM

I personally don't need to hate anybody. The main reason to remember terrible battles where thousands of people died is to try to keep from doing it over and over.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Gareth
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 06:20 PM

I must confess that I had to read and reread this thread before replying.

I typed Flanders into the search.

Three songs hit my eye :-

Willie McBrides reply.

The Old Mans Song

The Fires of Calais

(Sorry I've yet to learn how to do clikys)

I think those sum up why we should remember old battles, not for the hate, and the peverted views of history that some songs render. Not hate but rememberance.

My Grandfather rests somewhere between Iceland and Murmansk - A merchant seaman - The Convoy is well commemorated, it was numbered PQ17. Not one of the Admiralty's better sucesses - but bitterness ? From this familly no !

Remember the battles, remember the slain, and the wounded, and the survivors. Perhaps it is a time to take a more objective view of history.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 07:23 PM

Friends,

I am sorry -- my sarcasm was apoparently not showing as clearly as I was feeling it. In my opinion there are thousands of stories on our historical line of incredible couragethat never should have been needed, incredible cruelty uncalled for, and incredible stupidity unprevented by others more able to see what was coming. In my mind for every war that bore heros to their fate there have been hundreds of wars that did NOT happen because some hero stepped in quietly and suggested an effective way of communicating instead. Those are the real causes celebres; it is a lot harder to step up with intelligence and energy and manage a war into not happening than it is to be courageous in the face of lead and mustard gas and the fear of bombs. I mean no respect to past heros who have died, and I am awfully grateful that the insanities of 1916 and 1939 were stopped before they ruined even more lives.

But the quiet, effective ones who prevent wars, unsung, unnamed and unacknowledged have saved millions of lives from being wasted courageously.

A

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 03:09 PM

The first day of the Somme was the worst single day's casualties ever for the British Army. The British Army included many thousands of Irish volunteers, which is why Trimble and others were there.
Some English towns such as Acrington were plunged into mourning as Palls Batallions of men from a single town were all but wiped out.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: paddymac
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 03:28 PM

Well spoken, Amos. Thank you.

There is often a very fine line between commemoration and celebration. In a general sense, commemoration seems more about looking toward a future informed by history, while celebration seems more about simply looking backwards. I recognize that there are are no absolutes here, but it seems that the more rational view would be the former.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 03:29 PM

Melani said:

"The main reason to remember terrible battles where thousands of people died is to try to keep from doing it over and over."

Actually, I don't think this strategy has worked terribly well to date, if the current state of the world is anything to go by.

Two groups of peddlers seem to profit by the "commemoration" business--the merchants of hate, and the merchants of nostalgia.

Wouldn't energy be better spent putting war criminals behind bars?

Might actually slow down that war maching and it's offshoot businesses a bit.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 07:16 PM

I wonder how many UK catters have made the pilgrimage to the Somme and the Ypres salient. Would you be able to describe, or explain the experience to the most sympathetic of catters from ,say , the USA. Suffice to say it is neither hatred nor nostalgia.
The original post compared how the two battles are commemorated. The Somme is commemorated though not with rowdy street parades. Go any day to Thiepval and you will see hundreds of pilgrims from these islands. And in Belgium every evening at the Menin Gate the traffic is stopped end the Last Post sounded. I was there last on a filthy night in late November. There must have been 300 standing observing two minutes of utter silence.
Keith.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Gervase
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 06:19 AM

Well said, Keith.
I've seen parties of giggling, larking schoolchildren reduced to silent awe at the Thiepval memorial, on which are carved the names of the 72,085 British soldiers who fought in the Somme sector of the Western Front and whose bodies were never found.
What moves them is certainly not hatred or nostalgia - they're too young to hate and too young to have any memory of that other time. It's a sense of the monstrous waste of war; a realisation that every one of those names represents a human being, often little older than them, whose existence was obliterated in the peaceful, rolling countryside in which they now stand.
Those kids come from all over the UK, but an enormous number do come from Ulster, because - as has been remarked in the coverage of Trimble's visit - the Somme has enormous significance in the history of "The Troubles".
The 36th (Ulster) division - nicknamed Carson's Army - was composed of new volunteers who, in many cases, went over the top wearing their Orange sashes. They advanced further than any other division on that day, at a cost of over 5,000 casualties - more than half the divisional strength - while assaulting the virtually impregnable Schwaben Redoubt.
Many of them had been members of the proscribed Ulster Volunteer Force before the war, and there was some feeling that they had been placed in the most hazardous part of the front with the hardest objective as "punishment" (scratch an Orangeman and you'll usually find a conspiracy theorist! :^) ). However the courage and sacrifice of the Ulster division was recognised, even though it had come at a huge cost.
Certainly, when the Free State was formed just five years later, most of Ulster remained part of the Union, with all the consequences that have followed, including the post hoc romanticising and falsificationof the Orange input into the Ulster division's record.
In Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme the catholic writer Frank McGuinness deftly illustrates the idea that the lessons of history are so often used wrongly, to justify contemporary bigotry and conflict. McGuinness wrote in the early 80s, when the current Troubles were at their height, but his message is as valid today.
And, as if in some horrible assent to McGuinness's theory, the elegant Helen's Tower memorial to the Ulster division near Thiepval has a new neighbour - a squat, shiny black granite memorial. Still very new, it stands out from the many other memorials in the area because of a bright orange painted sash and the words "No Surrender".
To me it is jarring and ugly, and does smack of hatred, jingoism and warped nostalgia (just as did the attitude of Ireland for many years in refusing to acknowledge the huge contribution - entirely voluntary - made by hundreds of thousands of Irishmen in two world wars)
Yes, war is rarely glorious - it's about pain, bereavement and suffering - but we do need to remember what it is and what it does, So, instead of "no surrender" we should learn its lessons and say "never again".
Sorry, a long ramble, but what the heck...

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Gervase
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 07:06 AM

Michael Longley said it better than ever I could, however:
WOUNDS

Here are two pictures from my father's head -
I have kept them like secrets until now;
First, the Ulster Division at the Somme
Going over the top with 'Fuck the Pope!'
'No Surrender!': a boy about to die,
Screaming 'Give 'em one for the Shankill!'
'Wilder than Gurkhas' were my father's words
Of admiration and bewilderment.
Next comes the London-Scottish padre
Resettling kilts with his swagger-stick
With a stylish backhand and a prayer
Over a landscape of dead buttocks.
My father followed him for fifty years.
At last, a belated casualty,
He said - lead traces flaring till they hurt -
'I am dying for King and Country, slowly.'
I touched his hand, his thin hand I touched.

Now, with military honours of a kind,
With his badges, his medals like rainbows,
His spinning compass, I bury beside him
Three teenage soldiers, bellies full of
Bullets and Irish beer, their flies undone.
A packet of woodbines I throw in,
A lucifer, the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Paralysed as heavy guns put out
The night-light in a nursery for ever;
Also a bus-conductor's uniform -
He collapsed beside his carpet-slippers
Without a murmur, shot through the head
By a shivering boy who wandered in
Before they could turn the television down
Or tidy away the supper dishes.
To the children, to a bewildered wife,
I think 'Sorry Missus' was what he said.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Matt_R
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 08:46 AM

1 p.m. Confederate Barrage.

3 p.m. "Picket's Charge".

11 p.m. Rain.

July 3, 1863.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Cobble
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 02:17 PM

History is for learning about the mistakes made in the past, so they dont happen again. NOT FOR STILL FIGHTING ABOUT TODAY.

Cobble.

Subject: RE: Battle Anniversaries
From: Fiolar
Date: 03 Jul 01 - 02:45 PM

Unfortunately some people only use the past as an excuse to carry conflicts into the present. Northern Ireland is a classic case in point on the domestic front as are the dozens of little bush fires all over the world.