BS: Remembrance Sunday

Subject: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Megan L
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 06:51 PM

I have just been watching the festival of remembrance, and seeing the Para who was dropped at Arnhem reminded me once again of the price paid by these men and thier families.

A few years ago i wrote a poem in remembrance of dear friends whos lives were changed forever by that event.

DANCING AT ARNHEM

Shall we go dancing
Archie my lad
The Palais, the Ritz
And Barrowlands no bad
We'll waltz and we'll swing
As we move round the floor
And when the nights done
You'll walk me to my door
For soon you'll be dancing at Arnhem

Mammy run quickly
As fast as your able
Aunty Bab's standing greetin
As he ruins the table
That bycicle wheel
Is fair cutting a rut
Auntie Barclay ma Archie
Has gone aff his nut
Ever since he went dancing at Arnhem

So mother starts shouting
Like a seargent in heat
And a paintpot hands Archie
A job to complete.
Now the doors multicoloured
And the air has turned blue
But to glue a mind back together
What else can you do
Thats the price of going dancing at Arnhem.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Nov 02 - 09:04 PM

That's a powerful piece...


My grandmother's uncle was killed in September 1918, just 2 months before the end. May 31st- June 1st 1916, saw 2 brothers, a cousin and 2 in-laws, all from the same village, killed in the Battle of Jutland.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we WILL remember them.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Megan L
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 10:39 AM

yes liz many good people lost thier lives my grandpa was killed 14 september 1914 4 months before his 5th daughter, my mum was born.

at the cenotaph today it said if the names were read out without a break you would not finnish reading till the last week in December, it fair makes you think

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Schantieman
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 10:45 AM

We will remember them.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 03:01 PM

Thanks Megan.
What became of Archie?
Keith.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Penny S.
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 03:21 PM

My grandfather took me to the top of the Road of Remembrance in Folkestone when I was a girl. It had been built for the men to march down to a special pier built for the troopships. They marched down it, hearing the guns across the channel, and many of them would never return. In those days, when I was young, there were banks of rosemary down the side of the road, for remembrance, and I would think of that road, and the young men marching (my grandfather had brothers die out there) during the two minutes silence. Now, you would have to look hard to find the herb there, and maybe most of the people have forgotten why it bears the name it does.
I took a party of school children on a geography trip to Folkestone, and we arrrived at the top of the road by the war memorial with some time to spare, so I told them what I have just told you. As I did so, I saw an elderly man who had been sitting on a nearby seat start to listen, and begin to push himself up to standing position. I was afraid I had said something to upset him, but by the time I had finished, he seemed to have changed his mind, and sat down again. I would have liked to have heard what he had to say, but I was in charge of a group of children, and had to go on with them.
When I was fourteen, my grandfather died. He became confused at the end, and believed the hospital was a field station in Flanders, where he had served as an orderly. I realised then that the lists of names on the memorials could not be, and never would be complete, for many of the old men who had been there would, like my grandfather, at the other end of the century, die in the First World War. There will be those from other wars since who know the same confusion at their ends. I hope that the man who sat in the Folkestone sun was, or is, spared that.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Megan L
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 04:27 PM

thanks kieth Archie died about 18 years ago even that long after he still got nightmares. they didnt know about ptsd back then, some of the ones who came back were a real danger to thier loved ones when they were having flash backs.

penny thank you for you memories things can so easily get forgotten after a few years. Perhaps what you were saying brought back memories for that old man, bitter sweet memories.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Sunday
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Nov 02 - 04:56 PM

It is moving to see, today, marching for only the second time, the members of the 'shot at dawn' society, for those who received no war honours, being shot for supposed cowardice, when it was probably PTSD.

My family's village is one of the 'grateful villages' - no-one lost their lives in WWII, but of the 16 names on the memorial for 1914-1919, fully half of them were related by birth or marriage to my family, as I said above, brothers and cousins.

LTS