dunno if you replied leccy, all i see is ref and nothing else. but if you you did indeed reply then i can only assume it was a complementing remark

If you can't see avs/pics or smileys then it's prob. your browser Contessa.

Most folks have found switching to firefox helps.

Some sign up because there's nothing else for them....recruiters tend to do very well in deprived areas...that does not mean that those who died, whatever their reasons for enlisting should not be mourned

i'm doing firefox but still no avi's no sigs, no quotes and i can't post pics.
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.

 

Nothing and noone will ever stop me wearing my poppy with great pride. To every one of those brave lads and lassies -  God bless you all!

Try the tips and tricks  help thread at the top of page

i would tds but there is too many pages lol

Go and post in the Support Forum...they reply quickly

I saw a tv programme a few weeks ago , about the Blitz in Coventry  during WW2, certainly opened my eyes up.

F'sure.  It's an individual tragedy in each case.

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.

IMO, all wars are futile.  You're never going to change a person's mind about anything by beating them up.  That's why I wear the poppy, with pride, to remember that those men died because someone, somewhere decided to change someone else's mind by beating them up.

That's why the second world war was strikingly different.  We were under threat of invasion so it was a defensive war, and we were fighting the emergence of a very nasty form of fascism which would have affected a whole continent and the political and moral future of everyone.  That wasn't a futile war, it was a war of necessity.

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.

That's true, Daniel.  It's also true that the men and women who sign up for military service know what they are letting themselves in for.  However just or unjust a particular war is, it's not those men and women who have decided to invade or attack a country.  It's the politicians who decide that.

It's just that they're not fighting for me or on behalf of me or for some high ideals, they're fighting for the policies of the state, decided by a government I most certainly did not vote in.

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.

I find the First World War the most heartbreaking war of all.  It could so easily have been avoided.  You had Edward VII sabre-rattling with his cousin the Kaiser, like two silly boys fighting over who had the biggest ship at Cowes.  The catalyst was of course the murder of Franz Ferdinand by Princip but it gave the 'boys' (by then George V) an excuse to show who was the biggest bestest King ever, in all the whole wide World

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.

Values they're called.

Hopefully we carry them all year round.

hi MsG, I cannot find the song with lyrics but Paul Weller's good diction enabled me to hear the words quite clearly.  It is poignant, it tells the tale.  It applies to now, and to then.  Thank you for telling me about it as I had never heard it before. 

Much as it pains me to say this I agree with pretty much everything Daniel has said.

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.

Dulce et Decorum Est pro patria mori - Wifred Owen knew what he was talking about.  The old lie - How sweet and fitting it is to die for your country. 

Wasn't sure that this was an appropriate place to post this but having read the other replies I hope it's ok.
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

It comes to something when poppy fascism (and I don't think Jon Snow was exaggerating) targets football clubs for failing to have their kit adapted to include a poppy.

I refuse to wear one. I contribute but I bin the paper flower.

Last Post by Carol Ann Duffy:

 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;

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. 

Already posted by me in a link back there.

I have to say I never wear one but I might be tempted by this rather fab limited edition one from the Royal Chelsea Hospital:

sorry DanielJ, I didn't see your post   But it is the one of the best anti-war statements ever published

I'm getting it all out now so I won't be tempted to spoil the threads this Sunday.

Oh I say...they are rather nice....

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.

Just to slip in another one before the (first) big day.  There's an article in the Torygraph about Harry Patch that's worth a read.  A couple of worthy paragraphs from there:

"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. “For me, November 11 is just show business,” 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 “to defend the nation”; but this ignored the facts. “I didn’t want to go and fight anyone,” he wrote in his autobiography, “but it was a case of having to. When it came, army life didn’t 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 wasn’t at all patriotic. I went and did what was asked of me and no more.” "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/cul...-reluctant-hero.html

i'm not going to get in to the poppy argument, but i just wanted to say that one thing that gets me every time people discuss war is that, had the internet somehow been around during the world wars, it would mostly have been the female forumers posting in this thread.  the rest of you would have been busy in a trench somewhere

some of my favorite poems here btw, especially the owen and sassoon.

I suspect not. They only need people like me when it's Volkssturm time.

I can picture you now

I rather fancy myself more as a Sgt.The Honorable Arthur Wilson type.