General Chat

it's much larger than the one they put on FMP :-D

The poppy was put one at about 10.43am on the 4th, albeit very small so some members may not spot it easily.

The poppy has been on GR since at least 7 pm on Nov 4th

Shaun there is a poppy on the top of this page.

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM <3

On the 27th Oct the Community Manage posted that they had asked for the Poppy to be added.

Seems we members aren't the only ones not be listened to. :-(

I cannot see a Remembrance Poppy on the home page yet.
Shaun

I would just like to say thank you to you all for adding to this Remembrance thread.

Great site for anyone researching there Military Ancestors
http://www.roll-of-honour.com/index.html


http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/RemembranceB.htm

Very Moving Video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_qAhp8yUoY

Shaun

We had no common bond, save that of youth,
No shared ambition, except to venture and survive, until,
aloft within that roaming fuselage, we found in wars intensity,
good cause to say with pride in later years to those who chronicled the great events.
We flew in Lancaters.

Don't forget these

http://www.thenma.org.uk/whats-here/armed-forces-memorial/armed-forces-memorial/

<3

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

There is plenty to remember on Remembrance Day,
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, I say,
The November wind blows strong, the dark clouds hang low,
The parade begins and moves so slow,

The sea of veterans march proud and tall,
Army, navy, and air force, they represent them all,
Their medals for service shine brightly you see,
They have each come here, because they fought for me,

The crowd stands solemn as they proudly march past,
We quietly clap to say "thank you" at last,
This sea of soldiers, pilots, nurses and doctors moves on,
Each remembering the friends, comrades, and family whom are already gone,

As the trumpet plays "The Last Post", you can see the tears,
That shows the pain and horror of all those years,
The sorrow and sadness of memories of friends they’ve lost,
Is etched on the lines of their faces, such a tremendous cost,

As this parade of veterans gets smaller each year,
It’s my generation’s responsibility to remember the fear,
Thanks to them we live in a country with freedom to live,
We must never ever forget what they each had to give.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank You Soldiers.

For us to remember
Your honour is marked this day
Soldiers united by war
With your lives, you had to pay.
November 11, forever in our hearts
Memories for old and young
Your world has ended
For us, another has begun.
Youth must remember
What your fight was for
Lest we forget
And start another war.
Thank you soldiers for the sacrifices you made
Thank you soldiers for being so brave.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
On Veteran's Day
We all must say
We remember the brave
And all the ones that gave
Their lives their blood
For countryhood
But don't despair
We remember them by the poppies we wear
Where they now lay
Is where they must stay
Gone but not forgotten.

~~~~~~~~~~


REMEMBRANCE DAY
The sun has set
Below the hills
The sounds of guns
Forever still
Not long ago
The battles raged
And many died
Of tender age
They fought for country
To protect
The way of life
We all respect
Now we gather
To recall
The sacrifices
Paid by all.


~~~~~~~~~~~

NOVEMBER 11th
In the years of the war
Brave men left to fight
For the lives of others
For the human right.
They all left their families
And marched through the door
To act for their country
To be in the war.
They fought for then
And they fought for us now
Most of them died
Thought it's a wonder how.
Because they did all for the benefit
Of our country today.
So on November 11th
Our remembrance we pay.


WE WILL REMEMBER THEM <3

All the Fine Young Men - Eric Bogle

They told all the fine young men of when this war is over
There will be peace and the peace will last forever
In Flanders Field, at Lone Pine and Bersheeba
For king and country, for honour and duty
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died

They told all the fine young men of when this war is over
In your country's grateful heart we will cherish you forever
At Tobruk and Alamein, at Bhuna and Kokoda
Like their fathers before, in a world mad with war
The young men fought and cursed and wept and died

For many of those fine young men all the wars are over
They have found peace, it's the peace that lasts forever
When the call comes again they will not answer
They're just forgotten bones lying far from their homes
As forgotten as the cause for which they died

Ah young men, can you see now why they lied

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgpiQF_ulzM

Brightsolid must have only purchased a few Poppies as there is only 1 on here and 1 on FMP.

Pushes thread back to the top.

THE LAST THREE INTERVIEWS REGARDING HARRY PATCH.

Mutiny.

‘E’ company were about a thousand strong. We had an officer we didn’t like. He used to take us out route marches. We didn’t like it. That afternoon he wanted the ‘E’ company on parade for bayonet practice. The war had been over for months. The sergeant major opened the door. Somebody threw a boot at him. He went back, reported it.

The officer came and they told him flat that they weren’t going out on parade. Well, he went back to the company office and about thirty of the men followed him and they asked for him. He came out, he pulled his revolver out and he clicked the hammer back. Nobody said anything. We had all been on the range.

I was on fatigue that morning so I wasn’t on parade. Nobody said anything.
They all went back to their huts and they rounded up what ammunition they could and went back and they asked for the officer again. He was a captain, risen from the ranks. He came out and he clicked the hammer back on his revolver. He said, ‘The first man who says he is not going on parade, I’ll shoot him.’ No sooner had he said that, when thirty bolts went back and somebody shouted, ‘Now shoot you bugger if you like.’ He threw the revolver down, disappeared. We were all run up for a mutiny.

We had a brigadier come over from the mainland to hear the officer’s side of it. Then he said, ‘I want to hear the men.’ Twenty or thirty of the men went behind a screen and they told him. They said, ‘We don’t want bayonet practice. We’ve had the real bloody thing. Some of us are wounded by bayonets.’ The outcome was that there were no parades except just to clear the camp, just fatigues. The officer was moved to a different command. We never saw him again. It’s a damn good job we didn’t.

The price of war.

It wasn’t worth it. No war is worth it. No war is worth the loss of a couple of lives let alone thousands. T’isn’t worth it … the First World War, if you boil it down, what was it? Nothing but a family row. That’s what caused it. The Second World War – Hitler wanted to govern Europe, nothing to it. I would have taken the Kaiser, his son, Hitler and the people on his side … and bloody shot them. Out the way and saved millions of lives. T’isn’t worth it.

Breaking the silence.

Opposite my bedroom there is a window and there is a light over the top. Now [when the staff go into that room] they put the light on. If I was half asleep – the light coming on was the flash of a bomb. That flash brought it all back.

For eighty years I’ve never watched a war film, I never spoke of it, not to my wife. For six years, I’ve been here [in the nursing home]. Six years it’s been nothing but World War One. As I say, World War One is history, it isn’t news. Forget it.

~~~~~~~~~~

The link below covers interviews with 5 more Service Men, very touching.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/last_tommy_gallery_01.shtml


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WE WILL REMEMBER THEM <3

HARRY PATCH INTERVIEWS CONTINUED.

Shooting to kill.

I never knew Bob [Harry’s friend and gunner] to use that [Lewis] gun to kill. If he used that gun at all, it was about two feet off the ground and he would wound them in the legs. He wouldn’t kill them if he could help it.

[A German soldier] came to me with a rifle and a fixed bayonet. He had no ammunition, otherwise he could have shot us. He came towards us. I had to bring him down. First of all, I shot him in the right shoulder. He dropped the rifle and the bayonet. He came on. His idea, I suppose, was to kick the gun if he could into the mud, so making it useless. But anyway, he came on and for our own safety, I had to bring him down. I couldn’t kill him. He was a man I didn’t know. I didn’t know his language. I couldn’t talk to him. I shot him above the ankle, above the knee.

He said something to me in German. God knows what it was. But for him the war was over.
He would be picked up by a stretcher bearer. He would have his wounds treated. He would be put into a prisoner-of-war camp. At the end of the war, he would go back to his family. Now, six weeks after that, a fellow countryman of his pulled the lever of the gun that fired the rocket that killed my three mates, and wounded me. If I had met that German soldier after my three mates had been killed, I’d have no trouble at all in killing him.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Losing friends.

The night we caught it, we were in the front line and we were going back. We had taken the German front line, the German support line and we were coming back from the German support through the German old front line. We had to cross what was the old No Man’s Land. It was crossing there that a rocket burst amongst us. It killed my three mates, it wounded me. We were on open ground.
September 22nd, half-past ten at night. That’s when I lost them. That’s my Remembrance Day. Armistice Day, you remember the thousands of others who died. For what? For nothing. And today you would never get another trench warfare. Never. Today, you got the internal combustion engine, the one like you drive your car and improvement on that. It’s entitled a man to fly, and today a trench is no good. He simply goes down the trench with his machine gun - that’s it. You’ll never get another trench war.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Being wounded.

You didn’t know you were hit. You never heard the bullet or the shell that hit you. All I can remember was a flash, I went down, blew me down. I suppose I had enough sense, I saw the blood, I had a field dressing on. I must have passed out. How long I lay there I don’t know.

Next thing I found I was in a dressing station. The field bandage had gone, the wound had been cleaned and a clean bandage on it. Around about it was a disinfectant of some sort, to keep the blinking lice away from the blood.

I lay there all the next day and the doctor came to me. ‘You can see the shrapnel – it must have been a ricochet.’ It was just buried in. He said to me, ‘Would you like me to take that out?’ I said, ‘How long will you be?’ He said, ‘Before you answer yes. With no anaesthetic in the camp at all, we’d used it on all the people more seriously wounded than you are.’ He said, ‘If I take that shrapnel out it will be as you are now.’ Pain from it was terrific. I said, ‘Alright carry on.’ Four fellahs held me down, one on each arm, one on each leg, and I can feel the cut of that scalpel now as he went through and pulled it out.

The doctor came to me some hours later. He said, ‘You want this shrapnel as a souvenir?’ I said, ‘Throw it away,’ and I never saw it again. I met his son, who was also a doctor, at Buckingham Palace eighty years later. He told me that if the shrapnel was a quarter inch deeper, it would have cut a main artery and that was it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Going home.

The fellah in the next bed said to me, ‘If he writes anything in that book on the table, a green book, you’re for Blighty.’ Well I didn’t believe him, and then some hours later somebody came in, they called my name, my number. I was out on the Red Cross truck down to Rouen … And there we had a bath, got rid of the lice, they burnt our clothing. We could see the hospital ship. We were out on the hospital ship, but never sailed that night. There was a rumour of a submarine in the Channel. We sailed the next night and came to Southampton. I think if I had gone to the field dressing main station, I don’t think I ever would [have sailed]. It was the fact that it was the advanced dressing station and they wanted the beds. Get rid of him.

Last verse of 'Before Action' by W N Hodgson. Written at the end of June 1916. He was killed in action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, aged 23.

~
I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say good-bye to all of this; –
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.
~

Harry Patch interviews continued.

No Man’s Land.

Probably you’d hear something in No Man’s Land. It might have been a working party. You reported it. The officer would have a look through his field glasses. If it was any good and it wasn’t British, give them a burst. Number One would give them a shot or two out of the Lewis gun, and after firing that Lewis gun from one aperture, we would always move down the trench. This was because, if it was spotted by a German observer there, the range was sent back to their artillery. Staying put was an invitation for half a dozen rockets. If you stayed where you were, you chanced it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Going ‘over the top’

Never forget it. We crawled, couldn’t stand up - a sniper would have you. I came across a Cornishman, he must have been from ‘A’ or ‘B’ companies who were the assault companies when we went over. ‘C’ and ‘D’, we were support. I came across a Cornishman, he was ripped from his shoulder to his waist – shrapnel.

Now a bullet wound is clean, shrapnel will tear you all to pieces. He was laying there in a pool of blood. As we got to him, he said, ‘Shoot me.’ He was beyond all human aid. Before we would pull out the revolver to shoot him, he died. I was with him in the last seconds of his life. hen he went from this life, to whatever is beyond.

Now what I saw in the way of sights at Passchendaele and at Pilkem - the wounded lying about asking you for help - we didn’t have the knowledge, the equipment or the time to spend with them,
I lost all my faith in the Church of England.

And when that fellah died, he just said one word: ‘Mother.’ It wasn’t a cry of despair. It was a cry or surprise and joy. I think - although I wasn’t allowed to see her - I am sure his mother was in the next world to welcome him. And he knew it. I was just allowed to see that much and no more. And from that day until today - and now I’m nearly 106 years old - I shall always remember that cry and I shall always remember that death is not the end.

You’ve got a memory. You’ve got a brain about the size of a tea cup. I’ve got a memory that goes back for 80 or 90 years and I think that memory goes on with you when you die. And that’s my opinion. Death is not the end.

Harry Patch interviews continued.

Life in the trenches.

You got tots of rum.There were many a man who didn’t like rum, didn’t drink it. It used to warm you up. Life in the trenches, well…can you imagine now, going out from this room along the corridor and there is a trench dug across the lawn. Six feet deep and three feet wide. There is water and mud in the bottom. You sit on a trench at the side to sleep, don’t matter whether it is wet, fine, hot or cold. Four days you are there and you got to stick it. That was the conditions.

If any man tells you he went into the front line and he wasn’t scared – he’s a liar. You were scared from the moment you got there. You never knew. I mean, in the trench you were all right. If you kept down, a sniper couldn’t get you. But you never knew if the artillery had a shell that burst above you and you caught the shrapnel. That was it.
~~~~~~~~~~

Shell shock.

You were in that trench. That was your front line. You had to keep an eye on the German front line. You daren’t leave. No. I suppose if you left, and some of them did, they were shot as cowards. That is another thing with shell shock – I never saw anyone with it, never experienced it – but it seemed you stood at the bottom of the ladder and you just could not move. Shellshock took all the nervous power out of you.

An officer would come down and very often shoot them as a coward. That man was no more a coward than you or I. He just could not move. That’s shell shock. Towards the end of war they recognised it as an illness. The early part of the war – they didn’t. If you were there you were shot. And that was it. And there’s a good many men who were shot for cowardice and they are asking now … that verdict be taken away. They were not cowards.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Sleep in the trenches.

Rats as big as cats. Anything they could gnaw, they would - to live. If you didn’t watch it, they’d gnaw your shoe laces. Anything leather, they would nibble that. As you went to sleep, you would cover your face with a blanket and you could hear the damn things run over you.

As you to sat on the firing step, you could have a doze. Not much more. Half-past seven in the morning, stand-to and you’d have an inspection. Last thing at night, you’d have an inspection. You had to sleep in between.

Written by a Private in 'A' Company 2nd Battalion Sherwood Foresters 1915, from the trenches

THE RED, RED ROAD TO HOOGE

On parade, get your spade,
"Fall in" the Pick and Shovel Brigade,
There's a carrying fatigue for half a league
And a trench to dig with a spade.
Through the dust and ruins of –––* town,
The 17 inch shells battering down,
Spitting death with their fiery breath
On the Red, Red Road to Hooge

Who is the one whose time is come,
Who will not return when work in done
Who will leave his bones on the blood-stained stones
On the Red, Red Road to Hooge
Onwards "The Sherwoods" never a stop,
To the sand-bagged trenches and over the top
It was over the top is a bullet you stop
On the Red, Red Road to Hooge

The burst and roar of a hand grenade
Welcomed us on the Death Parade
The Pit of Gloom, the Valley of Doom,
The crater down at Hooge
Fall many a soldier of the Rhine
Must stop tonight in a pit of lime
Tis a pitiless grave, for a brave or knave
In the Crater down at Hooge.

Hark to the din of a fusillade
Brig your rifle and bring your spade,
And fade away at brewak of day
In a hole you'll fill at Hooge,
Call the Roll and another name
Is sent to swell the Roll of Fame
So we carved a cross to mark the spot
Where our chums had fell at Hooge

Not a deed for paper for which man will write
Of a glorious charge in the dawning light,
The Press who wait won't tell the tale
Of the slaughter done at Hooge.
But our General knows and his praise we won
For the glorious work our lads had done,
Through shot and shell, through the Gates of Hell On the Red, Red Road to Hooge.