1st July

[mjw]

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.

 

 

There is a lovingly tended German cemetry on the western front that is the final resting place for thousands of young German soldiers that acts as a fitting memorial to the hell they also went through.There are also many jewish memorials in the cemetry which comes as a surprise to many visitors as we all know what happened a couple of decades later

 

edit- the cemetry is in Fricourt

[steelboy]

. 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;

 

Thankful_Villages

 

only 51 villages in the whole UK who didn't lose anyone. when you think of how many wee places there are we must be talking 99.9%

 

as for the ussr. 14 million political prisoners through the gulag, 7 million stragetically straved to death, the molotov-von ribbentorp pact and the 1939 partition of poland are amongst many other things s reasons why no one with half a brain would hold up the russian revolution as a good example of anything.

[Ocelot Groomin']

it was industrial destruction of the one life we have.nae words from u pricks make that change

[the fox]

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.

Wise words my friend

[postiejim]

"The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori." The old lie as Wilfred Owen calls it when translated reads "Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country."

[Special aka]

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.

 

Spot on mjw. Cannot begin to imagine the hell those in the trenches on both sides went thru. No matter their uniform, they deserve our total respect.

[mjw]

I can't take the credit for that Special, it was part of a post i quoted from Trafficlight although i agree with it entirely

[Haggischomper]

BBC From Our Correspondant.... piece

[the fox]

Spot on mjw. Cannot begin to imagine the hell those in the trenches on both sides went thru. No matter their uniform, they deserve our total respect.

Of course the people on both sides of the conflict went through hell 60,000 died in the 1st minute of the Battle of the Somme and for what? Did their countries change after the war? Did they lead better easier lives? You suggest i do some research well if you have an open mind you can read "The speech from the Dock"

[mjw]

Of course the people on both sides of the conflict went through hell 60,000 died in the 1st minute of the Battle of the Somme and for what? Did their countries change after the war? Did they lead better easier lives? You suggest i do some research well if you have an open mind you can read "The speech from the Dock"

 

The first day of the battle cost 60,000 casualties,that includes dead, injured and missing there was not the capability for that kind of destruction in 1916.This was a thread for people to remember/honour the battle of the Somme if you want a discussion on the rights and wrongs why not open a thread of your own instead of hijacking this one.

[Malky79]

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.

 

Largely agree.

 

There is a horrendous side to Russian history but if the revolution had spread, there was a chance at one point pre Hitler ruled Germany that it might have taken root there and that much more horrors could have been avoided.

 

Not least within what we know of the Soviet Union of our own history as if it hadn't faced the external pressures from Western interference then maybe likes of Stalin wouldn't have had the fertile ground to bring about much of the worst of that histroy. Perhaps Spain also wouldn't have fell to the facists etc. Perhaps if ideas opposed to pure capatalist greed could have developedwe might have developed into a more enlightened way of life, no guarantees but...

 

So quite right to commerate the horrendous loss of life, but it well beyond time we learned lessons of imperial type behaviour and stopped being the sources of wars of aggression most notably recently in Iraq and still currently in Afghanistan where lives of UK citizens in the hundreds are being wasted and many many more Afghanis.

[brisbaneMFC]

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butle...ti-war_activity