With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, England mourns for her dead across the sea. Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, There is music in the midst of desolation And a glory that shines upon our tears.
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 contemn. 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.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, To the innermost heart of their own land they are known As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, To the end, to the end, they remain.
One of my Jewish cousins fought on the English side in WWI, and was killed in the Battle of the Somme in France in July 1916. He was 24 years old, a math graduate from the College of London with his life just beginning. I remember him each Armistice Day by posting his photo to my FB profile status for the life he didn't get to live. He is a hero in my book.
This weekend is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht Day in Germany, when the Nazis burned and pillaged Jewish Germany in 1938, terrorizing the Jews of Germany preceding the Holocaust.
ETA: My cousin wasn't on our German Jewish family tree, before I found him from London's census records for the years he lived there with his parents and siblings. And I added one of his sisters. Their names had not been included there by our German book printing ancestors who kept the family records. Perhaps he and his sister had been born later, so their names hadn't been added to the tree or the family web prior to that stopping. His obit is on England's war registry as well for WWI soldiers, so that was another way I was able to verify his parentage in addition to the census records.
Once I did locate him and his sister, they are now permanently on our family website. He had been made a captain in WWI. He was so young and brave to be going into battle, like so many of those who died. My Israeli cousin who kept the family histories alive, wrote a mini biography for him, after I found him and added him to the tree. :) I haven't been able to find any bio info for his sister, other than her name so far.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2018 05:40PM by Amyjo.
Watching the Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance and thinking of Great Uncle Albert who did in the Somme.
I don't know if it is just this stake, but members have been instructed to attend the Remembrance Services held in their local communities, rather than attending any ward meetings.
The management of the Smith Cult in Britain has realised it's been missing a trick all these years. Members (priesthood)aren't just attending rememberance events but are laying wreaths which are there to advertise the cult and make it seem like it's both British and normal. They are hitting as many events as they can which leaves no men to conduct the sunday meetings.
I was watching some of the Premier League today and noticed the presenters/commentators all wearing poppies with the leaves pointed to the 11 0'clock position. I remember my mom buying poppies for both of us when I was a child. I believe that the VFW sold them. It's a lovely tradition but I haven't seen the poppies in recent years.
There is no real British tradition or meaning in the leaf at all. For many. many years the poppy was sold without a leaf and is still used in many poppy displays without it. It is purely an improved design. I wore a commemorative one today to memorialize George Chapman of the Royal West Kent Regiment killed at the Somme in 1916.
My mom’s uncle died in France in the Battle of Arras on August 31, 1918. Only two months before the end of the war. He and his sister, my grandmother, were the only two of their family to emigrate to Canada from Scotland and his death left her alone and devastated.
One hundred years on, I think of him and the thousands of other young men who were lost so far from their homes and families.
My wife's great uncle, freshly naturalized from Russian to French, died on the Argonne ridge a few months later. Her grandfather spent 4 years at Verdun but survived.
However, he refused to sing the national anthem ever again because of what he saw as the nation's betrayal of its people by allowing the war to happen and pursuing it with such lack of regard for human life.
It was such a STUPID war.
Tom in Paris
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/11/2018 03:37AM by Soft Machine.
My grandfather was a machine gunner in WWI. I have his helmet, gas mask, and dog tags. My mom said he didn't like to talk about the war. He refused to own a gun after it. I just remember him as a nice old man who would dump out a box of Captain Crunch into a big bowl so I could get the prize at the bottom.
He passed away in 1971. When I was with my mom going through his dresser drawer there were some horrifying pictures of rotting corpses in trenches. Some were pretty much skeletons. It scared the hell out of me because I was just a little kid and I can still see those pictures in my head today. I guess my cousin has them now.
Rubicon Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > My grandfather was a machine gunner in WWI. I > have his helmet, gas mask, and dog tags. My mom > said he didn't like to talk about the war. He > refused to own a gun after it. I just remember > him as a nice old man who would dump out a box of > Captain Crunch into a big bowl so I could get the > prize at the bottom.
Only a mensch and a grandpa could be so noble as that! ;)
> > He passed away in 1971. When I was with my mom > going through his dresser drawer there were some > horrifying pictures of rotting corpses in > trenches. Some were pretty much skeletons. It > scared the hell out of me because I was just a > little kid and I can still see those pictures in > my head today. I guess my cousin has them now.
Can you imagine the PTSD he may have lived with and held inside after living through a hell like that?!
I wear a poppy today to remember that the old Lie is the new Lie and will always and forever be a Lie:
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace Behind the wagon that we flung him in, And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
—-Dulce et Decorum Est (last stanza)— —-Wilfred Owen—
Oh, thou eternal Homer! I have now To paint a siege, wherein more men were slain, With deadlier engines and a speedier blow, Than in thy Greek gazette of that campaign; And yet, like all men else, I must allow, To vie with thee would be about as vain As for a brook to cope with ocean's flood; But still we moderns equal you in blood.
—from Don Juan (Cantos Seventh)— —Lord Byron—
First war resembles a beautiful mouth we all want to flirt with and believe—.
Later it’s more a repulsive old whore whose callers are bitter and grieve.
—Sh'muel HaLevi ben Yosef HaNagid— —born 993, Moorish Iberia— —(trans. Peter Cole)—
It's still ruled by England. The way the LDS go on in their services, you'd think we should be grateful to Mother England. The British insert in Ensign is the worst. Totally Anglocentric, Union Jack waving...
It was a war for small nations, but England ruled plenty of small nations and Scotland had to wait ninety years to get less autonomy than a US or Aussie state has.
Don't even get me on to that silly referendum. Totally rigged and won because of that lie called the Vow. No fair coverage from auntie Beeb (BBC)... today Reporting Scotland had a piper with Union Jack bagpipes playing.