The First World War: The Great War
"My mother, born in
1905, lived in the giant shadow of that war. Her father and two
elder brothers, just young lads, died in the first year of that war
... my mother, then aged 10, and her two older sisters were put in
the workhouse here in Norwich. She remained there until she was 18.
It in reality was a prison system. My mother often related this
tragic episode in her life. Thankfully that workhouse system ended
in 1948. Many throughout the world at that time who never saw battle
in that war, were nonetheless victims of it"
[viewer's comment at
source].
"When I was a child of
about 9 or 10 years old, I used to stay with a bedridden old man
while his wife travelled by bus to the nearest town to do her weekly
shopping trip. He was on death's door and mostly slept, while I sat
on a chair by his bed. What fascinated me though, were the clusters
of medals which hung from a nail on his bedroom wall. In one of his
lucid moments I asked him about them. He told me they were from his
times in The Great War, and in the Irish War for Independence. He
showed me a scarred hollow in the side of his neck, which he
received when a shell hit his trench in France. He died a little
after that ... His wife had a great big medal hanging from a nail on
the stair wall, and I also asked her about it. She cried as she told
me of how it was awarded posthumously to her 19 year old brother who
died at The Somme. The couple are all but forgotten now, and as I
write this, their little cottage is being bulldozed to make way for
progress" [viewer's comment at
source].
"My grandfather just
recently passed away and what always hits me is how different the
British were back then. He hates what has become of England today
but I'm happy he got to vote leave; just wish he got to see England
free again. The work ethic, intelligence, manliness is the polar
opposite of Britain today. He was a gentleman and always honest ...
Britain is a really messed up place now ... British values and
culture has all but gone" [viewer's comment at
source].
"My grandad, 83, knew
many family members who fought in World War One. One was captured by
the Germans,, they were going to shoot his leading officer who was
wounded and he begged them not to, so they made him carry him on his
back for miles till they reached the place they were going to be
held prisoner till they could be moved elsewhere. He carried him for
miles, just to reach the end of the journey, place him down, and
find he was already dead" [viewer's comment at
source].
"I remember as a boy my
great grandfather, still sharp of mind, standing next to him at our
little cenotaph on July 1st in our little town with the captured
German howitzers flanking it. I remember him laying down the wreath
as they called out the names of his brothers and cousins who never
came home after that fateful day; the Big July Drive. At Gallipoli,
he scaled its cliffs and was one of the last men to leave the
peninsula. At the Somme, he raced forward with his friends and
brothers beside him until he was thee last man still standing.
Auchonvillers, Langemarck, Monchy, Passchendaele, Arras... again and
again he faced death until he was one of a small handful of men to
come home to out small seaside town. His son would do the same when
his turn came. Dieppe, Caen, Verriers Ridge, Falaise, The Scheldt,
and the Hochwald Gap. Names and places etched in fire and blood in
the heart of our people. The magnitude of our loss is almost
incomprehensible to grasp. I hope Britain wakes up from its dreadful
slumber" [viewer's comment at
source].
"My great great uncle
fought in both world wars and turned down promotion to stand and
fight with his fellow men. Something that has been lost amongst
these so-called men these days"
[viewer's comment at
source].
Film: They Shall Not Grow
Old
"As [Brian Jackson] says
[the Great War] is personal to probably every family in Britain and
the Commonwealth. When I saw the change from black and white to
colour, I almost cried. And possibly somewhere in this documentary
will be a Great Uncle of mine that was killed in the support
trenches on his way to the front at the Somme, Pt Arthur Harry Drew.
We will re member them" [viewer's
comment at
source].
"I'd love to see [this
film] ... seeing what my great uncle, Leland Stanford Westover, saw
during his time in the great war. He lied about his age only to be
K.I.A. at Vimy Ridge April 9, 1917. He was 18 when he died fighting
with the 38th Eastern Ontario Regiment of Canada"
[viewer's comment at
source].
The Second World War
"In his memoirs of the
war years, Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, wrote: 'It was just
after the fall of France, an event which at the time it happened
seemed something unbelievable as to be almost surely unreal, and if
not unreal then quite immeasurably catastrophic. Dorothy and I had
spent a lovely summer evening walking over the Wolds, and on our way
home sat in the sun for half an hour at a point looking across the
plain of York. All the landscape of the nearer foreground was
familiar - its sights, its sounds, its smells; hardly a field that
did not call up some half-forgotten bit of association; the
red-roofed village and nearby hamlets, gathered as it were for
company round the old grey stone church, where men and women like
ourselves, now long dead and gone, had once knelt in worship and
prayer. Here in Yorkshire was a true fragment of the undying
England, like the White Cliffs of Dover, or any other part of our
land that Englishmen have loved. Then the question came, is it
possible that the Prussian jackboot will force its way into this
countryside to tread and trample over it at will? The very thought
seemed an insult and an outrage; much as if anyone were to be
condemned to watch his mother, wife or daughter being raped'."
[Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, 1940, quoted by one viewer at
source].
"A personal letter written from a
soldier to his mother, describing how his entire platoon narrowly
escaped being wiped out as it faced the Germans in Luxembourg:
'One of my best friends, Tom, with his whole platoon were pinned
down by mortar and artillery fire. They were given the order to move
but they couldn't because the enemy had full view of them from a
hill and were zeroing their fire on them accurately. Tom is the most
conscientious Christian boy I have ever met in the services. He knew
something had to be done to save the fifty men. He crawled from his
foxhole and looked things over. Seeing the hopelessness of the
situation, he lay down behind a tree and prayed earnestly for God to
help him. This is true mother... after he prayed a mist or fog
rolled down between the two hills, and the whole platoon got out of
their foxholes and escaped. They reorganised in a little town behind
the lines where there was a church building. They all went in and
knelt down to pray and thank the Lord, and then they asked Tom to
take the service. This is true mother, and it just shows how much
prayer can mean. If that was not an answer to prayer I don't know
what is'." [Joel, a young soldier
in Patton's Third Army, quoted at
source].
Poor
Fools...
"Men fight for liberty
and win it with hard knocks.
Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools.
And their grandchildren are once more slaves."
[D.H. Lawrence]
In
Flanders Fields
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on
row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely
singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw
sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands
we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us
who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
John McCrae,
MD,
Canadian Army (1872-1918)
"[T]he foe of which John McCrae
wrote were not the people in the opposite trenches.
The foe were tyranny and dictatorship ... our soldiers knew this ...
Yes, we have indeed dropped the torch! Yes, we have indeed broken
faith with those who died and lie in Flanders Fields! ...
and yes, we will have to bear the
consequences in the years to come..."
[source]
To every
thing there is a
season, and a time to
every purpose under the
heaven:
A time to be born, and a
time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to
pluck up
that which is
planted;
A time to kill, and a
time to heal; a time to
break down, and a time
to build up;
A time to weep, and a
time to laugh; a time to
mourn, and a time to
dance;
A time to cast away
stones, and a time to
gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a
time to refrain from
embracing;
A time to get, and a
time to lose; a time to
keep, and a time to cast
away;
A time to rend, and a
time to sew; a time to
keep silence, and a time
to speak;
A time to love, and a
time to hate; a time of
war, and a time of
peace.
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
©
Bayith Ministries
http://www.bayith.org
bayith@blueyonder.co.uk
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