100 years ago today, Great Britain declared war on Germany, starting 4 years of bloody conflict in World War 1. Let's remember all those people, including the innocents, who have died in armed conflict, before, during and since.
Good shout to remind us. My paternal Grandad died in the trenches at Ypres. I'm not a believer but God rest them all anyway. "The War to End All Wars" was, sadly, anything but. Like you say, Billy, we never learn. Looking at the situations in Ukraine and Middle East and elsewhere just gets me depressed at the futility of it all.
Our death warrants would have been signed today had we been alive back then. Day to feel pensieve and appreciate. Great thread.
Whatever the reasons, failures, foolishness that lead to and drew out that war at the levels of government, those young men showed a strength of character and loyalty to each other that goes beyond belief. Good piece by Paxman of all people today. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-paxman-ww1-changed-britain-3973087
Cheers RH, I did but I'm on my phone and app. It doesn't paste links properly and it won't upload pictures and I can't view videos posted by others either Grrrr. I really should go through website if I'm going to do anything other than post or read text.
Jeremy Paxman: WW1 changed Britain forever - but have we changed for the better? The former Newsnight presenter has written a book on the Great War and wonders whether today's Britons would feel a similar call of duty When Big Ben chimed 11pm on August 4th 1914, the deadline given to Germany to withdraw her invading troops from Belgium passed. Newspaper reports from London that night speak of people running home, excitedly shouting: “It’s war! It’s war!” They didn’t know what they were shouting about, for the carnage that followed was on an unimaginable scale. The war – which some idiots claimed would be “over by Christmas” – lasted over four years and changed the country forever. Before it began, most adults had no say in the government of their country. When it was over, Britain began to look like a proper democracy. But that improvement was bought at a terrible cost. Why did the soldiers put up with it all? Exhausted, terrified, distressed by the death or disfigurement of their friends, ignorant of any overarching plan and with no end in sight for years on end: the greatest question of all is why men continued to fight. For what did they endure the separation, the squalor, the terror, the cold, the mud, the sleeplessness, the deafening noise of outgoing artillery barrages and the loss of friends to incoming fire? There were mutinies in the German, Russian and French armies, but not, on any significant scale, in the British army. Why? Part of the reason might be that – contrary to the “lions led by donkeys” caricature – British soldiers were better led than many other armies. The British often had more officers for each battalion than the Germans had: the generally steady leadership of many junior officers must have had an inspirational effect. Perhaps most of all, the sense among the British soldiers – both officers and men – that they existed in a different universe, so frightening, so perverse, so repellent that no one else could comprehend it, gave these men a sense of brotherhood that few felt able easily to cast aside. Size of British Army at outbreak of war, inc reservesVolunteers who enlisted in the first 6 weeks of the warVolunteers during the entire war01,000,0002,000,0003,000,000Number of men They ate together, slept together, feared and fought together. The few yards of trench were their world, and each stayed there and fought there for the simple reason that their comrades were staying there and fighting there, too. The question we ought to ask is, could the country endure a similar ordeal today? Our age is characterised by an ever-increasing obsession with individualism. As we hunch over our screens, entertaining ourselves, we also know that we can all claim the protection of the European Convention on Human Rights. Our one certainty is that we’re all entitled to enjoy our own personal freedoms. This idea of an individual’s rights being above all else would have baffled the average adult of 1914. The incomprehension is mutual: the concept of duty – the idea that you lay aside personal concerns for a greater good – has been a notable casualty of the campaign for individual rights. Would we rush to the colours, as the young men of 1914 did? We are a much more diverse society than we were then. We don’t trust our leaders. And we have got used to seeing wars in which “our boys” (and – now – girls) are engaged being fought out on the screens in our front rooms, in colour, in high definition, and almost in real time. A First World War soldier might write home to his family about the mud and the squalor and even, sometimes, of the fear. But it still required an effort to picture what his life was really like. Television removes the need to imagine. Would Britain have gone to war in 1914 if its statesmen had appreciated what the effects would be? An assessment was as impossible in 1918 as it had been in 1914, because no one had any idea what the long-term consequences would be. Some of the people, doubtless, would have argued that consequences were not the issue: treaty obligations are solemn and binding, whatever the cost; others would – and did – object to war on principle. Total number of British men who served in WW1, including conscripts 5,000,000 But public opinion did not stop British participation in the Iraq War of 2003, so it is hard to believe that a more vocal anti-war mood on the streets would have counted for more in 1914. Besides, Britain was another country then, self-confident and accustomed to getting its way: the anti-war “mood” was marginal. Of course the whole thing was a bloody tragedy. But the question is not, would they have done things differently? It is, at the time what else could they have done at all? Unlike France and Belgium, which had no choice, perhaps Britain might have stood aside and allowed Germany to build an empire on the continent. It would not have been a dignified thing to do, or compassionate, and hardest of all it would have meant accepting a direct and powerful threat to British economic interests and security. But other countries –notably, of course, Germany – ignored treaties and appeals. Britain could have done so, too. The problem is that it would not have fitted with the British people’s idea of who they were and what their country stood for. To follow such a course of action would have required them to hold a view of themselves that became possible only after the war. Even now, it is hard to imagine a British government making the case for doing nothing at all when a treaty guaranteeing a nation’s integrity is violated, even if the commitment was entered into by people now long dead. Total number of British soldiers wounded in the war 1,600,000 If nothing else, the war ought to remain a warning to our statesmen not to write cheques they themselves will not have to honour. As for its consequences, it took a few years for the idea that the whole thing had been an almost unmitigated disaster to find common currency, but this notion has since become received wisdom. The retrospective narrative that supports it – the innocent conscripts, dullard generals and bone-headed battle plans – has become tiresomely familiar. Sometimes it reads as if the generals intended to murder their own men. A moment’s thought tells you this must be nonsense: how many generals have you ever heard of who set out to lose a battle? Knowing, as we now do, how the outcome of the First World War contributed to the origins of the Second, and how that, in turn, made so much of the Cold War possible, it is unsurprising to find the Great War taught merely as “pointless” sacrifice. We are entitled to expect better. It is precisely because it changed so much that we understand it so little. Before it began, the country had enjoyed half a century of being told that theirs was the greatest nation on earth. We have since had generation after generation of international decline. The men and women of the time were accustomed to going to church and being told how to behave, while we have had fifty years of being told we can make our own minds up about almost anything. Total number of British soldiers killed in the war 703,000 The middle and upper classes of 1914 had been brought up on ideas of privilege and obligation, which made them respond to what they were convinced was the call of duty. They would have been disgusted by the selfish concerns of so many of the modern wealthy. Ordinary people, many of whom did not even have the vote, were accustomed to being bossed about and not listened to. Even the idea of “sacrifice”, which would have been entirely intelligible at the time, has been lost to us, discarded along with religious belief and replaced with the cost-benefit analysis which demands the inseparable adjective, “pointless”. As to why men volunteered to take part in such carnage, the short answer is they did not: the war they went off to fight in 1914 was nothing like the war of even one year later. And the “donkeys” in command? They were hardly any better informed than anyone else, even if ignorance is no excuse. In the century since the war we have grown used to another kind of fighting, of tanks and aircraft and drones: we lack the means to imagine what they thought they were doing. Maybe it’s because it’s so hard to imagine ourselves behaving as British people did then that the war is the great punctuation point in our modern history, the moment when the British decided that what lay ahead of them would never be as grand as their past. Are there any noble causes left? There are better ways of settling disputes and there are plenty of things I should not fight for. But let us imagine for a moment how we might feel if we faced a bunch of Islamo-fascists hell-bent on setting up some benighted caliphate in Britain. •Great Britain’s Great War by Jeremy Paxman, published by Viking at £8.99 http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-paxman-ww1-changed-britain-3973087#ixzz39PwygudB Follow us: @DailyMirror on Twitter | DailyMirror on Facebook
The 1st World War is encapsulated by the battle of the Somme. If some of the younger lads don't understand what went on there, do yourself a favour and read up about it, as it's a harrowing tale of death and destruction on a scale that is beyond comprehension. Somewhere in the region of 1.3 MILLION lives were lost, on both sides of those trenches. There but for the grace of God.......
DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1) Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs And towards our distant rest(3) began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots(4) Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind. Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . . Dim, through the misty panes(10) and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering,(11) choking, drowning. 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 cud(12) Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory, The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.(15)
My Old man fought in WW2. His Old Man was a regular (artillery) in WW1. Sadly I never met my Granddad as he died months before I was born. But when I asked my Old Man why he fought he said he'd answer in the same way that his Old Man had when he asked the same question: "When there is fighting you can forget about King and Country, you can even forget about the folks at home, you stay and you fight because your mates do it's as simple as that. When there's no fighting you stay because your stuck there - even though you miss your folks at home and your mates are getting on your nerves."
A bad war. Bad beginning and bad ending. Versailles 1918 was a disaster. There's good wars to be fought, but wars are as dirty as politics unfortunately. WW1 and 2 were disgusting at a mega scale. Faith in humanity has been wobbling worse at the knees ever since - not even facebook can make it better.
What pisses me off about wars is the two guys that cause it are hidden in a secret bunker completely out the way and safe whilst Joe Bloggs gets to be shot! What not stick the two guys arguing in a ring and let them sort it themselves? Carl Froch would get more votes to become PM too
Every time I see that line I feel it needs pre-fixed - but I see RHC has posted the full poem. Have been to Ieper (Ypres) to visit the mass graves - truly humbling experience that has left me with a keen feel for the futility and tragedy of war. Where I live and study in NI the poppy and the ceremony attached is unfortunately politicised by (a minority) of republicans - but it's important that we remember WW1's soldiers not as statistics of imperial Europe but as victims, of class and of human nature.
My favourite "war" poem: Yes, I remember Adlestrop -- The name, because one afternoon Of heat the express-train drew up there Unwontedly. It was late June. The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat. No one left and no one came On the bare platform. What I saw Was Adlestrop -- only the name And willows, willow-herb, and grass, And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry, No whit less still and lonely fair Than the high cloudlets in the sky. And for that minute a blackbird sang Close by, and round him, mistier, Farther and farther, all the birds Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire. Nothing to do with guns, bombs, death and whatever, but Thomas wrote it as a memory, a memory of peace and normality whilst he was in the middle of the horrors of war. Nature continues, despite how clever and 'noble' we think we are, in his age building trains and tanks, and in our age with drones and smart bombs, and the sun and the meadows, the bees and the breezes, trees and flowers will all return long after we've settled who is the biggest and bestest by sacrificing our young adults so wantonly. And our children will play there again, as well. Honour to those generations that fought and died so that we may, if one day we are sensible and strong enough, to live in this paradise that all could experience.
Thomas is one of my favourite poets - although he's not a war poet in the traditional sense he still writes very poignantly on the topic. A real shame he was shelled before he had time to reflect and write more. 'Rain' and indeed Adlestrop are very good. The more direct style of Sassoon and Owens is more shocking of course... From the opposite side I really enjoyed Remarque's All Quiet On the Western Front. Same conclusions really. AT dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
It's sad that some people want to politicise the poppy and the commemorations - especially as so many who would describe themselves as Proud Irishmen fought and died in the conflict.
