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In Flanders Fields

Blimey

Grizzled Veteran
Aug 3, 2007
244
56
Montreal,Canada
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.

remember-1-1.jpg
 
I don't think so. It would've taken great men on all sides to avoid, but it was avoidable and in the end utterly pointless.


So, then, what you're saying is that, given a certain specific set of circumstances that did not exist, involving a certain specific set of characters that did not exist, that it was avoidable?

Isn't that the same thing as saying that it was unavoidable?

(The pointless part I have to agree with, though.)
 
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I may have not lost any in the fields of flanders, but ive lost family members at the shores of Gallipolli, in the desert of iraq and the mountains of eastern anatolia.

Maybe more than that as well. I dont know. Its something so distant yet has impacted my family so intensely none the less.
 
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I don't like that line "take up our quarrel with the foe," because it sounds like the dead haven't learned anything, and implies they were fighting for something noble when, let's face it, they really weren't in WW1. But seeing as it was written in 1915, I guess it's to be expected.

A church just two blocks from my home has a marker with 15 some-odd names of men from the neighbourhood that went off to Europe in that war and didn't return. I pass it almost every day and I honestly can't recall a single name from memory. On the 11th, perhaps I'll take a moment and read them more carefully.
 
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I don't like that line "take up our quarrel with the foe," because it sounds like the dead haven't learned anything, and implies they were fighting for something noble when, let's face it, they really weren't in WW1. But seeing as it was written in 1915, I guess it's to be expected.

A church just two blocks from my home has a marker with 15 some-odd names of men from the neighbourhood that went off to Europe in that war and didn't return. I pass it almost every day and I honestly can't recall a single name from memory. On the 11th, perhaps I'll take a moment and read them more carefully.

perhaps in a more modern context the 'foe' could be interpreted as the fear mongers who would love nothing more then to see more pointless war for their own benefit...
 
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I suppose we could start a thread about family members and their battles, that we remember. Apart from family having fought in just about every damned (British) battle since Hastings, the graves looked after by the War Graves Commission in locations as diverse as Ypres and Tehran, plus the long list of family members on the Thiepval Memorial, one of the things that always strikes me is how many of their deaths were so "unfair". This includes the great-uncle who was the "Brigade Bombing Officer", was wounded while examing a German "bomb" (grenade) and died outside Ypres a few days later, to the great-uncle who is buried in Tehran, dying 3 weeks after the war ended, of some crappy disease.
 
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My grandfather helped liberate Manchuria. My wife's grandfather was in Pomerania and later in Berlin. In the glorious armies of Joseph S.

My great-grandfather fought against the commies during the Polish-Soviet war at the beginning of 1920s. He was in the cavalry. Quite a sabre he had.

My cousin was in Iraq, thought about Afghanistan, but opted out.
 
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