From the excellent BBC archive on the Somme
There is a lot of talk about failing to remembering the lessons of the past but it, as usual, is a call for selective memory and a selection at one person or party's call for their cause rather than your interests. Timely to note, then, that there is a re-enactment of the Battle of the Somme of ninety years ago this summer going on, recalling how people from certain neighbourhoods (like my great-uncle John, who I got to meet as an old man) were ripped up by machine guns in the interests of other people from other neighbourhoods with a whole bunch of borders thrown in for good measure, all pointlessly triggering a whack of ideological totalitarianism which we are still dealing with. There were more than a million casualties at the Somme.
Comments
David Janes - June 28, 2006 10:06 am
I never really got the point of WWI. As for "Canada becoming a nation" so often said ... OK, fair enough ... but I think the ANZACs learned the more important lesson, that you can't trust your citizens to be lead by those whose skills in warfare were learned playing on the fields of Eaton. (In fairness to the British, their low ranking officers were mowed down well in porportion to the troops they lead).
Alan - June 28, 2006 10:40 am
You would think that 1 July would include a memorial aspect given British casualties were over 57,000 on that one day in 1916. My wife's grannie was called Ypres initially as she was born on that battle's initial day after her Dad went to the front as a chaplain. When he returned at the end of the war he immediately changed it having been there and having no wish in any way to remember it.
Alan - June 28, 2006 10:42 am
Here is a post from two years ago showing Rev. Whillans at the front.
cm - June 28, 2006 11:05 am
My grandfather fought at Vimy. A friend of his named his son Vimy. I went there myself in '03. It was a very profound experience, much more so than I expected.