2 minutes silence

**Churchill** · 12 November 2009, 09:54

Originally posted by sasguru View Post

Indeed - plenty on this thread who put people on ignore, call people disgusting etc. etc. just because they hear Sasguru spout bollocks - again!

FTFY

**RichardCranium** · 12 November 2009, 10:01

Originally posted by Board Game Geek View Post

I bought a poppy the other week, like I always do...

...Thus I wear my poppy to remember all these things, including my own shame.

Some ideas for how tulipe The Great War was:

1. Imagine the FA Cup Final being played at the old Wembley Stadium. A capacity crowd, full mostly of young men, a few boys and a few older chaps. Now kill them all. Every last one. Two weeks later, hold another FA Cup Final with another capacity crowd of boys, young men and some of their dads. Kill all of them too. Two weeks later, do it again. Keep that up for four years.

That is how bad the carnage was amongst the soldiers (from both sides).

2. Heard of the Thankful Villages (or "Blessed Villages")? These were the parishes in England & Wales that lost no men to The Great War. Not "Thankful Towns" - there were none of them. Eventually, 50 parishes were identified across the whole of England and Wales that had lost no men. I guesstimate there were 10,000 to 15,000 parishes at the time.

In France there was only one such village.

3. The Pals Regiments. A splendid idea to get factories / towns / other communities (such as the men working for the Royal Household) to join up altogether. An example was The 15th (Service) Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment. They were 'The Leeds Pals'. The rolling recruitment campaign arrived at Leeds and immense peer pressure and direct instruction from one's betters resulted in 2,000 men being recruited. Of these, 900 were there at the start of the Battle of the Somme. At 07:39 on 1st July 1916 the whistle was blown. By 07:45 about 750 of those 900 were dead. None made it across No Man's Land and the Regiment had ceased to exist.

As a consequence, every street in Leeds had at least one house with the curtains drawn in mourning.

By the end of that day, 58,000 men were casualties and 20,000 were dead. The entire 'Kitchener's Army' of Pals Regiments - drawn from all over the country - had been wiped out. Two years in recruitment, selection and training.

4. I was going to do The Gallipoli Campaign and the pointless massacre of the Anzacs

5. Then the Armenian Genocide

6. Then something about Africa and other non-European areas that get forgotten.

but this is all just too depressing.

The point I was going to get at was that all these people were NOT professional soldiers. (They were not involved by the time of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Because they were dead. Or crippled. Or gassed. Or blind. But mostly dead.) Just ordinary people sent to do horrific things to other ordinary people because the state could make them. And if you objected, you were executed. Death or death - just because the nobs at the top felt like it.

That is what Remembrance is supposed to be about. That is why the key words are 'lest we forget'.

The point is to remember the horror and to remember to try to never let them make us do this to one another again.

Personally I think we are still doing it. Bombing mountains with 'daisy cutters' causes hideous, slow deaths just as mustard gas did. Using unmanned drones to machine-gun groups of people is even worse than hiding in a trench while machine-gunning soldiers armed with only one bullet and a bayonet. As for promoting trade with China whilst ignoring that they run tanks over their protesting students - I cannot think of a Great War analogy. Although the illegal yet strangely acceptable Israeli behaviour toward their neighbours is nothing new to the world.

Yes, people behave awfully toward people. But some of us don't like it and try to do what we can to publicise it, campaign against it and refuse to support it.

And for many they mark their allegiance to wanting a better world by voluntarily wearing a poppy and observing a silence.

**cailin maith** · 12 November 2009, 10:02

Originally posted by sasguru View Post

Indeed - plenty on this thread who put people on ignore, call people disgusting etc. etc. just because they hear a different opinion

It's not that and you know well it's not. It's the way in which the opinion is put across that is the issue. To be so obnoxious about it doesn't make it any more valid, doesn't make people think hang on he might have a point or even, ok - it's what he thinks, fair enough. It's when that opinion or the way in which it is being put across steps over the offensive line that you think **** off - well, I do anyway.

**Churchill** · 12 November 2009, 10:06

RC, my Great Grandfather was in the "Accrington Pals".

Originally posted by Accrington Pals

"The History of the East Lancashire Regiment in the Great War" records that out of some 720 Accrington Pals who took part in the attack, 584 were killed, wounded or missing.

"The result of the H.E. shells, shrapnel, machine-gun and rifle fire was such that hardly any of our men reached the German front trench. The lines which advanced in such admirable order, melted away under fire; yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks or attempted to go back. I have never seen, indeed could never have imagined such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination." (Brigadier-General H. C. Rees, GOC of 94th Brigade.)
On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, significant inroads into the German positions were made only where the terrain was less favourable to the defenders nearer the Somme river. British casualties on this day alone totalled 60,000.

**Diestl** · 12 November 2009, 10:06

I have to put up with every tv station, news website ramming the rememberence day crap down my throat, Im entitled be peed off. Thank God its over, maybe they should end it now there are no remaining soldiers.

**EternalOptimist** · 12 November 2009, 10:10