Lest We Forget

[big jim]

I happened to flick over to that last night with about 40 minutes to go and was glued to it to the very last minute, absolutely fantastic piece of work, very poignant and at times quite some quite amusing commentary

[Guest CLARENCE]

An amazing piece of work!

I kept looking for my Grandad! Wonderful, thought-provoking work - I was in tears throughout.

[Tricky-CRS]

I went to the premiere of they shall not grow old and recorded to watch tonight after a short documentary on the making of. In interview after the film Peter Jackson said they have repaired to black and white quality over 100 hours of film for free for the Imperial War Museum. At one point he picks up it shows the Lancashire regiment waiting in a lane to go over the top, with in 20 minutes of being filmed most of them were killed.

 

This is a very funny and humorous film but very sad and highlights the tragedies of war very well. The post war bit was particularly sad, the way the veterans were treated.

 

May all who served in any way, in any conflict RIP

Edited November 12, 2018 by Tricky-CRS

[Steven B]

This is how CBeebies mark the 2 minute silence:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/poppies

 

Well worth two minutes of your time if you have access to iPlayer (even if you don't have young children)

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

I doubt 'they' will be unable to draw a line under WWI for all sorts of reasons...

 The evidence is in for our parish, you are correct.

 

Our extra effort for the centenary of the 1918 armistice was to make a temporary poppy trail  -  a named poppy for each of the WWI casualties - from the war memorial to the single WWI war grave in  parish church graveyard on the 11th, to mark out the parade route. Immediately following the Remembrance parade, the poppy trail was then transferred from the lane to within the churchyard alone, where it stood until this morning when a small team of us removed it.

 

This just happened to coincide with the local councillors surgery date in the parish church, and they had received much feedback to add to that left in the church. Top of the list was please repeat the poppy trail.

[burgundy]

As a postscript to this thread, it is worth remembering that, although hostilities ceased on 11 November 1918, the consequences of the war continued for a considerable time. British forces were directly engaged in the Baltic supporting Estonian and Latvian independence, in northern Russia supporting the White Russians, in Ireland and in Afghanistan.  Poland was fighting for its independence and Greece and Turkey were engaged in a war that ended with the deportation of ethnic Greeks from Turkey and vice versa. Spanish flu claimed further victims, including my grandfather, who died in Gibraltar, two days after the war ended.
The point of this note is to record the centenary of the sinking of HMY Iolaire, when she struck rocks  in the entrance to Stornoway harbour on 1 January 1919, with the loss of 205 men out of the 284 on board. The population of the Isle of Lewis at the time seems to have been around 30,000, of whom around 1,000 are believed to have died in the war. The Iolaire was bringing back a number of those who had survived and who were returning home. The loss of a further 200 young men was a final, devastating blow to the community.
https://www.virtualheb.co.uk/iolaire-disaster-western-isles/
I feel very fortunate to belong to a generation that has seen peace throughout Western Europe throughout my lifetime.

Best wishes 

Eric 

[BoD]

I would like to rate that post but non of the ratings available quite do it justice.

[F-UnitMad]

I would like to rate that post but non of the ratings available quite do it justice.

Agree.

 

An interesting thing if you look carefully enough is that a lot of memorials that were errected fairly soon after the Great War refer to it as 1914 to 1919, since although the Armistice occured in 1918, there were further ongoing hostilities as Eric/burgundy points out - especially that in Russia that Britain was directly involved in, & it still took the troops on the Western Front some time to get back home.

[Model Railway Noob]

I was at a remembrance event at Walsall Town Hall with my battlefield collection, slide show in a theatre of WWI and WWII and had VR photos of the WWI battlefield for people to experience in 360. I have researched many soldiers and visited the battlefields numerous times which is why I am modelling a WWI layout of a Casualty Cleaning Station in France in 1917. I served with the Royal Army Medical Corps in a Field Hospital and two Field Ambulances.

 

To the memory of the men and boys of Castle Donington, Leicestershire (the village of my birth) who gave their lives in the Great War. All gave some, some gave all. I have been researching them for many years and feel I know them. of a village of 2,500, around 350 went and 70+ failed ot return. Many of those who did were wounded, lost eyes or limbs and many died young due to be gassed, poorly fed and exposed to the elements for so long. The third of three sons died of 'flu in a German PoW camp in December 1918 before he could be returned home to his family. He was the one son they thought was coming home. The only surviving male said his brothers were calling him to them on his death bed many years later.