Posted on 11/09/2013 2:48:03 PM PST by Dysart
I find Remembrance Sunday sadder each year. It’s partly that I’m becoming sentimental – I find it increasingly difficult to recite any poetry without a catch in my voice – but it’s mainly that the fallen are now closer in age to my children than to me.
When I was a small boy, I was, as small boys are, uncomplicatedly pro-war. At around eleven or twelve, I started to read the First World War poets, but I was still mainly attracted by the heroic element in their writing: their endurance in monstrous circumstances. Later, as a teenager, I began to wrestle with the question of whether Britain ought to have become involved (probably not, I currently think, but it’s finely balanced). Now, I find the whole business almost too melancholy for words.
There was a Remembrance Service at my children’s school this morning. We sang familiar hymns and recited familiar words, and the fallen old boys were remembered by name. A small school, a long list: more than 120 fatalities. Of every nine boys who answered the call, two failed to return.
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My grandmother’s only brother died, at age 19, at the Battle of the Bulge. I find it extraordinarily humbling to read about the casualities of WWI and WWII - just the sheer numbers. It puts into perspective when we hear, for example, “100 dead in 2011” in Afghanistan. Please realize, I mean no disrespect towards or belittling of the even a single loss of an American soldier or sailor. It just reminds me how nearly impossible it is for us now, collectively, to understand the kind of sacrifice that was given by prior generations. To lose 100 men a day - or ten times that - was the norm not so long ago.
In the US, the vets organization used to sell plastc poppies for people to wear on Veterans Day. I haven’t seen that happening for a generation now. Always thought it was a nice way to honor our veterans. Guess it’s more a custom of Canada and the Commonwealth nations.
In the US, the vets organization used to sell plastc poppies for people to wear on Veterans Day. I haven’t seen that happening for a generation now. Always thought it was a nice way to honor our veterans. Guess it’s more a custom of Canada and the Commonwealth nations.
The last time I bought such a poppy was only about 5 years ago.
Always nice to see the English soccer players with the poppies on their uniforms.
A very good first world war film is “A very long engagement”
it is in french with subtitles and covers some very
disturbing aspects of leadership and cowardice and how
this affected the people at home. Filmed in a almost
Expressionist style, the views of the french countyside
are just awesome, the trench fighting is horrendous.
It is long but well worth viewing as some of the family
and loved ones of the disgraced take revenge on the
higher unfeeling command structure in a number of mcabe
incidents. The main character finally takes the identy
of another dead outcast and survives the war but suffers
greatly for all he has been through .
Basically there were various shirkers,slackers, some
men who shot off their trigger fingers or attempted
suicide but were not successful. they were all gathered
together and marched out between the lines to be decimated.
But some of them lived as outcasts.
Really great film, must see!
Oh, the Germans had learned something from WWI, but not the lessons one might have hoped: they learned the importance of tanks in modern warfare, and the basis of blitzkrieg — fusing the tactical innovation that had been turning the tide in their favor before the entry of the U.S. and the first generation of British tanks into the war with the use of tanks. (Though it was really a British captain, B.H. Liddell-Hart, who learned those lessons and set them down fair and square in books, which his own country’s General Staff didn’t read while the German General Staff (and Patton) devoured them.)
“A Very Long Engagement” is available on youtube for the low, low price of $1.99.
What the Germans should have focused on were U-boats ...
Strategists (Monday AM QB's) have said if Nazi Germany had 40 more U-boats ready to deploy by 1940 they would have effectively cut Britain off from supplies ... food, armaments, fuel.
Once the US entered the war in December 1941 it was essentially over for Germany. The US and Canada had a stream of supplies & war equipment, production uninterrupted by bombing, moving across the Atlantic. Very little in the way of German U-boat activity to stop it ... especially the last two years of WWII.
I understand what you are saying about historical vs modern warfare carnage. Moreover, the casualty figures in the Civil War are ghastly and unfathomable anymore.
I’ll look for the making of War Horse. I saw the show 3 times - and each time, the director/creators had made changes. In the original production, the entire French family were puppets, not actors! Tremendously eerie, didn’t work, and was quickly changed. The last time I saw it, with my nephew, I sat so close to the stage, I could have pulled Joey’s tail.
I’ve only seen red crape paper poppies here in the Northeast. I buy one every year. I prefer the British poppy - made of a kind of plastic/vinyl. Prettier design as well.
I’ll try to locate it, sounds interesting. Thank you.
And Scots, Northern Irish (well most lol) and Welsh. Only one major UK club’s fans make a hoo-hah about the poppy, guess?. To be fair the club has supported it, its the fans who complain.
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