11th of november

[PEBBLE]

my great grandad got wounded going over the top on the big push at the Somme

got caught on barbed wire , got his legs shot and his thumb shot off

then fell back into the trench, i guess he was lucky

anyone else got any stories of the 1st world war as im very fascinated about it al, if i could go back in time in a safe bubble id go to the somme in 1914-18

i went there a couple of years ago when i was in the army cadets and looked at the enviroment and memorials and graveyards, id love to go back there

 

[snax]

i went there a couple of years ago when i was in the army cadets and looked at the enviroment and memorials and graveyards, id love to go back there

my school do a "battlefields trip" around october in year 10 for history students, i went on it and it was awsome

on this field there was this tree and exactly where that tree was the germans would of shot you down, and on the germans side there was a massive ditch sorta thing and they hid there at night when the germans were getting bombed,

also at this one battlefield site they owners keep it they way the side was left, and there was a messagers tunle and you had to be about 2 foot to get threw it,

and then at the last day we went to the allies cemetery and i rang up my dad from belgium to get the name of his dads brother, and i found the book with details and his grave, he died in the somme when he was 16 !

those were the highlights of the trip, just thought i would share that with you.

was your trip the same by any chance pebble

 

[snax]

double post , sorry

 

[Pikachu]

My whole family will be marking the occasion as always and as it should be, not just because my husband (slam) is in the army or because i served my time either, for me its because of every page i read of my grandfathers war diary that he had kept written on stolen loo paper tucked in a water bottle while in a POW camp in WW2,its horrofiying and heartbreaking to read but amazing to read about peoples enduring strength of mind and body.
he got out but many didnt, and the horrors they had to endure can only be marked a fraction by the 11th of november this is why its always a powerful image to see the old soldiers marching with our current troops.
for all the wars our soldiers have fought,none should be forgotten and i was always proud to be part of this country every time i heard in my school history lessons about how these wars were fought and the brave people who gave their lives for us all to have better ones......what have we done with it?

What do you get taught in history in schools now????

sorry peeps rant over.

To all who remain and the many fallen,my grandfather, my friends and family....ill be there to mark it.

 

[Lucky]

anyone else got any stories of the 1st world war as im very fascinated about it al, if i could go back in time in a safe bubble id go to the somme in 1914-18

Well i'd like to say my mother in laws brother was killed whilst taking on an entire batallion of baddies single handed, but the reality was that the supply truck that he was driving clipped an unexploded bomb/shell and that was that.
It's not all heroism, but having driven a vintage truck myself i'd say he was a hero just for agreeing to do that.

On a side note, i can't think of many worse places to go than the Somme?

"Now somebody explain to me why they thought it would be a good idea to form an orderly line and then walk towards a machine gun posistion"?

I watch film footage like this and it just defies belief
Something to watch and contemplate

On a side note, i'm talking too and trying to get a job with a military vehicle restorer and the equipment they took into battle is amazing.....contrary to popular belief, the germans mobilised their entire divisions using hand carts!
Do you fancy dragging a fully laden handcart most of the way across Germany? Nah me neither.

 

[Buddha 3]

On a side note, i can't think of many worse places to go than the Somme?

"Now somebody explain to me why they thought it would be a good idea to form an orderly line and then walk towards a machine gun posistion"?

Because the military is a very conservative and traditional institution. Don't forget that for many years that was exactly how battles were fought and won. Unfortunately, nobody realised the impact the changes in technology would have. And when they did, they didn't know any way around them, until some new technology came along, like the tank.

On a side note, i'm talking too and trying to get a job with a military vehicle restorer and the equipment they took into battle is amazing.....contrary to popular belief, the germans mobilised their entire divisions using hand carts!
Do you fancy dragging a fully laden handcart most of the way across Germany? Nah me neither.

If he tells you that again, punch him in the kidneys (or maybe not). That's crap.

The Germans had fully motorised divisions. Particularly the "Big Three" in the Waffen SS (Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, Totenkopf) and the big divisions in the Wehrmacht (Panzer Lehr, Grossdeutschland and some others) were fully motorised. Unless they had suffered losses offcourse (which happened a lot after the Western Allies landed, they were quite good at taking out equipment rather than men). Some of the German Panzer (Armoured) and Panzergrenadier (Motorised) divisions had artillery that was not self propelled, but they did employ prime movers for these. In fact, the Germans more or less invented the self propelled artillery.

However, many of the infantry divisions (which formed the majority of the German military might) did get the short end of the stick. Many were only partionally motorised, and some not at all. They were however horsedrawn...
The only units to deploy any handdrawn stuff on a large scale were the Fallschirmjägers (paratroops), as horses tend to shy away from jumping out of aircraft.

 

[PEBBLE]

my school do a "battlefields trip" around october in year 10 for history students, i went on it and it was awsome

on this field there was this tree and exactly where that tree was the germans would of shot you down, and on the germans side there was a massive ditch sorta thing and they hid there at night when the germans were getting bombed,

also at this one battlefield site they owners keep it they way the side was left, and there was a messagers tunle and you had to be about 2 foot to get threw it,

and then at the last day we went to the allies cemetery and i rang up my dad from belgium to get the name of his dads brother, and i found the book with details and his grave, he died in the somme when he was 16 !

those were the highlights of the trip, just thought i would share that with you.

was your trip the same by any chance pebble

yeh i remember the tree next to the canadian memorial i think, i remember that huge crator that was left a mine by the British underneath german trenches via a massive honeycomb maze under ground that occianally till this day cave-in in wet weather

i remember seeing a documentary on the mine crator and the guy found a bit of skull on the ground

 

[Amac]

At my home paintball field back in Canada we have History classes come out and they reenact various historical combats even with multiple night camping. Not that it would be one quarter as realistic but it does give a little bit of weight compared to just reading from a book in a classroom.

The community I grew up in lost 3/4 of the service men who went abroad during WWII which really made me think a lot while playing the Millennium Series this season.

 

[Buddha 3]

A book I can recommend is "The Bedford Boys", by Alex Kershaw. It's the true story of a group of young men from Bedford, Virginia, who join the Virginia National Guard in order to get some money. Even though the Great Depression was over, rural Virginia was still suffering from much poverty and this was a good means to get some money.

When WW2 broke out, the Virginia National Guard became part of the US 29th Infantry Division, and most people from the same area were put in the same units, because they had already trained together and so knew each other well. And so the boys from Bedford formed A Company, 116th Regiment, 29th Division "The Blue and Greys".

During the early morning of June 6th, 1944, A Company was the first unit to land on Dog Green sector, Omaha Beach. Within a few hours, they had lost some 50% casualties, most of them killed. These are basically the guys that Tom Hanks has to climb over in Saving Private Ryan. You can recognise them from the YinYang like patches they wear. Only a small handful of these Bedford Boys would eventually survive the war.
And just like that, one entire generation of men of a rural town in Virginia had been wiped out on a cold, overcast day in the late spring of 1944...

 

[Robbo]

As soon as any society/ culture loses sight of the need to remember those who fought and died for their freedom, then it inevitably sews the seeds of societal degradation.

The fact that so many young people have little to no knowledge of who they owe their present freedoms to is indicative of a moral slide.

I got no idea where it will end up but I do know this is not a good situation.