General Chat

July 1st 1916. Ninety seven years ago today.

The blackest day in the history of the British and Commonwealth Armies.

At dawn, the British allies attacked along the Somme in France and suffered 60,000 casualties, including 20,000 dead in one single day.

Lions led by Donkeys.

We will remember them.

RIP

God rest their souls <3. RIP

Let us Remember.

Lest we forget x

Known as Rifles Day by the Royal Ulster Rifles (now amalgamated)

We will remember them.

They will never be forgotten R.I.P.

Folkestone has a bleak, but striking unusual memorial remembering this battle.

So many of those men sailed from this port and on the cliff tops is a fairly recent addition.
19,240 individually numbered pebbles are set in a square. Each one represents a life lost on the 1st day of the fighting.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blahflowers/2772251328/in/photostream/

Rest in Peace.

That is a powerful memorial Gwyn.

RIP and thank you to all those who fought and lost their lives.

Folkestone's unique memorial to WW1 is the Road of Remembrance. Thousands upon thousands marched down this hill to the boats which took them to Belgium and France. One in seven never returned.

For anyone who is interested have a look at the links below. The same section of road is shown but the photos are taken 95 years apart.

Then: http://centenarynews.com/media/uploads/tbldata_news/ljttvjl3jzzylpzme8dt_thumb.jpg

Today: http://s0.geograph.org.uk/geophotos/02/56/74/2567400_06968676.jpg

RIP brave men. Also RIP to the many brave women, nurses and voluntary workers who were also killed in this terrible conflict.

And years later the lessons had not been learnt, even on the last day of the war generals were still sending men out to be mown down by machine guns, to further their careers.
Can you imagine an officer getting away with such callous treatment of his men today, he would be tried for war crimes.

At least we have learned a lesson from the dreadful carnage of that war and have moved away from wars of attrition. WW2 was one of movement, no General dared to let the stalemate of the trenches and inevitable large casualties happen again.

It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom – for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.

If officers did not obey orders then their fate was the same as anybody else doing the same, shot at dawn. Do not blame the officers who for the most part shared the same dangers injuries privations and chance of an early death as privates and corporals and ncos.

My grandfather was a regular soldier with the Royal Artillery and was with his regt on the Somme at this date. He survived the war without a scratch despite the odds against.
I have never forgotten his wise words.

"There are old soliders and bold soldiers, but no old bold soldiers"

Quo Fas Et Gloria Ducunt
Ubique

My grandfather came home.......... with chunks of shrapnel in his body.

The doctors finally talked him into having it removed in 1956, despite grandfather saying it didn't bother him. It had been there for 50 years!

He died six months later, a blood clot.

I don't think my grandmother ever smiled again.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We Will Remember Them.

"At least we have learned a lesson from the dreadful carnage of that war and have moved away from wars of attrition."

nuts; other meat grinding battle fields since 1918 include

Caen, St Lo, Monte Cassino
Stalingrad
Iwo Jima
Bien Dien Phu
Pork Chop Hill Korea
Khorramshahr (Iran)
Hama, Aleppo, Deera, Homs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XElGDuCUUd4

Rollo my vitriol was aimed at the "General Melchett" not the "Edmund Blackadder" class of officer.

You mean General Haig ? He was very good at passing the buck.

"On 1 June 1914, during World War I, Major General Montagu-Stuart-Wortley became GOC of the 46th (North Midland) Division, a Territorial Force division. In October 1915, the Division saw action in France during the Battle of Loos when it made a costly attack against the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Wortley proposed a bombing attack, but was overruled and ordered to go ahead with a frontal attack by General Richard Haking (his Corps commander).[7] In the event, the attack was a disastrous failure and the Division lost 180 officers and 3,583 men killed wounded or missing. The action was described in the Official History as a ‘tragic waste of infantry’."