Discussion Forum

11/11/11 tomorrow.

Armistice day. Wear your poppy with pride. I tried to think of a spoofy angle to this, but just couldn't. It was a criminal waste of life, and love, and dreams, and just about everything else anyone could ever comprehend.

Some twenty years later, they did it all over again.

All in the name of freedom.

All the priveleges we enjoy today are a result of sacrifice. Not intending to lecture in any way, just saying that we owe our freedom of expression to some selfless people.

I hope God blesses those people.

I'll be observing the two minutes silence. We owe them a hell of a lot more than two minutes of our precious time.

God Rest

Skoob.

So true Skoob, so true!

Well said Skoob.

Futility...

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.


Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, - still warm, - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?


Wilfred Owen

Skoob:

Thank you for the good words.

Thanks to the veterans, the fallen and peace to all their families.

PoM

Well said.

Problem is, people forget about The Falklands, Aden, Korea, Vietnam, Our troops have been lost in all of the modern day conflicts, Especially the Special forces.

I am proud to have served my country as a soldier.
During some of the worst fire fights, the humour was unstoppable, and the jokes hilarious. Strange.

God Bless you, Whoever you were. And Thank you.


Arm x

I think mate, that today is a day when we devote a little time to all the people who fell, or served, in whatever conflict.

War just sucks. Rightly or wrongly, brave men and women get chewed up and spat out, innocents die and suffer unimaginable indignities.

Not tub thumping or anything, but those people did what they perceived to be the right thing, and it's thanks to them we enjoy the freedom we have.

The Lord alone knows where we'd be had those fantastic people not made the ultimate sacrifice.

God bless them all - the veterans, the fallen, the innocents.

Sincerely

Skoob.

Im a veteran. I spilled blood for you SKOOB, So you could rent me a loft full of bat shit and Snow Leopard hair.


If I had know then, standing in me funk hole on East Falkland Island, in the rain and howling wind, that some years later, Mrs SKOOB would be boiling Hake in the middle of the night, I would have resigned there and then.

Im going with my youngest daughter to the ceremony on sunday at our local church. She is carrying a standard, for her troop, which is nice.

Arm xxxxxxxxxx

Proud of you mate.

I'm not after the fruit bat either.

Just sayin'

Bests

Skoob

The last remembrance sunday I did was 1986, or was it 87?
Anyway, I did the full number 2 dress with bulled up boots and the polished brass ect. Problem was, the ground was damp, and when we slow marched into the chapel, to a man, we ended up on our arses! The chapel floor was like ice.

Our retired RSM, Kelly, got us all outside, lined us up, and at the top of his voice said, "You were a bunch of cunts in 78, I knew it then, I know it now, I have never been wrong!

The Verger came out and said to him, "Excuse me, but do you think you could keep your personal opinions to yourself, some of these men have thier mothers here".

To which RSM Kelly replied, "Who the fuck are you, to dictate to me, how I address this bunch of cunts!"

Many years later, I pulled into a factory yard in Hampshire.
Standing on the bankside, with his back to me, was a short stocky man, that I knew was my RSM. I walked up to him, stamped my foot in and said, "24584992, Sir!"
He turned, looked me up and down and replied, "Oh fuck, another one of you cunts has found me!".

He was the manager of the factory, and had employed several of my regiment, and thought I had come for a job. When he saw my articulated lorry, he said, "Do you mean to tell me, that the authorities allow a cunt like you, to drive a machine like that? Who did you threaten to get the ticket?

I can hear his voice, as clearly today, as I did on my first day in the army, back in 1978. In the most delicate of situations, when the mortars and the tracers were flying around like fireworks, he would stand up and say, "Right, I want a volunteer, to go over there, and ask those cunts for a pint of milk, if they say no, tell them we will invade!"


War, is a chess game, played by the insane.

Arm xxxxxxxxxxx

Just got back from the service. Very moving, seeing my daughter carrying the standard.



Arm x

Good one Arm, there's not a lot of respect around these days so it's nice to hear that some young people are being brought up proper mate!

Great story Arm..

Here's to RSM Kelly..

Like millions of others, I watched the Cenotaph on TV, like wot I do every year..

sniff ...

poignant music too..

Love & peace

xx

I dont give it the large to my dustbins, but I do ask them to read and learn about thier English culture, and observe certain ceremonies that are, in my opinion, what makes us a unique nation.




Arm xxxxxxxxxxxx

Arm, keep it up (the upbringing I mean)!

Respect to arm and all of his ilk.

Lest we forget.

Several things at this time of year remind me of our British-ness - August - Christmas decorations in Tesco, September The last night of the Proms: November Albert hall festival of remembrance and the ceremony in Whitehall: December- Pantomime, Easter eggs in Tesco. January -ads for package tours on TV and in the papers, Sales in the shops and no money left to buy anything.

Why don't they bring back the royal Tournament? Bastards!

We could do with a few more reminders that multi-culturalism is not the be all and end all - we do have an identity and culture of our own and not in a BNP way either.

Here, here, Old Bean, thouroughly agree. I miss the real UK when I go home, but not in a nationalist manner, just the simple things.