take five min's out from your day today to think about those who gave, so that we could live, then, now and in the future.

Indeed.

Agreed

http://www.dugoutpaddy.co.uk/page_1193765478921.html

off to the cenotaph in five - but may go to the headland instead.

undecided yet...

Cenotaph it was - very good attendance, Drummond, Judas Wright etc all present, about 40 odd very old boys who clealry had seen real experience and lots of people younger than me in civvies with medals on - your modern day (ex) soldiers. -about 1200 I'd say. Dignified and respectful.

"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"

From the last page of Edward Thomas' diary:

The light of the new moon and every star
And no more singing for the bird....
I never understood quite what was meant by God.
The morning chill and clear hurts my skin while it delights my mind.
Neuville in the early morning with its flat straight crests and houses -
the beauty of this silent empty scene of no inhabitants
and hid troops,
but don't know why I could have cried and didn't.

Next morning at 7.36, during the barrage at Arras he was struck and killed by a shell

I was one of those in civvies with medals on, I had my old beret on too !

Well, how do you do, Private William McBride,
Do you mind if I sit down here by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone you were only 19
When you joined the glorious fallen in 1916,
Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fir o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
And, though you died back in 1916,
To that loyal heart are you forever 19?
Or are you a stranger without even a name,
Forever enshrined behind some glass pane,
In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

The sun's shining down on these green fields of France;
The warm wind blows gently, and the red poppies dance.
The trenches have vanished long under the plow;
No gas and no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard that's still No Man's Land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man.
And a whole generation who were butchered and damned.

And I can't help but wonder, no Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.


If there is one song I am utterly unable to sing in public, it's that one.
It was written by an Australian. Go anywhere in Picardy and you'll see any amount of commonwealth graveyards.
The good news is there's a full time CWGC (formerly IWGC) team based in Arras making sure they remain in pristine condition.

Eric Bogle, exiled Scotsman who still visits the UK regularly. He wrote another well known and often sung ANZAC song called:

"And The Band Played Walzing Matilda".

Equally touching words about young men risking their lives but avoids any suggestion of preaching.

Especially in my thoughts today

My great Grandad and my Dad's cousin

Thomas Dinsdale 2nd Bn South Staffs killed in France 8/1/1915 aged 26

Harold White Merchant seaman killed onboard S.S Caledonian Monarch 14/1/1942 aged 23

also
Paul Muirhead 1 Royal Irish Reg died 6/9/2006 Helmand Province aged 28
Darren Bonner 1st Bn Royal Anglian died 28/5/07 Helmand Province aged 31
Chris Gray died in Afghanistan 07 aged 19


When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today

It puts our celebrity obsessed society into perspective doen't it .... and they call footballers 'heroes' for scoring a goal..... I was saddened the other night by some young fishwife with a political axe to grind, complaining about all the statues in London dedicated to military men... she sneeringly referred to them as not heroes to her generation. She'll end up an M.P. no doubt.

i play for an u15 team and for the first time in 8 years of me playing we had a minit silence today. i felt abit ashamed when alex the guy to my right said "whos died" but oh well

Iwas on grayfields this morning and only 1 game stopped at 11-00 oclock.
They might have stopped earlier but not at 11.

It's all water under the bridge for many people, and symbolises nothing.
Tho I suppose, symbolically, you could say that all those people died so that twerps with more money than sense could have the freedom to do things like queue up for 30 hours for iphones.