Posted on 07/17/2007 2:32:18 PM PDT by LibWhacker
wow, thank you for posting these photos. I think the last British survivor of Passchendaele died about a year ago.
Can you imagine what the Left today would have said back then?
Amazing pictures. Thank you for posting them.
Interesting...
Small consolation ...
I think many Americans fail to comprehend how costly the Great War was to the English. An entire generation of Brits vanished in the muck and mire of the trenches. That and the Blitz have to be the biggest scars modern-day Great Britain bears.
Material from the Guardian (UK) must be excerpted in all corcumstances. Please make a note of it.
Yes, I can. The same thing they are saying now.
bump
I have walked the battlefield, and the cemeteries. Words truly fail. To follow the trench lines, to try and imagine what it was like..is near impossibel to do. The minds can’t grasp it. What si also amazing are the huge areas of soil where nothing grows..no vegetation...not even weeds. The huge artillery bombardment left so much chemical residue in the soild that nothign can grow there.
They said it then too. And Lenin rode to power by exploiting the exhaustion in the aftermath of horrors like this. Then proceeded to heap fresh horror on the world.
I hear ‘ya. I can’t imagine the misery of living like that for months on end, with no end in sight. The pictures can’t possible convey how wretched it must’ve been. I think you’d almost want to die, rather than go on another minute.
http://www.jacquelinewinspear.com/france_photos.htm
The last survivor of Passchendaele
Harry Patch is the last fighting Tommy of the First World War. He alone will preserve the living memory of the carnage of the Battle of Passchendaele on its 90th anniversary this month.
He is now 109 years old. .'
POSSIBLY! :-(
Two British staff officers sent up to the front to report back on the situation was so shocked by the swamp like edges of the battlefield that one broke down and sobbed. "Good God, did we really send men to fight in this?".
IOW, the British military leadership didn't even bother to visit the place -- they just said, "keep moving." Haig was not alone in this: it was probably the defining reason for the unbelievable carnage of WWI.
Except for the subject matter, the photographs are superb. Didn’t think that they were able to take photographs of that high a quality during WWI.
Compare it to this other, authentic one:
Notice the shell burst and ruined gun in the background of both photos. The tank is missing, and the Germans pasted in.
Busted...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.