Posted on 06/30/2021 5:47:13 AM PDT by DFG
Incredible colourised photos from the Battle of the Somme have provided a glimpse into the brave sacrifice of British and Commonwealth troops ahead of tomorrow's 105th anniversary of the start of the horrific carnage.
In one picture, a German prisoner assisted wounded British solders as they made their way to a dressing station after they fought on Bazentin Ridge on July 19, 1916.
Another image showed Australian gunners who stripped off in the summer heat, serving a 9.2 howitzer during the Battle of Pozières which took place during the Battle of the Somme.
The torrential rain of October 1916 which brought an end to the British Somme offensive were brought to life in colour as horses were pictured drawing carriages through the mud.
The series of images were colourised by electrician Royston Leonard from Cardiff who was inspired by the courage of the troops in what was one of the bloodiest battles in human history, leaving a million men dead.
'I got the idea for this set after hearing stories about my grandfather who was there in World War One for almost four years,' said Royston.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
No question.
What they did to Ireland a few decades earlier should have, too, it was genocide.
Many irish peole say so indeed.
Historians are divided on this issue, but in any case it was a most dreadful tragedy, exacerbated by the obvious incompetence of the then-government in London.
Needless to say, it also exacerbated the century-old tensions between the British and the Irish: from then on even the more moderate Irish embraced armed resistance against British rule as a means to break free from its pernicious effects.
But at least there was a lot of privately founded relief: Many Americans sent money to alleviate the famine, among them President Polk and Congressman Lincoln. Queen Victoria, Tsar Alexander I. and even Sultan Abdülmecid I. sent considerable sums.
What I consider very moving, is that even the Choctaw Indians collected money for the starving Irish, although they themselves had lost most of their wealth years before, in the course of their resettlement in Oklahoma (Just a few years ago, a memorial has been inaugurated in a village near Cork, Ireland, which commemorates the help which came from the Choctaw nation).
This aid arrived in Ireland by proxy of the ever-helpful Quakers.
God’s blessing be upon the memory of all those, who helped the starving Irish!
And he was brain-damaged as a side-effect from his very complicated birth, too.
Of course, in those days, the consequences of the brain-injuries he received during his birth were not clearly understood.
His crippled left arm was, after all, the more obvious, as well as the (then) better-understood, of his birth defects.
Still, I don’t believe the English gynecologist who assisted in his delivery was at fault. IIRC, he happened to be more of a medical theorist, rather than the practically competent doctor who would have been necessary for the job.
And there was plenty of food in Ireland, it got all shipped to England.
Big talker or not, he was a credible threat. Imperial Germany was neck and neck with the USA as the most powerful industrial nation and had all its naval power concentrated in the North Sea with the potential to outbuild the Royal Navy over the coming decades.
It would have been irresponsible not to take that threat seriously and heavy as the casualties of WWI were, it was probably fought then and there rather than waiting for Germany to crush France and Russia and then watch on as Germany made itself even more powerful and Britain was forced to fight a war it couldn’t win against an ascendent Germany that was unrivaled and unchallenged anywhere in Europe.
It should be remembered that whilst Britain was the most powerful and richest nation in the world during the 1840s and 50s it was still by modern standards, a developing nation with plenty of poverty of its own, and the famine had been ongoing for years by 1847 when famine fatigue had set in, and during that year there was a financial panic caused by the collapse of the railway boom that threatened to turn into a severe economic crisis that could have overwhelmed the country and caused a run on the banks.
In that context many in Britain, ignorant of the extent and reasons for the continuing crisis in Ireland started to resent continuing to pay for famine relief in Ireland and understandably thought that some of the wealthy absentee landlords (many of whom lived the high life in England) shouldn’t pay more of their fair share to help with a local crisis.
The unintended consequences of raising taxes on these landlords to pay for famine relief was that they exported more cash crops to pay these taxes. It may have been the wrong move, in hindsight but it was not a deliberate attempt at genocide, more shortsidedness and the failure to consider a policy which might have done more harm than good.
That’s what I’ve read, too.
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