Pvt. George Thomas Chapman whose commemorative poppy pin I wear this week. Soldier in the King's Own Royal West Kent Regiment killed 9-4-1916 at the Somme.

Also to the cousin I never knew Reginal Arthur Andrews, Private, East Staffordshire Regiment killed July 2, 1944 during the assault on Caen, and buried in Brouay, Normandy, France.

Proud of my home country for honoring its promise to never forget.

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old

Age shall not weary them, nor years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

It's an important day to memorialize, even celebrate: when the war that destroyed "Europe" finally came to an end.

"All Quiet on the Western Front" the new German made film. Damn, that war sucked for the Germans too. War just sucks.

A very well made movie. Likely up for an Oscar now that movies made for streaming are eligible. Displays all the horrors of WW1 with the unimaginable number of dead. More than 2 million from Germany, almost that number from France, and close to 800,000 from Britain and countless numbers from countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand where losses in proportion to population were staggering. Russian soldiers, too, in the earlier years of the war.

AQOTWF is a reminder of tragedies at the end of the war. George Lawrence Price last Canadian killed at Mons at 10:58 November 11. Augustin Tribuchon, last French soldier killed at 10:50. Last British soldier killed at Mons at 9:30. He lasted virtually all of the war having fought at the first battle of Mons in 1914.

Then there are the 300 American soldiers killed or wounded on the morning of 11/11 when their officer ordered on attack on the German held village of Stenay. A few hours later they could have walked in.

Kentish Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> At the going down of the sun and in the morning

> We will remember them.

Bless you, Kentish.


HM Royal Marines:

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



Why the Poppy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28RvhnK6X_I



Remembrance Day Canada ('Soldiers Cry' by Roland Majeau):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ7z_eANAP4



Flypast 2022:

https://legion.ca/news/articles/2022/11/09/a-remembrance-day-flypast-with-special-symbolism



Tom Hennessy, RAF, The London Free Press (Ontario), 2017:

"On Remembrance Day Saturday, Hennessy likely won't attend a ceremony or go to a Legion hall for a pint. As he has every year, he will watch a cenotaph ceremony on TV at home with Joyce, his wife of 40 years.

"There is nothing good about war, at all," said Hennessy.

"He recalls returning home on a hospital ship, his leg broken in a soccer game, and was on deck at night when he saw the lights along the English coast -- a sign the war had ended.

"That is when it hit me. I am coming home, but Jack did not come home, James did not come home, my brother did not come home. I started to have tears."

His brother Burt was also in the RAF, a wireless operator, and was killed in 1938 in Palestine during the Arab Revolt.

"There was a thankfulness that I was alive, I was OK. I am alive and got through it, but my good friends did not make it."

-----

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

For some reason, Nightingale, your Last Post made my eyes water. If you can find them, two beautiful moments captured on YT that I enjoy are from recent years of the annual Festival of Remembrance. One is the singing group Amore singing haunting words put to Elgar's Nimrod. The other is young poet Tomos Roberts reciting his Alive with Poppies. The festival will be this Saturday evening at the Royal Albert Hall. Always held the night before the national services of remembrance on the Sunday closest to the eleventh.

That focus will be at the Cenotaph,the national war memorial on Whitehall where King Charles will lead the wreath laying and masses of veterans will march by to pay their respects to the fallen.

A few years ago I was at the Menin Gate in Ypres, Belgium for the nightly Last Post ceremony. The Menin Gate is a memorial to more than 50,00 British and Commonwealth soldiers with no kn own grave To hear the bugles while looking up at columns and columns and columns of names was a staggeringly emotional experience.

"They are not missing. They are here."

Lots of YT on this event.

For me with that Last Post, it's the sound of the wind, quiet until the end. When the music stops the wind is louder. Haunting.

Thank you for mentioning "the last man", our Canadian soldier George Price. Here's a write-up on him, that includes the line "...it was a terrible day to die". Indeed.

Another tearjerker is the gift his nephew was given when he went back to the place where Price fell at 10:58 on November 11 so long ago and yet close in memory.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/george-price-first-world-war-last-soldier-killed-1.4898387



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2022 07:25PM by Nightingale.

Interesting story. So tragic. In many towns of England whole streets of young men signed up under the promise they could stay together in the same regiment. Pals Regiments they called them. You can imagine the lament when the telegrams came.

Great Britain and its allies did what needed to be done to keep fascism at bay. Yes, we remember. Last night the CBS Evening News in the U.S. profiled a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge (a battle in which two of my uncles fought.) He is 103 years old, and a West Point graduate. He's still walking with the benefit of a cane. His class graduated just before the U.S. entered the war. He misses his long-gone friends and comrades-in-arms.

Someday that generation will be entirely gone, and we will be the poorer for it. They were a remarkable people who saved the world.

Indeed Summer. I wonder if any of those boys gave gum to a city scruff like me virtually deprived of candy until years after the war when it came off ration.

I’ll be attending the annual Remembrance Day ceremony at our local Canadian Legion Hall tomorrow. My thoughts will be on my two great uncles who both served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War 1 - Alex Morrison, who enlisted in Saskatchewan and survived, and John Thomson, who enlisted in Manitoba and was killed in battle on August 31, 1918.

I’ll wear my poppy in gratitude.

Me too at the Legion, looking in. It's an outside service. I'm already shivering at the thought. But it's nothing compared to what those we're remembering endured. A 30-minute service and then head inside for a brew. Or a hot chocolate. Not to much to ask, is it.

I'm remembering for my mum, who remembered for her father, and so on...

First Nov 11 without QEII. She was such a trooper.

In honour of today, "In Flanders Fields" recited by the late, great Leonard Cohen.

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

So much great poetry and literature came out of WW1. A sobering one by British poet Siegfried Sassoon:

When you are standing at your hero's grave,

or near some homeless village where he died

Remember, through your heart's rekindling pride,

The German soldiers who were loyal and and brave.


Men fought like brutes; and hideous things were done;

And you have nourished hatred, harsh and blind.

But in that Golgotha perhaps you'll find

The mothers of the men who killed your son.



Sassoon, I think, captured the bigger picture in terms of war's assault on humanity, especially since he served on the Western Front of WW1 and earned the Military Cross, Britain's third highest award, for his bravery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FKG62BtuVY

This is a song by comic folk singer Christine Lavin, though this song is serious. It is the true story of the kamikaze campaign of WWII, told from the Japanese POV. I looked it up and was surprised that it only lasted 12 weeks. The fact that so many people are aware of it to this day is a measure of how horrified people were at the campaign.

The sound quality is not the best. Sounds like the audio was downsampled, but it is understandable if you pay attention. It is also fairly long (9 minutes).

And as bad as WWI and WWII were, what is happening right now in eastern Ukraine is in the same ballpark, creating its own legions of the dead, the heroic, and the victims. We'd like to think humanity is beyond that now, Sadly, no.

> And as bad as WWI and WWII were, what is happening
> right now in eastern Ukraine is in the same
> ballpark, creating its own legions of the dead,
> the heroic, and the victims. We'd like to think
> humanity is beyond that now, Sadly, no.

I don't think humanity will ever be "beyond" such things. There is an innate optimism in people, a desire to believe that we are better than our ancestors, and yet we are not. So wars, genocides, the overthrow of democracies, and wartime atrocities will always be present.

The one thing that may come out of the Ukrainian War is a more fundamental and lasting change in the balance of power. Russia has paid a high price for Putin's avarice: roughly half of the country's conventional military power and possibly significantly more. If pursued to a reasonable conclusion, the war may seriously reduce Russia's ability to intimidate its neighbors and give Xi Jinping pause regarding Taiwan.

Some wars are worth fighting.

>Some wars are worth fighting.

Sadly, yes.

So go over and fight.

Is that intended as a logical argument?

I recall vividly the two minute silence on 11,11,11 in the years after WW2 when even the traffic on the street stopped to honor and remember the dead. Today in Britain many businesses and factories and public places such as railway stations fell silent.

Thankfully there will perhaps never be another war fought like WW1. I am not sure young men, no matter the side, would put up with the slaughter of so many years of stalemate and attrition.

I am confident that modern warfare is unlikely to repeat the self-immolation of WWI, but that doesn't mean its effect on humanity will be lessened.

As a silly bumper sticker of yesteryear put it, "one nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day."

I think Canada's Remembrance Day is becoming more like the US version, a holiday at least partly stripped of its meaning. When I first moved to Manitoba back in the 1980s, I was a busy grad student, and decided I could use the Nov 11 holiday to do a grocery run. I was astonished to find out that nearly every business was closed, with the exception of an occasional gas station. The only day in the US when businesses are closed to that level is Christmas Day.

And poppy pins are still a thing in Canada. I remember them from my childhood in the US, but I almost never see them now.

Wearing poppies is still very common in Canada, from the start of November through the 11th, although in a recent news segment that I saw, it was suggested that it is becoming less common. But I’ve seen plenty this month.

Some years ago in Ottawa, a tradition of leaving your poppy on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier after the conclusion of the national ceremony of remembrance sprang up. Now every year the tomb is covered in poppies. It has spread to lots of other communities as well, with people leaving poppies at local cenotaphs.

Also, an organization called No Stone Left Alone has promoted involving schools, youth and community groups to bring poppies to military graves in cemeteries in our communities before Remembrance Day and leaving one at each soldier’s grave.

It think not wearing a poppy would put you in the minority in the UK. The annual poppy campaign is the.lifeblood of the Royal British Legion and the essential emblem of remembrance. It is not uncommon to see poppy decorations around churches and public building and all sporting event for the first part of November have some kind of pregame moment of silence. It is very respectful and as it should be I think. Nothing is more noving than the annual poppy drop on assembled military representatives at the Festival of Remembrance. In excess of a million poppies, one for each soldier killed since WW1, fluttering to the floor amid the utter silence of the filled Royal Albert Hall.

The British national remembrance ceremony held this morning is up on YT. Lots of shots of assembling but the two minute silence at the second of 11 o'c!ock starts the reverent part. Before a gathering of the nation the dead ate honored.

Saturday, November 12, 2022 was a gloriously warm, sunny autumn day in British Columbia. In contrast to Friday, November 11, with its dull skies and icy wind that ripped the poppy from my winter jacket. A day reminiscent of innumerable accounts of frozen battlefields and frostbitten fingers and toes.

The solemn Remembrance Day ceremony I attended featured ranks of cadets and officers, numerous current and retired police officers and firefighters, and an appreciative, reflective crowd, old and young. Familiar music of sorrow and remembrance was performed on pipes, drums, trumpets and flutes.

After the service, I hastened inside the nearby Legion for egg salad sandwiches and a sliver of Nanaimo bar as well as a little warm-up. No getting through the three-deep line-up to fetch a pint but no worries as 11:20 is slightly early for me to down the good stuff. Besides, long drive back home.

My sister introduced me to one of the pipers and told him that since young childhood we have known all the words to every tune they played that day. (My parents’ house was party central to their expat friends with their pipes and kilts, as far back as we can remember). Friday’s piper replied “I didn’t always know there were words – I thought they were just tunes for the pipes!”


Before attending that service I had watched the one from Ottawa (3 hrs ahead of us here on the West Coast). At the National War Memorial, where the Remembrance Day service is held, the first official wreath was laid in respect for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, who was also a veteran, as you know, followed by all the other official and personal wreaths. At the conclusion of the proceedings, God Save the King was sung (the first Remembrance Day since the Queen’s passing).


Rabbi Scher, rabbi of a modern orthodox synagogue in Ottawa, and a gifted speaker, gave the following stirring speech, during which two Hawker Hurricanes and a Spitfire performed a fly-past (to honour the Queen, the announcer said).


Rabbi Scher:

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when the guns of the First World War at last fell silent, a universal reckoning was in order. What had happened? What had we sacrificed? And most importantly, for what purpose? Year after year on the 11th day of the 11th month we gather to reflect at this solemn time to try to answer these questions.

The answer is as simple as it is painful. The very best and bravest of our nation. The most courageous of our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, partners, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers. These heroic souls stood on guard, sacrificing their lives, their bodies, their minds, every last bit of who they were.

We know what we lost. We know what was sacrificed. But to what end? At its very essence, it is for freedom. For freedom, an ideal which to this day is being fought for by brave men and women in too many parts of the world. An ideal that is to our great despair becoming harder and harder to take for granted.


In the words [in part] of military veteran Charles M. Province:


It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,

Who serves beneath the flag,

And whose coffin is draped by the flag,

Who allows the protestor the freedom to burn the flag.



We live in a country where we are able to take this cherished ideal for granted because of those who understood that life without freedom for their country, for their loved ones, for people they don’t even know is worth fighting for at all costs.

So today, on this national day of reckoning, we first and foremost say thank you. And every day forward we must say thank you again and again for it is in giving thanks that we recognize our national responsibility and our commitment to fulfilling it.


In April 1917 in Northern France Canadian soldiers stormed through sleet, mud and fire to capture Vimy Ridge. As Prime Minister Trudeau [Sr.] once described it: “They came from coast to coast, Francophones, Anglophones, new Canadians, Black Canadians and Indigenous Peoples and battled for four days to achieve this decisive victory. As a great veteran of that storied battle shares, "We went up the ridge as Albertans and Nova Scotians. We came down as Canadians."

The story of that battle is the story of each and every one of us. Our cherished soldiers and their families, they are on the front lines. But every one of us must do our part. For we are all in this together. We are all one. We share this responsibility to preserve the sacred ideal of freedom and focus on this responsibility today as we express our commitment to our beloved soldiers and their families, not by simply saying thank you, not by simply supporting our veterans and their families through words but rather through action, with our time, with our attention, and with our resources.


There are so many ways to do so, so many organizations through which we can fulfil our commitment, our sacred commitment, to support the physical and mental health of our veterans and their families as they return from the front lines. That is how we share our gratitude. That is how we sincerely and clearly declare we as Canadians are united, standing in solidarity with the brave men and women of the Canadian Armed Forces who have led and continue to lead the way forward.

We affirm that just as you, our cherished soldiers, have made a lifetime commitment to each and every one of us so that we can live, love and breathe freedom, so too do we make a lifetime commitment to you and to your families. May God keep you safe in mind, body and spirit now and far into the future.

-----

In addition to being a young, dynamic rabbi, Scher is also known for scoring the championship winning goal in his freshman year in the Jewish Men’s Ice Hockey League of Ottawa. Very important and impressive in Canada!


Here’s a brief video about Canada’s National War Memorial (featuring King George VI):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qywHIl0qEo



Kentish, I enjoy the snippets you write about your early life in England. Have you ever thought about recording them (by voice or in writing) for your family members? I’m sure your reminiscences would be treasured.

I greatly regret not asking my parents more about their youth as well as their own grandparents, uncles and aunts, most of whose names I don’t even know. I would like to have known Mum and Dad as children, through more memories of their lives and times, as well as those of their wider families.

It’s easy to think our lives and thoughts wouldn’t be that interesting to others, even our own kin, but the shortest account, an everyday chat, a mere snippet, can be an intriguing slice of living history, especially to people who share bonds by blood or marriage.

Go for it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2022 07:40PM by Nightingale.

Nightingale, thank you for your report. The piece I saw on the British ceremony was very touching as after the dignitaries laid their wreaths they were followed by more likely displayed as young soldiers. The lead away by the bands of a couple of Guards regiments who continued to play until the last veteran group returned to the starting point. Loved it.

I have written much of my life story for family but I have not reached the present day. I'm up to around age 14. I keep promising to finish it but have not got around to it.

Now that came out garbled. More than 10,000 veterans marched by led by bands of two guards regiments that played until the last group arrived back at the starting point.