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Remembrance Day
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| Fir3start3r |
In Flanders Fields
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.
- John McCrae
Go to the celebration, find a vet, shake their hand, give them a hug, tell them, "Thank you".
It's because of their sacrifice you're able to do what you want today.... |
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| dallastar |
Awwwwwww, happy rememberance Day y'all!
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| EvilTree |
http://www.ruxted.ca/index.php?/arc...the-Fallen.html
| quote: | Time to Remember the Fallen
We need only think back a few weeks to remember soldiers like Private Blake Williamson (The Royal Canadian Regiment) and Sergeant Shane Stachnik (Canadian Military Engineers) and only a few months to remember Captain Nicola Goddard (Royal Canadian Horse Artillery). Their faces are still fresh in our memories; we still remember their voices; we shared a joke, a task, a hug, maybe just a nod of the head last time we passed them; they were so full of hope and life so short a time ago. The emotional wounds suffered by their families, friends and fellow soldiers are still raw.
For others the wounds are older but no less painful. The names are less familiar to many but there is someone still who feels the loss. Their names are listed, in volume after volume, in the national Books of Remembrance in the Peace Tower in Ottawa.
For more than 120 years Canadian men and women have been fighting and dying on battlefields on several continents. For every Paardeberg, Vimy Ridge, Battle of Britain, Ortona and Kapyong there were a dozen less famous but still bloody and costly battles – at sea, in the air and on the ground. Canadians fought and died in Africa, Asia and Europe, in the icy North Atlantic and under a warm Mediterranean sun – some are buried in Hong Kong, others in Belgium, many have no known grave.
Sometimes Canadians scanned their daily papers anxiously, hoping against hope that they would not see the name of a husband, son, niece, neighbour or friend on the all too frequent casualty lists. Sometimes Canadians barely heard about the deaths of soldiers; other times the media dwelt too long on each death – searching for or trying to manufacture a bit of controversy from the very real grief of friends and family members.
On November 11th many of us will pause, just for a few moments, to remember Private Braun Scott Woodfield (killed in a vehicle accident in Afghanistan, 2005) and Lieutenant Colonel William Nassau Kennedy (died of disease suffered while serving with the Canadian Voyageurs in the Nile Expedition, 1885) and more than one hundred thousand other brave Canadians who have made the supreme sacrifice for their country, for their service, for their family and friends and, above all, for their brothers in arms.
Ruxted will take time to remember our fallen, with gratitude and with some small pride in what we, Canadians, have done with the opportunities those brave men and women bought for us, with their lives. We invite all Canadians to pause, just briefly, on 11 November, at 11:00 to share that pride and gratitude.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them. |
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6133312.stm
| quote: |
Where did the idea to sell poppies come from?
The first official poppy appeal was held 85 years ago in the UK. But when - and why - was the first poppy sold?
The red poppy worn around the world in remembrance of battlefield deaths has nothing to do with the blood shed in the brutal clashes of World War I.
Instead it symbolises the wild flowers that were the first plants to grow in the churned-up soil of soldiers' graves in Belgium and northern France. Little else could grow in the blasted soil that became rich in lime from the rubble.
Their paper-thin red petals were the first signs of life and renewal, and in 1915 inspired Canadian doctor John McCrae to pen perhaps the most famous wartime poem:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...
It was this poem which inspired an American war secretary to sell the first poppies to raise money for ex-soldiers.
Two days before the Armistice was declared at 11am on 11 November 1918, Moina Michael was working in the YMCA Overseas War Secretaries' headquarters during its annual conference in New York.
While flipping through a copy of Ladies Home Journal, she came across McCrae's poem, and was so moved that she vowed to always wear a red poppy in remembrance.
Poppy lady
That same day she was given $10 by the conference delegates in thanks for her hard work, which she spent on 25 silk poppies. Returning to the office with one pinned to her coat, she distributed the rest amongst the delegates.
Since this group had given her the money with which to buy the flowers, Ms Michael saw this as the first sale of memorial poppies. She then threw her efforts into campaigning to get the poppy adopted as a national remembrance symbol.
Two years later, the National American Legion's conference proclaimed the poppy as such. Among those at the conference was Madame E Guerin, from France, who saw poppy sales as a way to raise money for children in war-ravaged areas of France.
Having organised the sale of millions of poppies made by French widows in the United States, in 1921 she sent her poppy sellers to London.
Field Marshall Douglas Haig, a senior commander during WWI and a founder of the Royal British Legion, was sold on the idea (as were veterans' groups in Canada, Australia and New Zealand).
So that autumn, the newly-established legion sold its first remembrance poppies. And so the tradition began. |
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| EvilTree |
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv...y/National/home
| quote: |
Remembrance Day being forgotten, poll finds
Survey of Canadians reveals steady decline in knowledge and observance of history
ROD MICKLEBURGH
From Friday's Globe and Mail
Canadians are beginning to tune out Remembrance Day and many have already tuned out much of our military history, a new poll suggests.
Despite considerable anecdotal evidence that crowds are swelling at Remembrance Day ceremonies as the ranks of world-war veterans thin, just 41 per cent of those surveyed said they intended to take part this year, a nine percentage point drop from last year.
At the same time, the poll found Canadians are not up on the country's prominent military heroes, few though they are, with more than one in four identifying storied U.S. General Douglas MacArthur as one of us.
Only 31 per cent of those polled were able to pick out both flying ace Billy Bishop and First World War commander Sir Arthur Currie as outstanding Canadian military heroes from a small list of four that also included Gen. MacArthur and U.S. Civil War leader Ulysses S. Grant.
Rudyard Griffiths, executive director of the Dominion Institute that commissioned the survey, said he was distressed by the results.
“If you compare them with similar polls in the past, there is a decline in knowledge and a decline in Remembrance Day commitment,” said Mr. Griffiths.
“This is a dangerous moment [for Remembrance Day], as we move from a society that still has living links to the experience of war to generations who no longer have that direct, living link.”
Mr. Griffiths said he was worried that Canadians are losing not only their history, but their social solidarity, the shared heritage that shaped Canada into the country it is today.
“We need to redouble our efforts [to preserve it],” he said.
The Dominion Institute survey was conducted by the Innovative Research Group, which polled approximately 1,000 adult Canadians during the last week in October. A sample that size is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points.
The most surprising finding concerned tomorrow's Remembrance Day.
Asked whether they would be attending a Remembrance Day service this year, 41 per cent said yes, down from 58 per cent in 2001 and 50 per cent as recently as last year.
The poll aside, however, few dispute that Remembrance Day interest and actual cenotaph crowds seem to be on a dramatic upswing.
“I can remember in the 1980s when we used to hardly get anybody,” Gerry Vowles, president of the B.C. and Yukon Command of the Royal Canadian Legion, recalled yesterday.
“But the numbers have been going up, and last year the crowd [at the East Vancouver cenotaph] was much larger than I'd ever seen.”
Nov. 11 attendance at last year's national ceremony in Ottawa was more than 25,000, a huge boost from the 7,000 or so who tended to show up in the 1990s.
And CBC's audience for Ottawa's Remembrance Day ceremony tripled between 1993 and 2003 to 2.3 million viewers.
But Mr. Griffiths is not dissuaded from his gloom.
The decline in commitment by Canadians to its annual day of remembrance for the war dead has been steady over the years, he said.
Increased attendance is coming from “hard-core” faithful adherents who are now even more determined to attend, Mr. Griffiths said.
“The intensity of feeling is going up, and more within that group are going. We're winning the battle but I'm not so sure we're winning the war.”
Many Canadians, he said, espouse a “feel-good” nationalism that is very emotional but does not translate into action when it comes to attending a Remembrance Day ceremony or actually learning something about Canadian history.
“I feel like the Grinch who stole Remembrance Day, but unfortunately, we seem to be leading these busy, workaday lives and Nov. 11 is becoming a casualty of that.”
However, the survey found overwhelming support (87 per cent) for making Remembrance Day a national statutory holiday.
Perhaps buttressing concerns of those who oppose the idea out of fear that Nov. 11 will become just another holiday, younger Canadians were significantly more in favour of a day off than older Canadians.
Military historian Terry Copp, meanwhile, is far more sanguine about the poll results than Mr. Griffiths.
Mr. Copp said learning the names of military heroes such as Sir Arthur Currie isn't of much importance in people's daily lives or to 16-year olds “with a lot of other things on their mind.”
“Learning bits of information about Canadians in the two world wars does not imply understanding.”
Gordon Bannerman, 85, who fought through the bloody Italian and Holland campaigns in the Second World War, has found his own secret weapon to bring the reality of war home to school kids.
Yesterday, at a middle school on Vancouver Island, Mr. Bannerman told two hilarious anecdotes, barely fit for a family audience, about Canadian servicemen blowing themselves up while using “the facilities.” Gas and matches were involved.
“The kids howled,” Mr. Bannerman reported.
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| King Luis |
best war series/movie
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| exstasie |
| quote: | Originally posted by King Luis
best war series/movie
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+1. Absolutely loved it! Only saw a few episodes when it was on TV, but bought the Box set. Amazing. Need to give it another watch through this weekend!
happy rememberance Day all! 11/11 |
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| Euphorica |
beat me to it. I came to post up about it :D
Lest we forget!!
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| *~LiSa-LoO~* |
Don't forget the moment of silence at 11am tomorrow.
I just want to say...thanks |
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| mr. poopyhead |
No Man's Land (Green Fields Of France) - Eric Bogle
Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.
Chorus :
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the bugles play the Last Post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the 'Flooers o' the Forest'.
And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back there in nineteen-sixteen
In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forgotten behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.
The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generaation that were butchered and damned.
Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again. |
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