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SSI01
November 11th, 2011, 03:15
I do not have much time for this as I have an appointment with some American Legion "poppy people" to give them a hand with their sad task today. I will say this - dad was a Canadian by birth and, at the time he was born, was a subject of King George V. He was also a subject of George VI until he became a U.S. citizen in 1942 while in the U.S. Army. His early years were spent north of the border. I remember him telling me about what was done in Canada every Nov 11th. A little demographic study is required. Canada was in WWI from the first day, and gave her support unflinchingly to the mother country when it was desperately needed. The Canadian Corps was considered one of the toughest outfits in the British Army in Europe. Due to this reputation they took many losses in war - so many, in fact, that to this day Canada still has a somewhat greater proportion of female to male citizens, as so many young men from that country died in that war. The unborn males represent the children the Canadian dead never had. There were so many missing faces after WWI is greatly affected everyone's feelings on this day. The Canadians knew how to mark the event - everything, and I mean everything (except aircraft in flight) stopped dead at 11AM and there were two minutes of absolute silence throughout the country. This included big-name, fast passenger trains on the CP and CN, factory work, people in shops and on the sidewalks in cities and towns across Canada. At 11:02 everything picked up again as before. This happened in Britain as well, as there were so many war dead there - hardly a family in the British Isles was not affected by this. I think changing the name here in the states to Veterans' Day does this a disservice. This is a day about suffering and death, and sacrifice, so we who inherit this priceless heritage can remember what it took to preserve it, what we've got to do to keep it, and vow not to let that sacrifice and suffering be in vain. It's not a day for sales in stores, and it's definitely not proper to wish anyone a happy Veterans' Day!! Please find it in your heart, and in your time, to remember for two minutes this day those who had their lives torn from them so you can enjoy what you've got.

wombat666
November 11th, 2011, 06:24
Complete agreement from Australia.
While 'ANZAC DAY' has tended to overshadow 'REMEMBERANCE DAY' the Western Front has become the subject of great interest, and rightly so.
Australians were in exactly the same position as the other Dominion Nations and like Canada committed forces from Day One.
Curiously, and despite the two referendums held by the Government of the day to introduce conscription (both of which failed), the Australian Forces remained a 100% 'Volunteer Army' throughout the duration, the only force to do so.
:medals:

Daveroo
November 11th, 2011, 08:08
i was talking to my nephew on the phone last night....i said to him..please dont forget Veterans day tomorrow...and he said ..."what?..dont forget what?...what is that?" i was shocked,,so we talked about it,he is completely clueless to world war one,two,hes heard of Vietnam because his wifes dad served and had never heard of the Korean war.he could careless (so he said) of currant events,and then he mumbled something about his wife mentioning her dad would take a bike ride on this day every year,,,,


i was beside myself

SSI01
November 11th, 2011, 15:50
wombat666 - while extolling the virtues of the Canadian Corps no denigration was meant toward the Australians or New Zealanders who served on the Western Front. Germany's last gasp in WWI - Operation Michael in March, 1918 - came very near succeeding in its intent. The German Army was driving every force it met on the field of battle before it, and was again threatening Paris, when its tide broke outside the French city of Amiens. That sector of the British line was held by the AIF (you know what that stands for). The Australians repulsed every assault a very determined German army could make, and broke the back of that Army. From that point on the path was all downhill for the Germans. A salute to the AIF, always tough and redoubtable fighters, and valued allies!

There was, after WWI, a bronze statue erected outside Amiens that depicted an Australian soldier holding a .303 Enfield with fixed bayonet, holding down a Prussian eagle with his boot as he prepared to shove that bayonet through its throat. It was very impressive. I've only ever seen one photo of it. The German Army in WWII, after occupying France, removed the statue principally for its metallurgical value (but also no doubt because it offended them - poor dears) and it was never replaced.

Wing_Z
November 11th, 2011, 18:08
The Armistice Remembrance Day was intended as a reminder to humanity never to do something that stupid again.
As time goes by, the intent will of course be moulded to suit the politics and fashions of the time.
A lot of rubbish will also be spouted about those days as memory grows dim and legend grows.
(I think the last survivor died quite recently)
Wikipedia has a fairly authoritative summary of the casualties of that war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties

T (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties)op scorer per capita was Serbia, casualties at 16% of total population.
The Ottomans took a massive 14%, numerically nearly equalling the Russians, who as usual topped the list with an outstanding 3.3 million.
16 million souls died in that war, "The War to End All Wars".

1918 was not a good year; the war helped spread the Great Flu, which killed perhaps 5 times as many, worldwide.

In this part of the world, ANZAC Day has overtaken Armistice Day in the public mind; our Prime Minister goes off to Gallipoli each year, where 2,721 New Zealanders were slaughtered in 1915, in an action that can best be described as a rather minor footnote to the greater slaughter.
This year the Turks came too, for the first time.
Perhaps this is a sign of human progress...

wombat666
November 11th, 2011, 22:29
SSI01, no offence taken at all, it never crossed my mind!
I've taken considerable interest in the Western Front, even visted several sites (my wife is Franco/Italian and her Father's side live in the Rhone Valley) and tried to visualize the battle fields that are fast approaching a Century ago.
While 'War' is always appalling, the 'Great War' is one that I find impossible to fully understand.
Pure horror in my opinion, and while I've had some experiences of my own I can't imagine myself surviving the Dardanelles Campaign and the Western Front, as did many of the ANZAC troops.

SSI01
November 12th, 2011, 04:15
Dad was in the Army in January 1941 even before he was a citizen of the U.S. I'm sure he heard many horror stories about the Western Front from Canadians who were there, before he came to the states and enlisted. After being in the Army here, he heard more of them from survivors who had graduated to being senior noncoms in the U.S. Army. As time went on he was to endure his own version of that sort of fighting. He was sent to Attu Island late in 1942 to chase the Japanese off. He never spoke about it, but I found out Attu had the second-biggest banzai charge of the war in the Pacific (only Saipan had one larger). They overwhelmed the infantry out front, who sensibly went into a 360-degree perimeter to defend themselves. The tide then washed up against the gun line - where he was - and from there some got to the rear areas, where they shot or bayoneted American doctors, nurses and wounded in hospital tents before they were stopped. I am told the fighting was hand-to-hand, fairly short but very sharp and brutal. No doubt Dad killed some people with the same hands he held me with when I was a child. After this incident the remainder of the fighting became basically an extermination of the Japanese. Feelings were running a little high, I guess, after what happened around that hospital. From there he came back to the U.S. as cadre, then went to England and France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Czechoslovakia with 3rd Army until the end. Cost him a fair amount of his hearing and shortened his life span, no doubt. Extended hard living under intense stress and with great responsibilities (artillery section chief) will do that. Back then they didn't diagnose PTSD, you were expected to shrug it off and get on with life. I know he had PTSD and it cost him, he wasn't the easiest person in the world to be around and didn't have a long fuse. The point is it affected me too, and in some ways I'm a casualty of that war as well. There aren't any unwounded soldiers in war. Families bear a tremendous burden.

wombat666 - have you read any of Lyn MacDonald's works on WWI? I have "Roses of Picardy," "To The Last Man," "1914-1918 Voices and Images of the Great War," and a flock of others. "First Day on the Somme," by Middlebrook, here on my bookshelf, is a must-read for a look into the mind-set, training and inculcation of "regimental spirit" in the British Army in WWI, both officer and enlisted. "11-11-11" by Joe Persico is another fine read, talks about casualties incurred on the last day of the war and the senselessness of much of it. I am fascinated by how a society, and a military organization, could get men to stand up under such tremendous hardship for such an extended time. The UXO they left behind 90 years ago is still killing people in N. Europe. And all this from those little old men in the old folks home with white hair, sitting in their wheelchairs.

gigabyte
November 13th, 2011, 15:40
Rememberance day has always held a special signifiance for my family, partly because we lost members in "The Great War", WW2, and Korea, (my father and two uncles served in Korea but were very fortunate to arrive home safe and sound, two great uncles paid the ultimate price). Also being from Halifax NS we remember the great Halifax Explosion (the largest man made explosion in history until Hiroshima), for those who may not know the story, a munitions ship "The Mont-Blanc" blew up after a minor collision with the Belgin Relief Ship "Imo", the collision was minor however a fire broke out on the fully loaded Mont-Blanc causing an explosion that destroyed the north end of the city and damaging every remaining building in Halifax Dartmouth to some extent, approx 2000 were killed and roughly 9000 injured.

Halifax, and Dartmouth remember to this day, and not just the horror and devistation, but also the amazing response and assistance from not only other parts of Canada, but our US friends in Boston, New York, Washington, and all over the US. The Explosion took place 8:40AM local resources were basically wiped out, disaster relief from nearby towns did not arrive until later that evening. A relief train left from Boston, 1,100 kilometres (700 mi) away, at 10:00 PM on the day of the explosion, without first being able to communicate with Halifax or knowing what was needed they packed medical supplies and personal, and relief supplies (blankets, food, clothing) and simply started out, picking up volunteers and supplies along the way. By the time the train reached Saint John, NB (where I live now) some idea was known of what was most needed so the train stopped and loaded more personal and critical supplies, it was given the right of way to Halifax and despite one of the worst winter storms in years arrived in Halifax just over a day after the initial explosion.

The City of Halifax and her citizens have always been extremely grateful for the amazingly quick and tremendous response from our friends in Boston and the US. In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boaton in thanks and remembrance for the help that the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided immediately after the disaster. That gift began an annual donation of a large tree to acknowledge the Boston support after the explosion. The gift was later taken over by the Nova Scotia Government to continue the goodwill gesture as well as to promote trade and tourism. The tree is Boston's official Christmas tree and is lit on Boston Common throughout the holiday season. Knowing its symbolic importance to both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree. It must be an attractive balsam fir, white spruce or red spruce, 12 to 16 metres (40 to 50 ft) tall, healthy with good colour, medium to heavy density, uniform and symmetrical and easy to access.For the Christmas tree extension specialist the "tree can be elusive, the demands excessive, and the job requires remembering the locations of the best specimens in the province and persuading the people who own them to give them up for a pittance." Most donors are "honoured to give up their trees... [and] most will gladly watch their towering trees fall" since everyone knows the reason it is being sent to Boston. The trees don't often come from tree farms, but from open land where they can grow tall and full. It is so important to the people of Nova Scotia that "people have cried over it, argued about it, even penned song lyrics in its honor."

Besides the annual Christmas Tree donation, a notable proportion of Nova Scotians (and Haligonians in particular) identify as supporters of Boston's major professional sports teams, a loyalty which is often traced to the relief effort of 1917.

For my SOH friends in the Boston area, if you get a chance this holiday season check out our gift of thanks to you and yours this christmas season on the Boston Common, and while some Bostonians "may" not know where the tree comes from or why, Haligonians and Nova Scotians will always remember with much gratitude! :salute:

SSI01
November 13th, 2011, 15:50
Speaking of things Canadian, let us not forget the Newfoundland Regiment and its sacrifice on July 1, 1916 on the Somme. Its loss rate was beyond belief.

Some of the places you mention bring back memories of William Wellman's "Island in the Sky," about the C-47 crash-landing in Canada. They are mentioned in the film, and in the book as well. I've read Ernest K. Gann's story about the real incident. They don't say it in the film, but the reason everyone's compasses were acting up was not just proximity to the magnetic north pole - that was bad enough - but according to the book there were many iron ore deposits in the ground near their crash site that were further confusing the compasses.

Cazzie
November 13th, 2011, 15:52
Here's to you Commonwealth nations and the UK, here it is Veteran's day, a day to honor all vets, living and deceased, as opposed to Memorial Day, where we honor all Americans, who have fallen in combat.

I used this as my FB Icon Veteran's Day. It is my father's Navy Blue from WW II. God bless all vets, for you have seen more than the common people need see, you are special people.:icon29:

52024

Wing_Z
November 13th, 2011, 16:52
Great post, gigabyte, what an amazing "feel good" story!
I hadn't heard of this before...