BS: Remembrance Day

Subject: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 04:50 PM

I go because I am honour-bound to think of those who died in wars and those who live with the memories of fallen friends. I go because I am honour-bound to think of those who live with wrecked bodies and broken minds. I go to pray that we have no more wars because I am honour-bound and free to do so. That is why I go and remember.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 04:59 PM

The war memorial in Stromness always makes me think of the cost of war each time i pass it unlike others i have seen it is not a piller or a soldier it is a seated woman her chin on her hand. I wonder how many woman have sat by the firside when the children in just this pose wondering how to keep them together and fed after thier father was killed in battle. I pass her every day and wrote this about her and the men she remembers.

Stromness Memorial

There is a lady head in hand.
Who sits at the turn of the road.
Her face is drawn in grief and pain.
As she ponders the depth of her load.

How will she keep the bairns fed.
And face lonely nights when they are in bed.
How will she keep them on the path straight and true.
How will she keep them minding of you.

She is only a statue at the turn of the road.
Her sides are covered with many a name.
The lads of her parish who went of to war.
Never to come to their home once again.

A name on a wall, a line in a book.
So often forgoten throught the land.
But to her they are father, husband and brother.
Her son, her uncle, her nephew, her lover.

There she sits at the turn of the road.
Her face to be found in every woman who shares her load.
She cannot forget them the ones who are gone.
Yet for their love she wipes away her tears and carries on

She will remember them.

MHTBL November 09 2009 22.50hrs

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 05:01 PM

For others who didn't know, it's the 11th of November, and Wikipedia says it't not observed in Ontario or Quebec. I kinda think it is.

Of course, loved ones will never forget, and on down the years, I hope they tell others. Here's to those I didn't know and never will, except through their loved ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 05:01 PM

Lest we forget.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Jeri
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 05:05 PM

Megan, that's beautiful.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 05:18 PM

It's observed in ONT and PQ but it is not a mandatory paid holiday for private enterprise.

Which pisses me off but there it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: BTNG
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 05:36 PM

11th November Not a statutory holiday in Ontario or Quebec, Manitoba, all other provinces it's a paid holiday
"

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 06:15 PM

Not a statutory holiday in the UK either, I'm afraid.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

May it ever be so.

Lovely poem Megan.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: BTNG
Date: 07 Nov 11 - 06:36 PM

Anthem For Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for 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 now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
--- 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 pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 04:15 AM

Jeri, Don thanks for the kind words. My Grandmother was one of those women, Grandpa was killed on the 14th September 1914 he had served in the Boer war and hadnt yet been called up but he knew they would get round to men like him so he enlisted. My Gran was expecting my mum and was five months pregnant when that terrifying telegram arrived "Missing presumed dead"

When my Mum first came to Orkney she saw the memorial and cried she remembered as a young child once her mum thought the six children were asleep she would sit just like the woman on our memorial she could hear the soft voice.
"Oh Dauvitt Dauvitt whit am i gaun tae dae"

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Leadfingers
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 11:10 AM

I must dig out Bill McKinnons song "The Thankful Villages" - Inspired by TV Prog of that name some years ago . Twenty Two villages that dont have a WW1 Memorilal , because they all came home
in 1918 , and even better three of them did the same in 1945 !

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: BTNG
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 11:19 AM

WEll they were the fortunate few among the carnage.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 11:33 AM

We happened to be a Thankful Family. My father, b 1901, was just too old to serve in WWii & too young for WWi. But two of his brothers and his sister were all officers, in RE, RCAF, and ATS. My sister was an ATS driver. I had many 1st cousins & 1st cousins once removed (10, on a quick count) who served in various places and all three services during WWii {my mother was one of 8 children, my father one of 5; so I had many cousins}. All survived: the worst that happened to any was that my cousin Alan who was a major in the RE was thrown by a horse when out recreational riding in India, and spent a fortnight in hospital with a sprained back.He is still alive and lives in Vancouver.

But one of my mother's closest friends lost her brother, absurdly killed on manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain when a strafing exercise plane was erroneously issued with live instead of blank, and her husband, an RAF pilot shot down on a raid on Germany, within a single month in 1940.

I, b 1932, am old enough to remember them all in their uniforms.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 11:59 AM

That's a beautiful piece of writing, Megan.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 08 Nov 11 - 02:45 PM

Dunno why my post didn't take... just noticed it didn't. I agree with 9, Megan... beautiful.

My grandparents got one of those telegram. A week later, uncle Chic, a motorcycle courier, made it back across the lines with a with a cracked vertebrae. Hmmm... my old man broke his neck carrying a bren and ammo down basement stairs in the dark while his squad was advancing up a street by blowing holes in basement walls of adjoining buildings. Neither of them knew the extent of their injuries until years later. Tough as nails.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 11:20 AM

My father was in the army. As a teenager he lied about his age and went into the army when he was actually too young to do so. He wasn't alive during World War 1 but he served in World War 2. He was in the Royal Engineers and it was from him that I learned about Bailey bridges. Being brought up in an army family the Remembrance Day parades and services were a very important part of my life. My father died in 2000 and thinking about him last night and thinking about my mother, who supported him so well in his army career, I recited and uploaded to my YouTube channel the famous war poem "For the Fallen" written by Robert Laurence Binyon and from which the "Ode of Remembrance" is taken. Although this poem was written in 1914 and honoured the World War I British war dead of that time I was thinking of my father and I was thinking of all of those who have died and suffered as a result of war, in all of those conflicts past and present in whatever part of the world. May we have no more wars.

This Siegried Sassoon poem is a sad reminder of those who could not cope with the horrors of war and for whom more understanding is needed.

Suicide in the Trenches

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.

For my father and mother

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: BTNG
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 11:39 AM

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

-- Siegfried Sassoon: Declaration against the War

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 11:59 AM

One of my Dad's brothers was killed in WWII, during the breakout in NW France shortly after the D-Day landings.

One of my mates' daughter has recently returned safely from Helmand province in Afghanistan. She's an air traffic controller with the RAF and she'll be going back.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Micca
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 12:14 PM

Megan L, HMS Royal Oak was it?

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 09 Nov 11 - 12:52 PM

There were two naval disasters the Royal Oak sunk by Gubter Prien second world war and the Vanguard in the first world war strangely similar number of lives were lost in each 804 on the vanguard and 833 on the Oak. The lady on the memorial however is for local lads who will return no more.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: olddude
Date: 10 Nov 11 - 11:44 AM

One of my friends that I worked with for 30+ years. Lost his son in Afghanistan. I remember when his son was born, I held him, watched him grow and 22 years later had to attend his funeral 6 months ago. My only wish is that all war would end, all wars .. nothing but tears is the result.

Thank you for your service, May God hold you always

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 06:14 AM

It's Veterans' Day here, and I'm getting ready for work. We don't get the day off, but New Hampshire was last to recognize Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. Perhaps it's just as well. This is a day for people more than it is for commerce and sales, and people at work become aware that quite a few of us served. Then, things go on as usual.

The fact that for me, things CAN go on as usual is not lost on me.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 06:18 AM

Emma & I are at home ~~ it is now 11.17 here. 17 minutes ago, we kept our own two-minute silence.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: fat B****rd
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 06:24 AM

Same here, MtheGM.
Charlie

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 07:42 AM

We were in the supermarket where the two minutes silence was both announced and observed. Well done Swinton Morrisons and all your customers.

I just came accross this while looking up the "lest we forget" reference.

I found it very moving - The song is 'Run' by Snow Patrol

I'll sing it one last time for you
Then we really have to go
You've been the only thing that's right
In all I've done

And I can barely look at you
But every single time I do
I know we'll make it anywhere
Away from here

Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside you dear

Louder louder
And we'll run for our lives
I can hardly speak I understand
Why you can't raise your voice to say

To think I might not see those eyes
Makes it so hard not to cry
And as we say our long goodbye
I nearly do

Light up...

Slower slower
We don't have time for that
All I want is to find an easier way
To get out of our little heads

Have heart my dear
We're bound to be afraid
Even if it's just for a few days
Making up for all this mess

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Beer
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 10:20 AM

In remembrance of WW1 and WW2 I have been asked to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph.
I honored to do so.
Adrien

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 11:44 AM

It was blowin like a banshee and raining cats and dogs at the Cenotaph here but it was warm. Very few vets... most go the the Coliseum. They started having the ceremony indoors years ago. Quite controversial but a good idea to me. I have seen very few Remembrance days that the weather wasn't cold and wet.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 07:28 PM

Megan, that poem is really inspiring.

Tell me, is there a tune that goes with it, because if not, I would love to try to set it to music, subject to your approval of course before performing it in public.

I wonder, would you mind if I did that?

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 11 Nov 11 - 07:30 PM

I was just sent this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 12 Nov 11 - 04:07 AM

That was lovely Gnu

Don i sent a pm

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 12 Nov 11 - 02:05 PM

Tomorrow there will be a Service of Remembrance near us, in the tiny village of Bylaugh (pronounced Bee-la) which has no electricity, only candlelight. The pews are the 'box' type, with a little door you shut behind you, a bit like a little wooden room. The hymns are acompanied by a harmonium which is pedalled! The silence is total, not a single sound, except perhaps a bird or two tweeting outside. I shall pray for all those who made 'the ultimate sacrifice', and also for 'peace in our time'.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 13 Nov 11 - 03:07 PM

Well, it was superb! 86 people squashed in, Edwin pedalled the harmonium for all he was worth, we sang our hearts out and five men read out the names of the Dead from five of the surrounding villages. The Silence was indeed silent, not a single sound. The National Anthem raised the roof. A wonderful tribute to those who gave their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Cats
Date: 13 Nov 11 - 05:16 PM

Don't forget the members of the Society of Friends [Quakers] Ambulance Service who went into No Mans Land every hour, unarmed and under fire, to bring back the wounded and the dying,[My Great Grandfather] and those who were in Reserved Occupations like the fire service [my father and his 3 brothers] and, of course, the Bevin Boys.
In WWII my father and his 3 brothers rescued all the children when a bomb dropped on Lingfield School. The headteacher was awarded the George Cross and the 4 men were sent white feathers as a sign of cowardice. My father kept those in the enevelope in which they were sent until the day he died. They were not cowards, they were heroes.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 13 Nov 11 - 05:39 PM

Cats I am so glad someone remembers the outsiders as a member of St Andrews Ambulance we have a war memorial in our headquarters and each year those non fighting men are honoured. My father in law was a bevan boy torn from his green island home to face the dangers of the yorkshire coal mines.

I also take time to remember the women, those in the services, the land girls the forestry corps, the women who flew planes from the factories, made munitions, welded ships dorve trams and all the other dangerous jobs that freed men for the front.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 11 - 03:59 AM

I attended the parade and service at Barnet, Herts, not in uniform for the first time in 39 years.
It was a warm, spring-like day, with just enough breeze to stir the flags.
The numbers attending increases year on year.
The church, around which battle raged in The War of the Roses, was packed, with people having to stand at the back or wait outside.
The streets were lined with onlookers and the troops and veterans applauded as they passed.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 14 Nov 11 - 04:15 AM

were applauded !!

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 06:16 PM

Who you were

A painting hanging in a lonely room
Your wife and daughter both gone now too
A name written on a dusty page
Yet one generation more will remember you
Black letters on a small town memorial
Is there anybody there minds on your name
And letters carved on a cold French wall
She left the light on in case you came
Missing presumed dead was all she heard
No warmth or comfort in the word
No tombstone where we can lay a flower
No quiet grave or shady bower
Yet I shall once more my poppy wear
To say just how much I care

MHTBL 10/11/2012 2315

Private David Sinclair killed 14th september 1914

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 07:19 PM

Tears.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 10 Nov 12 - 08:16 PM

One thing the main library in Bangor Maine did was have a big book with its people who died and each day they would turn the page..every person got a little bio and a picture and a day they were the page to view under glass.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: ragdall
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 04:53 AM

Megan,
That poem is very beautiful as was the one you posted before.

There was a time when I wondered if generations of people in the "western world", growing up without the threat of war, would be able to find meaning in the sacrifices of those who bought our freedom with their lives. Sadly, the threat of war and the loss of precious lives to war continues.

rags

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: DMcG
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 05:06 AM

I am well aware that this risks attracting a fair amount of criticism: please be assured that is far from my intention.

My daughter shares a flat with an Italian and my son is married to an Italian. My sister lives in Germany. I see Remembrance Day including combitants of all nations, including those who opposed us. Do others, and if they do, do you feel we adequately express this in the service?

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 05:30 AM

DMcG In the military cemetary at Lyness on Orkney there are the graves of seven young German airmen. Many years ago now my husband and I took over a bag of spring bulbs and planted them for each of those lads.

Sorry that I keep doing this in poetry but after I was ill I found i had difficulty saying things i wanted yet for some strange reason I could still express my feelings in a poem.

SOME MOTHERS SON

When all the talking's over
and the fighting has begun
your enemy or comrade
is still some mothers son.

Whatever it is they tell you
To make you believe instead
It is her son your killing
When you put a bullet in his head

Regardless who does the dying
Whose body falls to earth
A mothers heart is breaking
Till she takes her final breath.

Whether fighting for your country
your god or for the gold
some mothers eyes are crying
for the son she cannot hold

From Agincourt to Arnehm
Always answering the call
A soldier is a soldier
But a mothers son does fall

MHTBL May 4th 2012 0915hrs

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: selby
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 05:53 AM

on our remembrance day today the TV has just scrolled a list of Uk forces that have lost their lives since last year, a terrible amount of lives. If you add those of soldiers from around the world it is an appalling loss of life WE WILL REMEMBER THEM

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 06:30 AM

As I recorded last year, Emma & I kept a 2-minute silence ½-hr ago at 1100. I have also pinned on my National Service Medal, which I wear all day on this day even if just at home.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 06:50 AM

the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month....

Armistice Day, celebrated in the USA as Veteran's because the war that that was to end all wars was merely the forerunner of the new methods of waging war... and hardly seems fair to ignore those fallen.

our fencing master was in WWI and was only just regaining his sense of smell- fifty years after surviving a gas attack.

maybe a more fitting title should be... mourning man's inhumanity to his fellow man day.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 07:04 AM

DMcG

I was a reservist and never had to face the horror called war. A professor (retired Royal Marine) who taught a course called The History of Human Conflict would put a poster on his door every year at this time. It showed a soldier, nationality unrecognizable, and on the poster was a single red poppy. I hope that answers your question. It did and does from my perspective.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: sciencegeek
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 07:50 AM

well, both my grandmothers were born in Europe- Italy (Tolla) & Luxembourg (Blauth - of Bavarian extraction) and my father was named after the uncle who died in WWI.

My dad fought in Belgium & France before shipping over to Japan at the end of the war. I grew up watching Victory at Sea and war movies on TV. But it made me hate war and the people that start the wars, not the actual combatants...

wars are fought by people - some bad but most good... and wars will only end when people - on all sides- refuse to wage war. we need to understand and remember days of the year...

peace...

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: number 6
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 09:09 AM

Year after year we stop and remember ... but do we ever learn .... the war drums still beat, the young still march off to war ... were their sacrifices all in vain?

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 09:34 AM

We need better politicians. A Lt Col(?) Sumner when asked what he was doing in Vietnam by some protesters replied, "I though you knew. You sent me!"

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: kendall
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 02:39 PM

War, the ultimate failure.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: WalkaboutsVerse
Date: 11 Nov 12 - 03:16 PM

My poem "Remember Them?" - http://www.myspace.com/walkaboutsverse/blog/456274222

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Megan L
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 06:29 AM

I do not just remember those who died I hold in my heart all those who survived all the women who had to struggle on without their husband there were still children to feed and clothe. I think of all those who came back with broken bodies and minds and hold their families in my heart for the man who comes back in your door is not the one who went out.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 09:03 AM

DMcG, the dead have no nationality and for me there is no hatred of the men who fought, on whichever side.

They all did their duty as they saw it and if any anger remains, it is for those who sent them to die.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 09:08 AM

I was a reservist and never had to face the horror called war. A professor (retired Royal Marine) who taught a course called The History of Human Conflict would put a poster on his door every year at this time. It showed a soldier, nationality unrecognizable, and on the poster was a single red poppy.

I am always glad when November 11 becomes November 12 because Remembrance Day affects me on many levels and in many ways, not all comfortable or easy to live with, because I share the views of every poster to this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: GUEST,999
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 09:25 AM

Meant that for another thread. Sorry.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 12 Nov 12 - 05:03 PM

Megan... "who comes back in your door is not the one who went out."

That is very profound and SOOOO true. Perhaps another one of your insightful and treasured writings to that effect?

I saw that exact thing... my father, one of my my aunts, other relatives.

That statement means a lot to countless people, Megan. Carry it forward in your writings, please.

Subject: RE: BS: Remembrance Day
From: gnu
Date: 13 Nov 12 - 06:40 PM

It's personal but it's fitting in a way.

Made me shed a tear.