Remembrance Day - November 11

[taylorde]

Here is a little something to read, listen to about November 11.

http://www.terry-kelly.com/pittance/pittance_en.htm

and the music video:

I just watched the series Apocalypse WWII - lots of raw footage, showing shelling, and bombs going off in cities, with civilians running for cover. Many of us certainly have it good now a days.

DaveT

[huntermountain]

I live about 30 kilometers from where some of the fiercest battles of WWI were fought in Belgium. 30 kilometers from where Germans first used nerve gas on the battlefield, Musterdgas, also called Yperite after the town of Ypres where it was first used. My grandparents had childhood memories from the war.

I pass through that area frequently, and you find a military cemetery there every few kilometers. Yesterday it was in the papers that again the remains of six soldiers have been found.

Believe me, I respect the offers that have been made, and so do most people who see those cemeteries.

There's this place on the actual battlefield, where they still have some trenches preserved. Next to them there's a little museum. After the war the whole area was closed down due to "disaster tourists", wanting to see the devastation. So photographers were sent in to the area, and recorded everything in pictures. Those pictures were mounted in wooden boxes with a lens to look through, and a mechanism to flip through the pictures, and people could come and watch those pictures. The little museum has a whole bunch of these original boxes. If you want horror, you will find it in those pictures. Black and white, grainy, but forever etched on you minds eye.

Actually, I've been looking for the name of the little museum and it's on Hill 62. That is also the place where there's a monument for the Canadian soldiers who died in WWI in Belgium.

Sanctuary Wood Museum

Edited November 10, 2010 by huntermountain

[SBARC]

Excellent post.....I plan to visit the WW1 sites one day.

[otis252]

God bless our Canadian friends!

Chuck

[AX 365]

I had a great uncle pass away due to injuries received as a result of being gassed during the Great War. My grandmother, sister of Private Cornelius Gregory "Neilus" Gillis said that the years leading up to his death were horrible. He passed away in 1924 at 33 years of age. Here's a link to his attestation papers on file with Collections Canada, formerly Library and Archives Canada...

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databas...p?id_nbr=413380

I had the privilege of being able to visit Beaumont-Hamel, Ypres, The Somme, Vimy, Arras and much of the French and Belgian countryside in April of this year. I have always observed Remembrance Day for what it is. Visiting those sites and looking at the cemeteries and headstones actually made me cry. Everyone must make the pilgrimage to the battlefields of France and Belgium if they are able to. Everyone talks about the sacrifices but to actually see it first hand; to see the headstones and the cemeteries dotting the countryside; to see the monuments at Beaumont-Hamel and Vimy Ridge is truly humbling and it made me think about what I have read and learned about the sacrifices our brave and selfless ancestors endured for us. We owe all our veterans a debt that I fear we will never be able to repay. A few photos for reflection....

The solitary bronze caribou commemorating the decimated Royal Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont-Hamel

Two of the unknown buried at Beaumont-Hamel

The Menin Gate in Ypres with the 11,000+ names of the soldiers of the British Empire who died at Ypres and who have no known grave

The tomb at Vimy Ridge

Canada Bereft - Mother Canada looking down on her dead

The monument at Vimy Ridge

Remembering

Remembering II

Lest we forget...