Lest we forget ....

[Student]

…. some people don’t. Although 2015 sees the 100th anniversaries of various battles of WW1 i.e. Gallipoli, Neuve Chapelle, Second Ypres and Loos, it also sees another significant event. In July, there will be the 30,000th (yes 30,000th) occasion when the evening ceremony takes place at the Menin Gate at Ypres. It’s taken place every evening since 1927 except for 4 years during WW2 when the Germans were occupying Belgium. There is a video of one of the ceremonies on You Tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7CkfcMWwtI

 

[blackrodd]

A very moving ceremony I hear.
I intend visiting my passed relative in vlamertinghe(?) 21 years old, RFA, DIED SEPT 1917.
Has Any one done a battle fields coach trip? Rodders

 

[Job and Knock]

To some Belgians WWI is still very much part of everyday life because they are still unearthing dangerous unexploded munitions a hundred years on. They still recover and deal with over 100 tonnes of the stuff every year, everything from machine gun bullets to mustard gas cannisters. That they still honour the dead, our dead, 100 years on is very moving.

Rodders I haven't done a trip, but I have visited a couple of the cemeteries when I was working over there years ago. They are always immaculately maintained.

 

[Graham Orm]

A very moving ceremony I hear.
I intend visiting my passed relative in vlamertinghe(?) 21 years old, RFA, DIED SEPT 1917.
Has Any one done a battle fields coach trip? Rodders

My daughter did a battlefields trip with school a few years ago and saw the ceremony. She also found the name of a relative.

 

[Graham Orm]

To some Belgians WWI is still very much part of everyday life because they are still unearthing dangerous unexploded munitions a hundred years on. They still recover and deal with over 100 tonnes of the stuff every year, everything from machine gun bullets to mustard gas cannisters. That they still honour the dead, our dead, 100 years on is very moving.

Rodders I haven't done a trip, but I have visited a couple of the cemeteries when I was working over there years ago. They are always immaculately maintained.

The Menin Gate ceremony is a wonderful tribute to all those who fell. Although there are stories of people dying for various causes in the news every day we owe a great debt to the heroes listed there and those who died with them.
I have an uncle buried at a cemetery in France. He was killed at Dunkirk. My dad always wanted to visit and never did. I will one day. On the War Graves Commission website we found a photo of the grave and directions from the port right to the graveside.

RIP Uncle Clem.

 

[NickWelford]

Not been to the Menin Gate but have visited my great uncle's grave in a French war cemetery North of Paris. Was shot down in his Sopwith Camel on his first day there in 1918. My Father was born a few days later and named for him, and went on to be a bomber pilot in WW2.

 

[Mark A]

We spent ten days touring the battlefields of northern France and Belgium by car in 2012. It was a very poignant experience and I'd recommend everyone makes time to go at some point in their lives.

We have four ancestors who were killed in the Battle of the Somme (great-great-uncles) and several more who fought and somehow made it out alive. They were people I hadn't even heard of before I read the family trees and researched on the CWGC website.

Don't forget there are two other important anniversaries this year - 200 years since The Battle of Waterloo in 1815, and 600 years since The Battle of Agincourt in 1415. I'd like to go to one (or both), and while I'm there tie it in with a trip to Verdun.


Another place I want to visit is Changi Prison in Singapore and the Burma-Siam Railway, though I suspect whatever has survived is now over-commercialised and teeming with tourists.

 

[Woodchips2]

The Menin Gate ceremony is a wonderful tribute to all those who fell. Although there are stories of people dying for various causes in the news every day we owe a great debt to the heroes listed there and those who died with them.
I have an uncle buried at a cemetery in France. He was killed at Dunkirk. My dad always wanted to visit and never did. I will one day. On the War Graves Commission website we found a photo of the grave and directions from the port right to the graveside.

RIP Uncle Clem.
View attachment 18[/quote]

One good thing about the internet is that you can see something special to you even you may not be able to actually visit in person =D>

Regards Keith

 

[Sawyer]

The Menin Gate ceremony is enacted every evening. Belgium's daily "Thank you" for allied aid, even a century later is certainly very moving and highly recommended. At the same time, I urge all to recall the incredible fortitude and courage of the Belgians themselves. As a profoundly peaceful and un-militaristic nation, the Kaiser, with most powerful army in the world at his disposal, expected a prompt acquiescence under protest to his demands. The Germans couldn't quite believe it when Belgium forcefully said "No" - and meant it. Delays in Belgium struck a deadly blow to German strategic plans, without which it may well have been 'All over by Christmas', but in Germany's failure.

March 10th., 100 years to the day, I shall be at Neuve Chapelle to re-trace the footsteps of my grandfather, whose unit had a very rough time in the opening attack and subsequent days.

 

[mseries]

Not been on a battlefield tour nor cemetary tour as such but certainly passed by many of the historic sites on my trips to Belgium and France. I did visit a British WW2 cemetary in Narvik, Norway though. My Grandfather survived his tours in WW1, he was an artileryman, deafened by the guns and lungs damaged by gas. I proudly have one of his medals since his passing.

 

[dexter]

Visited the Menin Gate and attended the ceremony a few years ago, very moving and when they start the Last Post the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Total silence throughout the ceremony and at the end, none of the nowadays obligatory applause and whoops, everyone just quietly walked away.
Also took the time to visit a couple of the battlefields with a local guide. He took us to what was the start line for the British at Pashendale, he pointed out Tynecotte Cemetry which you can clearly see in the distance, that was the German line, shocking to think a quarter of a million men were lost getting to there. Lest we forget indeed.

Dex

 

[dickm]

Since moving up to Scotland it's very noticeable that the war memorials here are really treasured and immaculate. Much more so than south of the border. Possibly a reflection of the casualty record - in the case of our village 30+ deaths from a wartime population of about 400. And this year, we won the best kept memorial award for the region.

My father flew Sopwiths in France & Middle East, but survived.

 

[treeturner123]

Hi

Mark A and any others, Verdun is absolutely worth a visit. Villages wiped out and never re-built, an excellent museum and the French memorial with a good proportion of men from their colonies. Even more impressive is the vast Ossuary. My wife swears that she hear moaning when we were in there. It is very spooky. I seem to remember that here are also some German graves as well, set to one side and very plain.

I'd love to go to some of the others. However, possibly more telling is that in the German occupied areas, for example in Alsace, the village war memorials have the names of men (expected), women and children. That I think more than anything brings it home how much they suffered during both wars.

Phil

 

[Jonzjob]

I've visited a couple of the cemetarys up there and they are incredible. The atmosphere is so peaceful. Where we live down this way they celebrate the 11th Nov, as they do all over France and it is a public holliday. The same with the 8th March, the end of the war in Europe. I was asked if I would like to become a member of the village Association d'Ancients Combattants several years back. We have always attended the 2 celebrations and I was very proud to accept the invite. I am ex R.A.F. At both celebrations the village children read out the names of 'The Children of France', the ones killed in the wars. That includes the Algerian conflict.

The area didn't suffer very much from the war in WW1, apart form the loss of the young men and that is enough, but in WW2 they were under a lot of pressure from the occupying Germans who took most of the food supplies to feed their troops in the north. There was almost a starvation diet here. The Resistance were very active here and there are 2 large monuments just north of us in the Montagne Noir where dozens of them were caught and murdered, including young teenaged boys.

 

[Graham Orm]

Whilst we're on this topic. My wife bought me an 'extra' Birthday present. A DVD Movie called 'Fury' with Brad Pitt.

It's about an American Sherman tank crew in the last months of the second world war pushing through Germany and fighting the fanatical SS. Coming up against the dreaded 'Tiger Tanks'.

My dad was in the 8th Army in a Sherman in Africa, then in through Sicily and Italy, and saw action at the battle of Monte Casino. He said that the Sherman was woefully under gunned and under armoured, which the film confirms. He said that the best tactic if finding yourself up against a Tiger was to get out of there ASAP.

There's a second disc that came with the movie which is a 40 minute documentary about the making of the movie and also about the tanks themselves. The tanks shown in the movie were borrowed from the tank museum at Bovington in Dorset. The tiger is one of only six left and the only one that is still running. A full team went with the 'loan tanks' and supervised all filming, they only allowed one day of filming with the Tiger.

The majority of the Sherman filming was done using a fibreglass replica built onto a tracked vehicle. The guys on the set said that you could stand right next to it and not know that it wasn't real.

The Sherman was armed with 3" of armour and a 75mm canon, the shells were shown bouncing off the 4 inch armour of the Tiger, which was another thing my dad had said. The Tiger carried an 88mm canon with almost double the charge of the Sherman's. This meant that it would pierce 4" armour a mile away!

Towards the very end of the campaign an upgraded Sherman arrived, which is the one featured in the film, this carried a 76mm canon but with a much bigger charge. The Tigers were outnumbered 4-1 overall which is the only reason the Shermans could have any effect.

The Tiger in the movie (on loan from Bovington), was captured in Africa early on in the war. It was shipped back to London for studying, then put on display in central London as a trophy.

I wish my dad could have watched this movie, it confirmed so many things that he had told me.

A good movie 5 stars from me!