It is too, I did forget.
The local service was well attended by a cosmopolitan crowd. A number of Australians attending, due to their priority service for ANZAC day being cancelled due to lockdown.
Oh wow. Went past me. Thanks for the reminder.
It is not too late. 1100 GMT on the 11th day of the 11th month.
I shall pause for a thought, or two, at 1800 Thailand time.
got a couple of poppies on the weekend at the supermarket - from a bloke with a lot of medals pinned to his chest - served in Timor Leste and Afghanistan - really humble bloke would have loved to talk more but there were others wanting poppies. I felt privileged to talk a bit with him.
a maori gunner laying dying in a paddy field north of saigon and he said to his pakeha cobber...
When the war ended, I don't know if
I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back.
Passchendaele was a disastrous battle—thousands and thousands of young
lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to
Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz,
Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is
107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to
go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take
me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I
couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table.
Now what is the sense in that?
— Harry Patch
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; And buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; And rusted every bayonet with His tears.
And there were no more bombs, of ours or Theirs, Not even an old flint-lock, nor even a pikel. But God was vexed, and gave all power to Michael; And when I woke he'd seen to our repairs.
- Wilfred Owen
^^ So Ray, Remembrance Day means naught for you?
For you was it a 'a licence to go out and murder' as you quote above?
Ray ... so sad.
It was a slaughter house.
Destroyed a generation and brought sorrow to several others
And for what ?
We always need to remember.
Unfortunately that's what it was. People singing about going off to kill the enemy, sitting in railway carriages on their way to the front where they wouls be made into minced meat . . . for politicians and regents who couldn't give a fuck about them.
Precisely
We agree, tovarish
I find the continuing ANZAC memorials here odd . . . there was no conscription, people signed up for a war at literally the other end of the world against people they'd never encountered. Now they memorialise these people who longed for war.
Odd.
Interestingly we have quite a few Irish and Scottish background friends, older than us . . . who think it was just the English or English Kiwis who wanted to go 'defend' the queen/king whatever.
Yea . . . Remembrance Day. If we would 'remember' an act of pain and misery yet repeat it every single year for 100+ years - what's the point
Wonders never cease. I've just found myself agreeing with a post by our Putin troll factory representative (Teakdoor branch).
Regret war and curse the architects of it, but honour the dead who were sent to their fate with nary a say in proceedings.
Interesting take on Anzac day.
My Grandfather was in the first world war. I believe he was an Ambulance driver in the Somme. My father was in the army in Burma.
My father told me the first thing he did was burn his army coat when he got home. He abhorred war, although he had been decorated and promoted in the field. He never marched in a remembrance parade. When I asked him why he told me once he wanted to forget the war not remember it.
I have never marched in place of my father to honour him as I believe I am staying truer to his memory by not doing so.
I have been to the War Memorial Museum in Seoul.
Every foreign casualty is memorialised. They clearly respect those who fought for them.
The War Memorial Of Korea
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