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They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not 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.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
Comments
They Shall Not Grow Old
Very apt words indeed.
Also the title of a Documentary that will be shown on BBC-2 (UK) tonight. It was put together by Peter Jackson (LOTR etc) using actual film clips taken in WW1. The film has been restored and some coloured. Where the people were speaking to camera lip readers were used to get what was being said and then people from that part of the world used to voice the words.
If you get a chance to watch it then please do so.
It is supposed to be broadcast on PBS in the USA.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0brzkzx
It might be available online as well.
Then we hear about a certain politician not going to visit a WW1 Cemetary due to the rain. Those who fought and died didn't have a choice about not fighting in the rain. We'll hear that this is just fake news before long.
Samantha
Weather
Yes all the conflict I took part in the weather played a big part, It play havoc with the troops morale but they still perform 120%. Most people can't imagine charging across muddy fields or up a mountain to dislodge the enemy from defensive positions most of the time with a bloody freezing wind howling.
As I replied to a blog yesterday apathy reigns on remembrance day in the UK.
Apathy?
Now at the service I went to. Double the number of people who normally attend. Even motorists who found the road blocked didn't complain which the normally do.
There again, I do live in a former Army town.
Samantha.
Trench warfare and "subterrains"
Here at the centennial of that awful "war to end all wars" I've been reading about the commemorations and thinking about films I've seen and books I've read about it. Paths of Glory and such. I'm sure I knew veterans of that war when i was a kid, but they're all gone now and all we have is print and text records of it. I'm glad people still remember the lives it took and the pay homage to those who fought in it, in another 100 years they probably won't. It will be like the Napoleonic wars, faded history.
Being a creator of fictions, this morning my reflections on all this suddenly took a perverse steampunk turn and i started thinking about those mechanical mole machines that people drive to the center of the Earth inside of in bad sci-fi films. Somebody dubbed them subterrains, but i don't know if the term ever caught on. Along with the nightmare of chemical warfare (the grotesquery of horses in gas masks), WWI saw the development of armored tanks and practical submarines; but on battlefields where the two armies had pretty much come to an impasse and sat in trenches 100 yards apart taking potshots at whoever stuck his head up, I wonder if a small fleet (battalion?) of these machines (I don't imagine they could travel very fast) could have helped one side or the other by creating a tunnel down big enough for troops to advance through and surface behind their foe.
This probably isn't practical for a lot of reasons---like the ground collapsing behind these machines unless it could be cauterized somehow---but it might make a cool alternative history-type story, film or anime. Or has this already been done in regards to the "Great War"? I hope it's not disrespectful to stray from the topic and turn it into fodder for fantasy but that's what my mind always does...
~Veronica
And remember...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifLqzLEB3E0
Clay kickers
Miners were recruited to dig large caverns under the enemy lines, using tunnels they dug from behind their own trenches. The terrain around our troops' lines wasn't best suited for tunnelling, so it was messy, dangerous work, made evn more horrifying by the fact that both sides were actively looking for each other's tunnels. There were underground battles where men fought with pick and shovel in utter darkness and foul air.
http://engineersatwar.imeche.org/features/tunnelling
Getting a bit more off WWI,
Getting a bit more off WWI, that tactic was used in the American civil war. When the tunnels got under the enemy lines they were packed with explosives and the ensuing explosion would breach the enemy fortifications and allow the advancing infantry to penetrate the lines.
I believe the same idea (but without the explosives) was used in siege warfare for millennia.
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
tunnelling
This method was used in the English civil war, but at the end off the tunnel the drove in a herd of pigs fenced then in and filled the area with straw which they then set on fire apparently this resulted in an explosion to breach walled battlements
Tunnelling
There was a fairly recent Aussie movie "Beneath Hill 60" about a tunnel dug by WW1 soldiers under German lines and filled with explosives.
Don't forget one Guy Fawkes who tunnelled under the English Houses of Parliament some 500 years ago but didn't get to detonate his 30 barrels of gunpowder. The Brits have been celebrating his failure on November 5th ever since.
Veterans of the Great War
My maternal grandfather served in the US Army in northern Italy during The War to End All Wars. Yes, Italy was our ally against Austria-Hungary. Although he was an Ulster Scot, he had emigrated to America in time to serve in that war. Fortunately, he didn't see combat. He told me that his unit went to various places in Italy to show them that the Americans were there.
Unfortunately, that war did not end all wars. His older son served in the US Navy during WWII and his younger son served in the US Army during the Korean War. My father served in the Army in both WWII and the Korean War, and I served during the Vietnam War, though I was fortunate to be sent to Germany and not Vietnam. Because of the draft, most healthy young men of my generation served in one branch of the service or another. Today few young people serve, leaving the sacrifice to those who volunteer.