1st July

[fatcalf]

Unsuitable for Compost Corner surely but mods can decide.

Spare a thought today for those brave men who perished at The Somme on this day, truly a sad day in our military history.

[Geedub]

Much respect RIP

[something else]

Thread running in compost corner but i agree its unsuitable in there.

[fatcalf]

Thread running in compost corner but i agree its unsuitable in there.

Didn't see the thread in there, that was from last year eh? I suppose my point's been made then. Apologies for repost.

[something else]

Didn't see the thread in there, that was from last year eh? I suppose my point's been made then. Apologies for repost.

 

Nae need to aplogise my friend, i was just bein lazy by postin onto last years rather than start one

 

As you said, it should have been in this thread where it can be viewed more.

[the fox]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

[Rickoza]

All I was told about today by someone was "Do you know what July 1st is? Anniversary of Battle of the Boyne"........

[Wellfan1984]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

 

History of Russia not your stong point then?

 

That's exactly what happened in Russia between 1917 and 1990

 

Anyway, lest we forget...

[fatcalf]

All I was told about today by someone was "Do you know what July 1st is? Anniversary of Battle of the Boyne"........

 

Ignorance knows no bounds

[Wellfan1984]

Ignorance knows no bounds

 

Especially since 1752 the Battle of the Boyne took place on the 12 July

[something else]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

 

[Rickoza]

Especially since 1752 the Battle of the Boyne took place on the 12 July

 

 

Depends what calendar you use to be honest. Julian calendar is 1st July, Gregorian calendar (what we use now) 12th July. Still can't believe some place it before the likes of the Somme.

[the fox]

History of Russia not your stong point then?

 

That's exactly what happened in Russia between 1917 and 1990

 

Anyway, lest we forget...

 

Perhaps you should look at some history yourself

[Wellfan1984]

Perhaps you should look at some history yourself

 

So if more countries when the way of Russia war would have been less frequent...

 

Aye the years 1920-1921 were very proud years for Russia, the famines, epidemics, the mass executions not to mention the collapse of the economy. Truely it was the way forward.

 

The Great Purges - another great showing by the perfect way.

 

Conquest of Poland in 1939... paid for by the death of the common people

 

1940.. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia fall to the Soviets... paid by the death of the common people

 

1940.. The Katyn Massacre...

 

1945... Conquest of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia... paid by the death of the common people

 

1962... Novocherkassk Massacre - starving workers protest about rise in food prices and poor working conditions.. met by armed forces...

 

Not to mention the millions of deaths in the Siberian Gulags...

[Andy_P]

Guys, seems like the thread was intended as a mark of respect so lets try to keep it that way and maybe do the arguing and debating about the background to the conflicts on another thread eh?

 

Just a thought.

[Optimus Prime]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

 

How do you explain the 6 Days War, the Crusades, the 30 Years War, the French Wars of Reigion, the Iran V Iraq war, The Scots wars of Independence, the American Civil War, the Korean war?

 

The reason for War, if you're looking for one is human nature. Outside of the human world, even Chimps conduct wars between rival tribes.

 

Anyways back on topic. Lets remember the brave soldiers who fought and lost their lives at the Somme, and those who were badly injured both mentally and physically.

[something else]

Guys, seems like the thread was intended as a mark of respect so lets try to keep it that way and maybe do the arguing and debating about the background to the conflicts on another thread eh?

 

Just a thought.

 

Well said that man.

 

Lest We Forget

[Wellfan1984]

Anyways back on topic. Lets remember the brave soldiers who fought and lost their lives at the Somme, and those who were badly injured both mentally and physically.

 

Very good point. When people talk of casualties of war, they sometimes forget about those, although they came back alive, they would never be the same. Some would come back and wish they were the ones to fall.

 

Lest We Forget

[steelboy]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

 

 

i don't even know where to start.

[mjw]

I will be making my fourth visit to the western front in october, the bravery those men showed in horrendous conditions should never be forgotten.They didn't volunteer to become heroes they went because they believed it was their duty wether you agree with the reasons for the war the simple truth is 'for our tomorrows they gave their todays'

[Special aka]

Most wars are caused by the greed of capitalism and that one certainly was no different just a pity the revolution which started in Russia did not spread around the globe meaning no other workers would have to slaughter each other while their superiors sat back and got rich on the profits made from arnaments.

 

Utter shyte .......... suggest you do some research before making such bold statements

[Haggischomper]

Posted this before. Daresay will post again.

 

 

 

16 years old when I went to war,

To fight for a land fit for heroes,

God on my side, and a gun in my hand,

Counting my days down to zero,

And I marched and I fought and I bled and I died,

And I never did get any older,

But I knew at the time that a year in the line,

Is a long enough life for a soldier,

 

We all volunteered, and we wrote down our names,

And we added two years to our ages,

Eager for life and ahead of the game,

Ready for history's pages,

And we fought and we brawled and we whored 'til we stood,

Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,

A thirst for the h*n, we were food for the gun,

And that's what you are when you're soldiers,

 

I heard my friend cry, and he sank to his knees,

Coughing blood as he screamed for his mother,

And I fell by his side, and that's how we died,

Clinging like kids to each other,

And I lay in the mud and the guts and the blood,

And I wept as his body grew colder,

And I called for my mother and she never came,

Though it wasn't my fault and I wasn't to blame,

The day not half over and ten thousand slain,

And now there's nobody remembers our names,

And that's how it is for a soldier.

[trafficlight]

The futility of war can't be exemplified any better than The Somme and the carnage it created. There can't be a town or city in Britain and Ireland that doesn't have a memorial to the young men who were killed over the months of that battle; a battle which was indecisive and which eventually, after hundreds of thousands of dead, forced generals on both sides to go back to the drawing board and to devise plans which guarenteed the deaths of thousands more.

 

I've studies the First World War many times - from school through to post-graduate studies, and the scale of the loss never fails to touch me. It may have been almost a century ago, but a generation of lost young men in europe ( and many from further afield ) remains horrifying. Bones and artefacts continue to be discovered on the western and eastern fronts, and utlimately it all goes back to a small interconnected and related elite trying to be more powerful than each other, particularly in the German case.

 

Wilfred Own remains my favourite reference for the carnage of the Great War; a man who explored the depths that mankind sank to in 1914-18 better than anyone I know, and it's his portrayal of the survivors of the western front in his poem 'Mental Cases', which describes the countless young men whose nervous systems were destroyed in a way more debilitating than the physical wounds, that touches me most. They couldn't escape through death on the battlefield and were tortured thereafter.

 

We type out a brief tribute to their hell from the comfort of our homes in the twenty-first century and truly don't know how lucky we are.

 

 

 

 

 

Mental Cases

Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?

Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,

Drooping tongues from jays that slob their relish,

Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?

Stroke on stroke of pain,- but what slow panic,

Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?

Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms

Misery swelters. Surely we have perished

Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?

 

-These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,

Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.

Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,

Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter.

Always they must see these things and hear them,

Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,

Carnage incomparable, and human squander

Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.

 

Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented

Back into their brains, because on their sense

Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;

Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.

-Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,

Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.

-Thus their hands are plucking at each other;

Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;

Snatching after us who smote them, brother,

Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

 

Wilfred Owen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. Could I also say the Great War should never be turned into some jingoistic celebration of eventually beating "The H.U.N." Every young German and of their allies who died prematurely in the Great War as they 'did their duty for king and country' were equal victims in the carnage, and every last one of them deserves to be held up as an example of the deliberate waste of young life that was 1914-18.

[Special aka]

............... There can't be a town or city in Britain and Ireland that doesn't have a memorial to the young men who were killed over the months of that battle ..........

 

Exactly.

 

I've often wondered what the public response would have been had they had access to the same level of media coverage as is today ? I doubt the conflict would have lasted 6 months.

[trafficlight]

By the way, the fox is right in so far as almost all wars are at least in part economic wars. Don't dismiss him out of hand, despite his generalisations.