Remembrance Day

train1

Member
Please do not forget to stop whatever you are doing and observe 2 minutes of silence on Remembrance Day; be that at work, at home or wherever. Think of the huge sacrifice so many have made in the past and still do for us now to ensure our well being.

Those from the past (there are fewer and fewer every year) and those serving our countries now (wherever they may be in the world) deserve our utmost respect and undying gratitude now and always. Think of those currently on active duty and pray for their safe return to their families.



Take the time and reflect.
 

interurban

Active Member
Yes Please.
In Toronto the Transit system stops for one minute, subway streetcars buses.
It is also announced so people are aware.

God bless our Vets.
 

slurp

New Member
Holmes P 2/6 Bn West Yorks Regiment (PWO) Kia France 03-05-1917
Holmes F 6 Bn Yorkshire Regiment Kia Belgium 19-06-1917

Two brothers from a small community in the West Riding of Yorkshire who made the ultimate sacrifice. In memoriam to Percy, my Great Uncle (no known grave but remembered at Arras Memorial) and Frederick, my Great Grandfather (I A 13 Derry House Cemetry No2).

In Flanders Fields

by John McCrae, May 1915
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.
 

interurban

Active Member
History

Thought I would add to Slurps post and particuler Flanders Fields

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

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.

McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:

Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men -- Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans -- in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:

"I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days... Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done."

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae's dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l'Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. "His face was very tired but calm as we wrote," Allinson recalled. "He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer's grave."

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

"The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene."

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.


Updated: 11 September 2004
 

60103

Pooh Bah
I will offer a tip for those of you going to the remebrance ceremonies tomorrow: the Legion's poppies are held on with a straight pin and tend to slip off your coat when you aren't watching. A short piece of insulation on the end of the pin will hold it on. I use red or green.
 

slurp

New Member
Have had to have a little chuckle to myself today, one of the younger members of another forum i belong to mentioned that he'd got his poppy from the school he attended, however, he wasn't allowed a pin to attach it to his blazer because of apparent or perceived apparent Health and Safety issues:) .
 

ross31r

Member
we had everything stop for a minute at eleven today - had a gatwick express pull to a halt outside work!
 

TrainClown

Member
My grandad was in WW1. He was a grunt in the trenches. He was at Vimmy (sp) ridge.
Never spoke of it to me. He would sing songs from WW1 though.

My dad and uncle were in WW2. My dad was in the air force, thats where he met my mom. My uncle was in the navy.

That is all I know. They never spoke of it.

I wish they had.

TrainClown
 

slurp

New Member
1916

16 years old when I went to war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side,and a gun in my hand,
Counting my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died & I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time, That a year in the line,
Is a long enough life for a soldier,
We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history's pages,
And we fought and we brawled
And we whored 'til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun,and that's
What you are when you're soldiers,
I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees,coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother
And I tell by his, side,
And that's how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn't my fault
And I wasn't to blame,
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain,and now
There's nobody remembers our names
And that's how it is for a soldier.

Motorhead.
 
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