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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.
-- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
Lets us hope that biggotry against remembering fallen Irishmen can finally leave this island and all rememberance events be it either Republican or otherwise be respected and honoured.
Lest we forget.
Jesus I'd forgotten about that.....
Or lets not try to glorify anything that killed millions of innocent people. German soldiers were just doing their job tooQuote:
Originally Posted by rebelarmyexile
The past is the past. Learn and move on, I say. No disrespect to the dead soldiers here, but im sure they would be much better off remembered as people, by those who knew them, rather than by random generation Xers in a grandiose celebration of man's greatest folly.
And when he gets to Heaven,
to Saint Peter he will tell,
one more soldier reporting sir,
ive served my time in hell.
R.I.P
"If any question why we died.
Tell them, because our fathers lied".
Rudyard Kipling.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
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 ardent14 for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
8 October 1917 - March, 1918
"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
All that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour,
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Hand on heart, who knows which poem this is from, without looking it up?
Quote:
Originally Posted by osarusan
I dunno -but Eamo lifted his from an ad for Playstation. :)
I watched that documentrary last night recalling the rememberance day bomb in Enniskillen.Moving stuff.According to a lot of the contributors the subsequent reaction led to many within the Republican movement to start assesing their methods.The Gordon Wilson interview(his daughter Marie was killed) afterwards in which he stated he bore no ill will to anybody is one of the most moving things I have seen.
Yea he was a proper man and is rightly linked with the eventual acceptance by the Republican movement that violence wasn't the way forward.
Just finished reading a book on 5 out of 8 brothers in a family who were lost during WW1, and one of the survivors was a semi-invalid. The mother would receive the notifications by telegram and you can imagine what she must have gone through. I have also been to the Somme and Verdun and there are very moving places to visit.
I have no issue with Remembrance Sunday at all. A lot of Irish men fought and died in WW1, and in numerous campaigns for the British Army.
My grandad was shot and badly injured in WW1, for example - brought home and sat out the rest of the war working in telecommunications. My Great-grandad fought in the Boer War at the end of the 19th Century.
But the problem I have is with the British legion and Poppy Day. My problem is this - it is governments that send soldiers to war, and usually for political purposes more so than ones of national defense. The only conflict Britain has been involved in for the last 100+ years that held any vague threat of Britain being attacked was WW2, and that threat was never clear and never transpired.
Theerfore - as it is governments who send people to die and get injured in wars, and usually for political purposes, then they and they alone should cover the bill for caring for those soldiers and their families during and after the wars.
That is what I despise about Poppy Day. There is an expectation upon people to support it, and you're unpatriotic in Britain if you don't (note how many politicians etc won't be seen dead without a poppy). Yet flogging Poppies to look after soldiers who can't p!ss of their own accord any more because they were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan by the t!ts who curently run the UK lets those very t!ts completely and utterly off the hook for the fall-out form their flawed actions. It lets the government wipe its hand of its responsibilities.
Governments start/get involved in wars. So let them carry the can after those wars are over. If money is colected for any victims of war then it should be for the hundreds of thousands of innocent bystanders - the 'colateral damage' - who had no choice about the fate that befell them and receive no support in return.
Would agree that too often Remembrance Day is tied directly to the Poppy Appeal. Not sure I really agree with that there should be no role to play for them in the care of former soldiers. You could make equal claims that there should be no need for MacMillan Cancer Support or other Cancer charities, or homeless charities - they're all doing work that should be done/ funded by Government.
My main problem with the Poppy Appeal is their continued failure to provide funds to the Merchant fleet charities. More seamen were lost in the Merchant fleet than were lost by the Royal Navy, in what was a protected occupation.
Doesn't work as a counter-example at all I'm afraid.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
The difference being that a government's decisions don't directly give people cancer, and particularly not for political purposes.
None of those in Iraq or Afghanistan are conscripts though - there must be some expectation that they'll see action and the inevitable consequences for some of them.Quote:
Originally Posted by dcfcsteve
didnt john snow (isnt he the fella off C4 news?) refuse to wear a poppy, cause he was told he had to wear one so he refused?
Stanza 9 from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray.Quote:
Originally Posted by osarusan
Ignoramuses.
Which is my point. Government sends them out to war knowing what will happen to a certain percentage of them. It then leaves their longer term care to charities.Quote:
Originally Posted by Macy
I don't know anything that governments do that directly cause the types if impacts you mentioned (cancer, homeessness etc). Even licensiing the sale of cigraettes at-best only leads indirectly to cancer. A smoker has the choice of whether or not to smoke. A soldier does not have any choice on where they get sent and whether or not they die. Government effectively makes those decisions for them.
It was for purely political reasons that the decision to go to Iraq and Afghanistan was taken. Once that decision is made, soldiers have no choice but to go or desert. Soldiers themselves may enter their occuipation understanding there is a risk they will die or get injured, but they also do so expecting that government will not put them at risk unnecessarily. The opposite has happened in Iraq, and those who've died there would still be alive today if that political decision hadn't been taken.