Poppies

[LaticsChris]

I am expecting a lynching for this but -

 

I wish football would stop getting on its high horse. Minutes silence for too much. Going to a football match is not the time and place for rememberance of dead soldiers. I have a friend in Afghanistan and if something does happen to him would I feel differently? No, I don't believe I would. There is a time and a place. Football seems to try and take a high ground on so much and it gets on my nerves. I wouldn't expect a football match to break off at the Cenotaph on sunday and I don't believe a minutes silence is appropriate at a match. Why just sporting events? Why not at the cinema? Or the theatre?

 

I buy my poppy, I do a 2 minutes silence today - which is wholely appropriate and exactly whats required.

 

I can see your point, the whole furore this week has been unnecessary & blown well out of proportion.

 

However I also think that clubs, as cornerstones of the community, see it as appropriate that they should commemorate these events by having the minutes silence and in recent years the poppies on the shirts. Yes we are at the game to be entertained, as at the cinema. But cinemas are just businesses with no emotional investment from their patrons, unlike football clubs.

[NIKI1234]

I am expecting a lynching for this but -

 

I wish football would stop getting on its high horse. Minutes silence for too much. Going to a football match is not the time and place for rememberance of dead soldiers. I have a friend in Afghanistan and if something does happen to him would I feel differently? No, I don't believe I would. There is a time and a place. Football seems to try and take a high ground on so much and it gets on my nerves. I wouldn't expect a football match to break off at the Cenotaph on sunday and I don't believe a minutes silence is appropriate at a match. Why just sporting events? Why not at the cinema? Or the theatre?

 

I buy my poppy, I do a 2 minutes silence today - which is wholely appropriate and exactly whats required.

 

I am the opposite, I like the fact the football does this once a year. If I end up doing a 2 minutes silence twice over the weekend so what. I certainly dont thinks its football taking the high ground.

[opinions4u]

Not a lynching pukka, but a complete disagreement.

 

Where else, in Oldham, will there be a meeting of people as big as at Boundary Park this weekend? I've no idea what the turnout at the big mosques will be (possibly bigger), but the football match on a Saturday afternoon is exactly the right place for a minute's rememberance.

 

Two teams going in to battle, albeit in the name of sport, precededed by a short intermission to put life in to a proper perspective.

 

Three or four thousand souls given a minute to think. Some of them will consider great grandparents long gone. Others will consider somebody lost more recently. Many will simply consider the futility of war, or the justice of going to battle in certain circumstance and the pain that inevitably brings.

 

If we were a church going nation I'd agree that the Sunday morning service is the place for this. It still is. But as the overwhelming majority don't attend a religious service I think a minute's silence at the local football stadium is more than fitting.

 

Long may it continue.

[Dave_Og]

I've an idea. Lobby your MP to get the government to pay for this :censored:. It's what I pay my taxes for. If I have to pay more for a better life all round, so be it.

 

A voluntary donation is worth ten times government funding (I'm not talking cash value here.)

[BucksBlue]

This is going to be an unpopular post so I'll prefix this with the fact that I spent last year's holiday going round the Normandy beaches, cemeteries and memorials. Here's a picture of the British Cemetery at Ranville, not far from Pegasus Bridge.

 

Beag_teeets ... I lived in France in the '80s and toured the normandy battlefields with my dad (now gone) ... there's a cafe at the Pegasus Bridge called Cafe Gondree, run at the time by the elderly daughter of the lady who ran it in the war .. Arlette Gondree had her own token of gratitude to the English Fallen ... if you had served in the Allied forces you could not buy a drink in her bar ... because they were free! She asked my dad if he had served and he said he was a couple of years too young, but his father had served (and was shot at Dunkirk) ... I paid for my drinks, but my dad's were free.

 

The point of this story is that we each have our own ways to pay our respects, and also the freedom not to, thanks to those who did fight. I personally do not wear a poppy, but I donate monthly to the British Legion and another injured soldiers charity. Each to their own!

[Monty Burns]

Do we raffle off the shirts and donate it to the appeal? We should do.

[beag_teeets]

This is going to be an unpopular post so I'll prefix this with the fact that I spent last year's holiday going round the Normandy beaches, cemeteries and memorials. Here's a picture of the British Cemetery at Ranville, not far from Pegasus Bridge.

 

Beag_teeets ... I lived in France in the '80s and toured the normandy battlefields with my dad (now gone) ... there's a cafe at the Pegasus Bridge called Cafe Gondree, run at the time by the elderly daughter of the lady who ran it in the war .. Arlette Gondree had her own token of gratitude to the English Fallen ... if you had served in the Allied forces you could not buy a drink in her bar ... because they were free! She asked my dad if he had served and he said he was a couple of years too young, but his father had served (and was shot at Dunkirk) ... I paid for my drinks, but my dad's were free.

 

The point of this story is that we each have our own ways to pay our respects, and also the freedom not to, thanks to those who did fight. I personally do not wear a poppy, but I donate monthly to the British Legion and another injured soldiers charity. Each to their own!

 

 

The first building to be liberated during D-Day:

 

 

And I agree, each to their own, if you want to donate, donate, if you want to wear a poppy then do so, if not, fine.

[TheBigDog]

Not a lynching pukka, but a complete disagreement.

 

Where else, in Oldham, will there be a meeting of people as big as at Boundary Park this weekend? I've no idea what the turnout at the big mosques will be (possibly bigger), but the football match on a Saturday afternoon is exactly the right place for a minute's rememberance.

 

Two teams going in to battle, albeit in the name of sport, precededed by a short intermission to put life in to a proper perspective.

 

Three or four thousand souls given a minute to think. Some of them will consider great grandparents long gone. Others will consider somebody lost more recently. Many will simply consider the futility of war, or the justice of going to battle in certain circumstance and the pain that inevitably brings.

 

If we were a church going nation I'd agree that the Sunday morning service is the place for this. It still is. But as the overwhelming majority don't attend a religious service I think a minute's silence at the local football stadium is more than fitting.

 

Long may it continue.

+1

[peanuts]

+1

here is why i buy and wear my poppy with pride to remember and honour the fallen who gave and continue to give there lives so that we can enjoy the freedoms we take for granted .wether you agree or disagree on onwether we should be at war or fought wars in the past those soldiers sailors and airman gave there lives for us dont cheapen it people

 

read and digest

 

 

The following text has been taken from: The Story of the Unknown Warrior. Michael Gavaghan. Oxford Press 1995.

 

It has alway suprised me how few people know the story of the Unknown Soldeir so if it interests you read on. It always makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge when i read this.

 

 

The Unknown Warrior

 

In 1916 an Army padre The Reverend David Railton MC had conducted a burial service when he noticed a grave with the inscription An Unknown Soldier of the Black Watch. Appreciating that there were thousands of similar graves he wrote to Sir Douglas Haig, General Officer Commanding of the British Army in France and Belgium suggesting that a single body should be chosen and brought back to England for burial. There was no reply.

 

After the War, Railton became a vicar in Kent, but he had not forgotten that unknown soldier, and he wrote to the Dean of Westminster suggesting There could be only one true shrine, and that, if possible, should be Westminster Abbey, the Parish Church of the Empire.

 

After much consultation between Government, King George V and the Prime Minister a plan was agreed, that was soon greeted with great enthusiasm by the nation as a whole. But it had not been easy; there had been over two thousand strikes since the War, and there were concerns that a funeral might be seen as belated with the passing of two years.

 

Over 880,000 British men had been killed, so the choice of a single soldier was not easy, however signals were sent preparing the way for the Unknown Warrior. It should also be remembered that there were over 2 million casualties, many of whom were crippled. This affected every community, many of which had raised memorials, but there would be only one tomb to hold the nations unknown son. That warrior, without rank, would be given a Field Marshals funeral and all that went with it; and what is more, the son would receive the nations thanks.

 

Brigadier General Wyatt GOC British Forces France & Flanders received instruction for the exhumation of four unknown soldiers from the battlefields of the Somme, Aisne, Arras and Ypres. The four parties each consisted of an officer and two other ranks, a shovel, a sack and a military ambulance. On the 7th November 1922 the parties arrived at each battlefield, still strewn with thousands of wooden crosses. Each party, unaware of the others, was instructed to take a body from a grave marked Unknown British Soldier. Soldiers must have fallen in the early years to allow nature to cause sufficient deterioration of the bodies so as to hinder identification.

 

The bodies were placed in a sack and transported by a motor ambulance to the military HQ at St Pol, arriving at different times, where they were received by the reverend George Kendal OBE. He ensured that the four bodies had no name, regiment or other means of identification.

 

At Midnight on 7th November a small party gathered outside the hastily convened chapel. The GOC was informed that he and one other officer would find four bodies inside and the shell of a coffin from England in front of the Alter. One body was chosen and placed into the plain deal, and then the lid was secured and a Union Flag placed over it.

 

The Unknown Warrior and his escort arrived in Boulogne at 15:00 on 9th November, where the ambulance was greeted by lines of French and British soldiers. The bearer party moved the body to the Officers Mess, together with 100 bags of Flanders earth which covered the body in Westminster Abbey. Here the Warrior spent his last night in France.

 

The following morning the coffin shell was placed in a plain oak coffin brought from England; it had been made from a tree that stood in Hampton Court Palace. On the top was a Crusaders sword given by the King. The inscription on the coffin read:

 

 

A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918

For King and Country

 

 

The body was escorted to HMS Verdun in a cortege that was over a mile long. There were a number of emotional speeches, and the band played the French and British Nation Anthems. The coffin was joined by a number of wreaths, some so big that four soldiers had to carry them. To the strains of God Save The King and a nineteen gun salute the destroyer slowly moved out and made a course for home.

 

HMS Verdun was escorted by six other British destroyers across the Channel, and as she entered Dover all Union Flags and Ensigns were lowered to half mast; an honour normally saved for the King alone. As the seven ships appeared out of the mist every vantage point was filled as the band on Admiralty Pier played Land of Hope and Glory and men openly wept.

 

Six bearers, Lieutenant Colonels from all three services including the Royal Marines, moved the coffin through lines of troops and civic dignitaries accompanied by a band, as it made its way to the Marine Station. There it was placed in a luggage van, the roof of which had been painted white so as to be recognisable to the crowds on the way from Dover to London Victoria. This was attached to the 5:20 p.m. Boat Train.

 

On arrival in London, the guard was formed of sixteen Grenadier Guards. The commander was handed the keys to the van, and the guard assumed their position for the night. Meanwhile a large crowd had gathered outside. The only sounds were those of departing trains and sobbing people; by early morning there was total silence.

 

Thursday 11th November 1920. London was throbbing. Along the route from Victoria to Westminster crowds were six or seven deep, but the area around the Grenadier Guards was cordoned off. At 9:20 a.m. eight Guardsmen raised the coffin and moved it to an awaiting gun carriage. On the coffin were placed a war-torn Union Flag, a steel helmet and the side arms of a private soldier.

 

The party waited in bright November sunlight as a nineteen-gun salute boomed out from Hyde Park. Moving into position for the 3,960 yard route were the massed bands of the Household Division. Also taking up position were twelve distinguished pall bearers including Field Marshal Earl Haig, all of who were either Admirals, Generals or Air Marshals, some of whom were Knights.

 

The party moved off in slow time to the Funeral March and the sound of muffled drums with black cloth. Six black horses pulled the carriage, and to the rear, mourners including 400 ex-servicemen. Flags and guards lined the route and as the procession passed the street lining soldiers, they reversed their arms and lowered their heads.

 

At 10:20 a.m. the King, dressed in the uniform of a Field Marshal took up his position at the new and unseen Cenotaph which was covered by two huge flags. As the gun carriage came to rest in front of the King he saluted and placed a wreath with inscription in his own hand on the coffin. After a hymn there was silence as the crowd waited for Big Ben... On the last chime the King unveiled the austere grey mass for all to see, and silence was observed across the nation.

 

The parade re-formed behind the Unknown Warrior and the King and moved off to Westminster Abbey where a thousand widows had gathered. The parade halted and the bearer party of Coldstream Guards laid their rifles on the grass and moved into position. There was deep silence as the king saluted the tall Guardsmen as they raised their comrade. Never had any hero had such a ceremony as the coffin moved up a line of one hundred Victoria Cross holders, and made its way to the new grave with impeccable military precision.

 

The coffin was lowered into the grave. The King was handed a silver shell filler with earth from the Flanders battlefield which he sprinkled over the coffin. The grave was partly filled with Flanders soil making part of the Abbey forever a foreign field. The Last Post and Reveille broke the silence. As dignitaries left the Abbey four sentries were mounted as two vans arrived from HMS Verdun with the wreaths from France. Over one and a half million filed past the Grave over the next 16 days.

 

Westminster Abbey is the resting-place for dozens of Kings and Queens of England. The grave of the Unknown Warrior lies set in the floor in front of the West Entrance to the Abbey. It is covered by a slab of black Tournai marble and is surrounded by poppies and greenery; it holds pride of place within the Abbey.

 

 

THEY BURIED HIM AMONG KINGS BECAUSE

HE HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND HIS HOUSE

Edited November 12, 2011 by peanuts

[BucksBlue]

thank you for sharing this Peanuts