Rememberance Day

[andy]

5 minutes ago, Baldy said:

No disrespect to the veterans and those who died for our freedom. 

But I fail to see what's "Great" about WWI or any war.  Big war, world war, OK I can see that but "Great War?"  That term always mystify me.  WWI was especially stupid in my books, both sides dig opposing trenches and pile all your men in there.  Every once in a while one side would send their guys over only to be plowed down by machine guns.  Repeat and repeat again.  At least the militaries of the world have learned from this and don't generally so openly slaughter their own anymore.   So many wasted lives due to a European family feud.

Again, because I dislike war and especially incompetent egomaniac commanders who senselessly gets men and entire armies slaughtered, does not mean I am not appreciative of the soldiers who fought and died.

That was the way it was done back in the day. It was grim. Technology changes the modern world. Even wars. Soldiers still have to follow orders and still have our respect

[luv2fly]

It was not my call.  Like it, don't like it, agree, disagree, I have the greatest respect for those who have served and those who do so now whatever the country and especially those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.  WWII and Vietnam vets in my family and my only thought is thank you.

[Ken Gargett]

2 hours ago, Baldy said:

No disrespect to the veterans and those who died for our freedom. 

But I fail to see what's "Great" about WWI or any war.  Big war, world war, OK I can see that but "Great War?"  That term always mystify me.  WWI was especially stupid in my books, both sides dig opposing trenches and pile all your men in there.  Every once in a while one side would send their guys over only to be plowed down by machine guns.  Repeat and repeat again.  At least the militaries of the world have learned from this and don't generally so openly slaughter their own anymore.   So many wasted lives due to a European family feud.

Again, because I dislike war and especially incompetent egomaniac commanders who senselessly gets men and entire armies slaughtered, does not mean I am not appreciative of the soldiers who fought and died.

i'm sure most of us here and elsewhere would agree that all wars should be avoided if possible.

i believe it was called 'great war' because it was a war far in excess of anything seen to that stage in human history and because all sides believed/hoped that this was the war that would end all wars and never again would humans descend to such insanity. i don't think it is ever seen as great in the sense of fabulous.

two points - if you genuinely believe that this was caused by a family feud then you really need to do a lot of research. shooting the archduke may have been the trigger but there are a great many more and far deeper reasons. i doubt you'll find the definitive reason behind it, as historians disagree, but none will suggest it was simply a family dispute.

also, as i said, i'm sure we all would prefer to avoid war wherever possible but do you really think this is the place for such a post? simply saying 'no disrespect' doesn't make it so.

[jwr0201]

Thanks to all of our veterans today and always.  We are forever in your debt.

[joeruby]

The Great War was also called - The war to end all wars..

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning. 

We shall remember them.

[gweilgi]

Here's an obituary from the Economist from six years ago.  This is what we honour and should pay our respects to.  

Bill Millin, piper at the D-Day landings, died on August 17th, aged 88

Aug 26th 2010  | From the print edition

• 

ANY reasonable observer might have thought Bill Millin was unarmed as he jumped off the landing ramp at Sword Beach, in Normandy, on June 6th 1944. Unlike his colleagues, the pale 21-year-old held no rifle in his hands. Of course, in full Highland rig as he was, he had his trusty skean dhu, his little dirk, tucked in his right sock. But that was soon under three feet of water as he waded ashore, a weary soldier still smelling his own vomit from a night in a close boat on a choppy sea, and whose kilt in the freezing water was floating prettily round him like a ballerina's skirt. 

But Mr Millin was not unarmed; far from it. He held his pipes, high over his head at first to keep them from the wet (for while whisky was said to be good for the bag, salt water wasn't), then cradled in his arms to play. And bagpipes, by long tradition, counted as instruments of war. An English judge had said so after the Scots' great defeat at Culloden in 1746; a piper was a fighter like the rest, and his music was his weapon. The whining skirl of the pipes had struck dread into the Germans on the Somme, who had called the kilted pipers “Ladies from Hell”. And it raised the hearts and minds of the home side, so much so that when Mr Millin played on June 5th, as the troops left for France past the Isle of Wight and he was standing on the bowsprit just about keeping his balance above the waves getting rougher, the wild cheers of the crowd drowned out the sound of his pipes even to himself.

His playing had been planned as part of the operation. On commando training near Fort William he had struck up a friendship with Lord Lovat, the officer in charge of the 1st Special Service Brigade. Not that they had much in common. Mr Millin was short, with a broad cheeky face, the son of a Glasgow policeman; his sharpest childhood memory was of being one of the “poor”, sleeping on deck, on the family's return in 1925 from Canada to Scotland. Lovat was tall, lanky, outrageously handsome and romantic, with a castle towering above the river at Beauly, near Inverness. He had asked Mr Millin to be his personal piper: not a feudal but a military arrangement. The War Office in London now forbade pipers to play in battle, but Mr Millin and Lord Lovat, as Scots, plotted rebellion. In this “greatest invasion in history”, Lovat wanted pipes to lead the way.

He was ordering now, as they waded up Sword Beach, in that drawly voice of his: “Give us a tune, piper.” Mr Millin thought him a mad bastard. The man beside him, on the point of jumping off, had taken a bullet in the face and gone under. But there was Lovat, strolling through fire quite calmly in his aristocratic way, allegedly wearing a monogrammed white pullover under his jacket and carrying an ancient Winchester rifle, so if he was mad Mr Millin thought he might as well be ridiculous too, and struck up “Hielan' Laddie”. Lovat approved it with a thumbs-up, and asked for “The Road to the Isles”. Mr Millin inquired, half-joking, whether he should walk up and down in the traditional way of pipers. “Oh, yes. That would be lovely.”

Three times therefore he walked up and down at the edge of the sea. He remembered the sand shaking under his feet from mortar fire and the dead bodies rolling in the surf, against his legs. For the rest of the day, whenever required, he played. He piped the advancing troops along the raised road by the Caen canal, seeing the flashes from the rifle of a sniper about 100 yards ahead, noticing only after a minute or so that everyone behind him had hit the deck in the dust. When Lovat had dispatched the sniper, he struck up again. He led the company down the main street of Bénouville playing “Blue Bonnets over the Border”, refusing to run when the commander of 6 Commando urged him to; pipers walked as they played. 

He took them across two bridges, one (later renamed the Pegasus Bridge) ringing and banging as shrapnel hit the metal sides, one merely with railings which bullets whistled through: “the longest bridge I ever piped across.” Those two crossings marked their successful rendezvous with the troops who had preceded them. All the way, he learned later, German snipers had had him in their sights but, out of pity for this madman, had not fired. That was their story. Mr Millin himself knew he wasn't going to die. Piping was too enjoyable, as he had discovered in the Boys' Brigade band and all through his short army career. And piping protected him. 

The Nut-Brown Maiden

The pipes themselves were less lucky, injured by shrapnel as he dived into a ditch. He could still play them, but four days later they took a direct hit on the chanter and the drone when he had laid them down in the grass, and that was that. The last tune they had piped on D-Day was “The Nut-Brown Maiden”, played for a small red-haired French girl who, with her folks cowering behind her, had asked him for music as he passed their farm.

He gave the pipes later to the museum at the Pegasus Bridge, which he often revisited, and sometimes piped across, during his long and quiet post-war career as a mental nurse at Dawlish in Devon. On one such visit, in full Highland rig with his pipes in his arms, he was approached by a smartly dressed woman of a certain age, with faded red hair, who planted a joyous kiss of remembrance on his cheek.

[CaptainQuintero]

On 12/11/2016 at 0:18 AM, Baldy said:

No disrespect to the veterans and those who died for our freedom. 

But I fail to see what's "Great" about WWI or any war.  Big war, world war, OK I can see that but "Great War?"  That term always mystify me.  WWI was especially stupid in my books, both sides dig opposing trenches and pile all your men in there.  Every once in a while one side would send their guys over only to be plowed down by machine guns.  Repeat and repeat again.  At least the militaries of the world have learned from this and don't generally so openly slaughter their own anymore.   So many wasted lives due to a European family feud.

Again, because I dislike war and especially incompetent egomaniac commanders who senselessly gets men and entire armies slaughtered, does not mean I am not appreciative of the soldiers who fought and died.

I'd echo the points about it probably not being the best place to discuss, but then again it may be the right place, I'm not sure.

The term was more applied because it was the first war of such magnitude. Like the Great Depression, it didn't have positive connotations, it simply reflected the sheer size of the conflict.

I sometimes struggle to associate with the modern event as it has become, purposely or not, blurred with recent political conflicts and other interests.

But personally for me it boils down to remembrance of the pure futility of the first world war. All others after had some kind of political emphasis and both sides have claimed moral reasons etc. But the first world war was so futile, so without reason and introduced the world to slaughter and destruction on such an industrial scale that it still cannot fully be realised or understood, even in the scope of the wars which followed.

I delved into my family history a few years back and came across a sobering set of military records. I had known my grandfather had served in Burma and the Far East in the second world war, but apart from a distant cousin of his who served in the royal navy, there was no one else who took part in that war. A curious thing baring in mind the scale of the recruitment for that war. Going back to the generation before my grandfather's I found the regimental records for the local areas. It turned out the reason who so few members of my family were available for service in the second world war was simply that there were none left. On one morning in western Flanders 26 men from my immediate family all stepped out into no man's land and didn't come back. They were just 26 out of 1.4 million who would become casualties in that small corner of Flanders fields.

The poppy for me isn't a symbol of the sacrifice for freedom or the price of protecting a nation. There was none of that in that senseless conflict. It's a simple flower which represents the complete shameful and utter waste of human life for no reason in that brutal conflict. It is a gut wrenchingly sad occasion quite removed from the modern celebrations which for me can sometimes sway unnervingly into chest beating and grandstanding, the very things which drove us into that war. This is just one man's view, the day means different things to different people. The 11th should have been kept separate from any other memorial event or celebration of the military in my opinion but that is a discussion for another place.

If anything take a moment to remove the modern day trappings if they play against your feelings and look back at the original event, on the 11th hour, on the 11th day, on the 11th month when the world looked around and realised what it had let happen and had achieved nothing but permanently dimmed some of the light of humanity 

[Colt45]

Oddly enough, I'd considered posting a Veterans Day thanks this past Friday, but knew - absolutely knew - it would be twisted into a soapbox topic.

And then a seven year old topic gets bumped.

Perhaps some day there will be no need for soldiers. Until that day I'll continue to thank them for their service.

P.S. I triple dog dare anyone to crap on the next Anzac Day remembrance......