sandandfoam
Veteran Member
As far as I know Harry Patch BBC NEWS | UK | England | Sculpture made of Harry Patch
and Henry Allingham I cheered Boer War vets in 1902 | Extraordinary life of Britain's oldest man | The Sun |News
are the last British survivors of the Great War.
I was listening to someone on the radio the other day, he was talking about the Battle of Passchendaele. 60,000 people disappeared in the battle. Just gone without trace. Startling. A few years ago we visited some WW1 cemeteries around Verdun and Arras. They were shocking places, even with the passage of time.
I remember WW1 veterans from my childhood and I recall a feeling of sadness as their numbers dwindled. We had a wall in our school that listed the names of those who had 'fallen' in the Great War. They came to my mind again as a result of that radio show.
I think that among the best ways of honouring the dead from this and other wars is to heed Wilfred Owens words:-
"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 cud12
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."
It was and is a lie. To die for your country is neither fitting nor sweet.
and Henry Allingham I cheered Boer War vets in 1902 | Extraordinary life of Britain's oldest man | The Sun |News
are the last British survivors of the Great War.
I was listening to someone on the radio the other day, he was talking about the Battle of Passchendaele. 60,000 people disappeared in the battle. Just gone without trace. Startling. A few years ago we visited some WW1 cemeteries around Verdun and Arras. They were shocking places, even with the passage of time.
I remember WW1 veterans from my childhood and I recall a feeling of sadness as their numbers dwindled. We had a wall in our school that listed the names of those who had 'fallen' in the Great War. They came to my mind again as a result of that radio show.
I think that among the best ways of honouring the dead from this and other wars is to heed Wilfred Owens words:-
"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 cud12
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."
It was and is a lie. To die for your country is neither fitting nor sweet.
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