Most folks have found switching to firefox helps.
firefox has recently done an auto upgrade i dunno wot to do next
I do not know your name, but I know you died
I do not know from where you came, but I know you died
Your uniform, branch of service, it matters not to me
Whether Volunteer or Conscript, or how it came to be
That politicians failures, or some power-mad ambition
Brought you too soon to your death, in the name of any nation
You saw, you felt, you knew full well, as friend and foe were taken
By bloody death, that your life too, was forfeit and forsaken
Yet on you went and fought and died, in your close and private hell
For Mate or Pal or Regiment and memories never to tell
It was for each other, through shot and shell, the madness you endured
Side by side, through wound and pain, and comradeship assured
No family ties, or bloodline link, could match that bond of friend
Who shared the horror and kept on going, at last until the end
We cannot know, we were not there, it's beyond our comprehension
To know the toll that battle brings, of resolute intention
To carry on, day by day, for all you loved and hoped for
To live in peace a happy life, away from bloody war
For far too many, no long life ahead, free of struggle and pain and the gun
And we must remember the price that was paid, by each and every one
Regardless of views, opinions aside, no matter how each of us sees it
They were there and I cannot forget, even though I did not live it
I do not know your name, but I know you died
I do not know from where you came, but I know you died.
I'm a natural iconoclast and I don't really do rituals so I'm a bit wary of things like rememberance day and the poppy appeal. What's bothering me is that fallen soldiers from all conflicts and none have now been bundled together and covered by an umbrella idea of having fallen to save our country and protect our freedoms. That's very disingenuous and morally quite iffy when people are being encouraged to see a strong and universal patriotic obligation there.
For instance, I've already claimed the first world war was essentially a struggle between imperial powers and not a just war. We have an obligation, I'd say, to mark the scale and futility of it and understand the hegemony of the elite going on. The second world war was a just war and a fight for our country and our freedoms. We have an obligation, I'd say, to recognise the sacrifice there but again I think we need to recognise that people were under extreme social pressure to fight. Both these wars were fought mostly by conscripts. Subsequent wars were fought by professional soldiers, and not as just wars but to gain political advantage. That's a whole different ball game and I think it demeans the sacrifice in the second world war to lump these together.
Yet the injured soldiers and the families of the killed still ought to be supported, if just because the state has a duty of care which I think it fails on at the moment.
Compare that to the first and second Iraq war. We were not fighting a defensive war in either case. The first was authorised under international law but the second was almost certainly illegal and speculative. Thousands of conscript soldiers died on the Iraqi side as a result whilst a relatively small number of our professional soldiers were killed. A tragedy in each case, of course, but they were doing their job which they voluntarily signed up for in full knowledge of the job spec. What they were not doing is defending our country or protecting our freedoms.
I want them to have state of the art defensive equipment without any limit on expense and I want them to be looked after and reintegrated into society when they come out of the armed forces. I also want them to be ready and available to defend our country if we need a defense force. In short, I want them to be professionals in a professional army or navy or air force.
But I'm not buying into this idea that all our armed forces are heroes simply for being in the armed forces and that they're all brave and that we have a duty to patriotically support them in everything they do. That's mawkish at best, and disingenuous and manipulative at worst. All this flag stuff, and pride, and glory, and regimental affliation ... it's mostly there to condition people and hide what is essentially a brutal and nasty business.
The poor ordinary man in the street was eventually dragged into it and left to die in rat infested trenches when it all got going. It ended up as a war of attrition, with neither side willing to give ground. On 1 July 1916 at 7.30am, some 20,000 soldiers from Britain and Ireland went over the top into a hail of bullets. My late partner's grandfather was one of them who survived The Somme, and he used to cover my partner with his pleats-unpicked kilt (a blanket now, complete with bullet hole) when he was a child.
My two great uncles, Irish both, died in the First World War and I have been told their names are on the Thiepval Memorial. Their brother, my maternal grandfather, survived the war but he came back with shrapnel inside him, and he had a lifelong limp because of it. I suppose my interest in this War is personal. The Second World War, of course, occurred because of the harsh penalties imposed on the German People by the Versailles Agreement.
In all of this, the ordinary Tommy paid/pays the price .. the same as is happening today in Afghanistan.
Hopefully we carry them all year round.
Twee Surgeon, everything you said is so true - this sentence especially. I do feel a deep debt to all of the fallen from those two tragic battles (WW's 1&2) but I do think this song sums it all up for me - the bloody pointlessnes.
(Can't work out how to do a link! I'd only just mastered it at the old place!)
OK - Search You Tube for The Jam - Little Boy Soldiers and also get the lyrics. Fantastically poignant song. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, It's tragic because it's true
I haven't bought a poppy in years, nor will I, unless and until my views change.
Noble sacrifice? Dying for your country? With precious few exceptions that's one of the greatest con tricks every played out on the "people". And the responsibility for that does not fall solely on the powers that be. Collusion I think it is called.
I used to buy both a white and a red poppy. I am a theoretical pacifist (I don't ever think war is a good idea but occasionally, very occasionally, it is the least worst choice) but support the service personnel who have been injured or the families of the fallen. I haven't seen a white poppy in years but I still buy a red one.
Tonight I was in Asda and saw the old boy who sells the poppies there. I went to get one and who should be handing them out but our local Nu Labour MP looking very smug and making sure that there were lots of photo ops for the local rag.
I couldn't resist! I asked him how long he had been helping out (he didn't answer) and then told him. "Andrew, if you care so much about our service personnel and their families then wouldn't it be a better idea not to send them out badly equipped to be maimed and slaughtered in a pointless and illegal war just so you can crawl up the arse of Washington? Coz, as I recall, you couldn't wait to send them over"
"You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself"
Then I put a fiver in the box, got the old boy to pin a poppy on me and walked off.
Fekkin MPs
I refuse to wear one. I contribute but I bin the paper flower.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin
that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...
but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood
run upwards from the slime into its wounds;
see lines and lines of British boys rewind
back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -
mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers
not entering the story now to die and die and die.
Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori.
You walk away.
You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)
like all your mates do too -
Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -
and light a cigarette.
There's coffee in the square,
warm French bread
and all those thousands dead
are shaking dried mud from their hair
and queueing up for home. Freshly alive,
a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released
from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.
You lean against a wall,
your several million lives still possible
and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.
You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.
If poetry could truly write it backwards,
then it would.
MsG, Wilfred Owen was one of the saddest casualties of the First World War, but he left some very poignant lines of poetry which are equally applicable today. Siegfried Sassoon was a contemporary of his and he survived the war. In fact they were both sent to the same place in Scotland to be treated for shell shock, both eventually going back to the front. SS also wrote some fine poetry condemning the war, and his open letter/manifesto (A Soldier's Declaration) against war makes for solemn reading and was a complete embarrassment to the powers-that-be that instigated the War.
I stayed with the children at Arromanches-les Bains a couple of years back - been there before but thought they might appreciate it. These days it's family seaside town - it was before D-Day too. Ever been to the 360 degree cinema on the clifftop there? And the beach itself - still scarred with D-Day remnants.
"Even towards the end of his 111-year-long life, when he was widely recognized as a spokesman for his generation, he was not in the least afraid to state his opinions. âFor me, November 11 is just show business,â he once said of Armistice Day, and he rarely lost an opportunity to express his abhorrence of warfare. "
"Following his death, much was made of the example he set as a soldier, joining up âto defend the nationâ; but this ignored the facts. âI didnât want to go and fight anyone,â he wrote in his autobiography, âbut it was a case of having to. When it came, army life didnât appeal to me at all, and when I found out how rough-and-tumble it could be, I liked it even less. I had no inclination to fight anybody. I wasnât at all patriotic. I went and did what was asked of me and no more.â "
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul...-reluctant-hero.html
some of my favorite poems here btw, especially the owen and sassoon.