Tag: Remembrance Sunday

Lest We Forget

We will remember them

poppy-day

Captain Alfred ‘Bill’ Bland of the 22nd Battalion Manchester Regiment (7th Manchester Pals) wrote to his wife on 26 June 1916: 

It’s a marvellous war, with these thousands of miles of trench system. If only we can smash it all in, and get out in the open, the war might suddenly collapse this year. I am afraid this is too optimistic, though at the present time I am outwardly blatantly optimistic. The true English spirit of deliberate self-depression and self-deprecation has to be countered.

We are a most happy family, everybody doing his best to help everybody else, none of us expecting too much but all ready to do our part of the job, minimising the obstacles to the men, but considering them carefully enough in our thoughts and conversation.

By the time this reaches you, the sun out to be rising a fraction earlier upon us – a new vista, one hopes, fresh woods and pastures new, a slaughtered dragon, a monster laid low. Our Manchester lads are in good form today; burnt brown, eager and keen. I love ’em.

The Manchesters fought on the first day of the battle of the Somme on 1 July. Sgt R.H. Tawney saw Bland just before zero hour and wrote later: “My captain, a brave man and a good officer, came along and borrowed a spare watch from me. It was the last time I saw him.”

The 22nd Manchesters suffered almost 500 casualties that fateful day; eighteen officers and 472 other ranks killed, wounded or missing. The battalion ‘ceased to exist in any recognisable form’.

Captain Bland is buried in the Danzig Alley military cemetary, Mametz (below). His widow never remarried.

danzig alley

 

Remembrance Service at Granton Parish Church

granton great warEvery year Granton Parish Church holds an Act of Remembrance for the community to remember people from the area who fell in the First and Second World Wars, who have served with our Armed Forces or been involved in conflicts around the world – past and present.

This year – during the First World War centenary year – the Act of Remembrance will take place around the Granton War memorial in the grounds of Granton Parish Church in Boswall Parkway on Sunday 9 November 9 from 10:50-11:10, followed by a Remembrance Service inside the church for those who wish to attend.

All are warmly invited to attend this event.

Chas Macintosh, Granton Parish Church

Granton Parish Church

 

Remembrance reflections

I started crawling back towards our lines, and I had never seen so many dead men clumped together. That was all I could see and I thought to myself, ‘All the world’s dead – they’re all dead – they’re all dead’. That’s all I could think as I crawled along. Everywhere I passed, to my left and my right were dead men laying on the ground.

Pte Charles Taylor, 13 Battalion, Yorks and Lancs

One summer evening after the Battle of the Somme had started the guns were rumbling and there was a terrible nose of battle in our ears. Yet where we lay, just thirty metres from the trenches, there were mountains and peace, and hardly any shooting. We could see the French soldiers, and one night a Frenchman started to sing – he was a wonderful tenor. None of us dared to shoot and suddenly we were all looking out from the tranches and applauding, and the Frenchman said ‘Merci‘!

It was peace in the middle of war, and the strange thing was that – just a few kilometres northwards – the terrible battle of the Somme was going on.

Captain Herbert Sulzbach, German Artillery

We were still fighting hard and losing men – we knew nothing of the proposed Armistice, we didn’t know until a quarter to ten on that day. As we advanced on the village of Guiry a runner came up and told us that the Armistice would be signed at 11 o’ clock that day, the 11th of November. That was the first we knew of it.

We were lined up on a railway bank nearby, the same railway bank that the Manchesters had lined up on in 1914. They had fought at the Battle of Mons in August that year. Some of us went down to a wood in a little valley and found the skeletons of some of the Manchesters still lying there. Lying there with their boots on, very still, no helmets, no rusty rifles or equipment, just their boots.

Marine Hubert Trotman, Royal Marine Light Infantry

It wasn’t like London, where they all got drunk of course. No, it wasn’t like that, it was all very quiet. You were so dazed that you just didn’t realise that you could stand up straight and not be shot.

Corporal Reginald Leonard Haine, 1 Honourable Artillery Company

The Armistice came, the day we had dreamed of. The guns stopped, the fighting stopped. Four years of noise and bangs ended in silence. The killings had stopped.

We were stunned. I had been out since 1914, I should have been happy. I was sad. I thought of the slaughter, the hardships, the waste and the friends I had lost.

Sgt Major Richard Tobin, Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division

 

Edinburgh ready to remember

Edinburgh will join the rest of the world in observing Remembrance Day on Sunday – a commemoration of the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war.

Two minutes’ silence will be marked on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – a date which marks the anniversary of the ending of the First World War in 1918.

Scotland’s national remembrance ceremony will take place at the Stone of Remembrance on the Royal Mile. In attendance will be the Rt Hon Donald Wilson, Lord Lieutenant and Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, the Rt Hon Alex Salmond MSP, First Minister of Scotland and the Rt Hon Michael Moore MP, Secretary of State for Scotland.

Lord Provost Donald Wilson said: “On Remembrance Sunday, people the length and breadth of Britain will pay tribute to all those who have fought and died – and who continue to do so – in order to keep this country safe.

“Whether it’s by attending a Remembrance Service or Parade, or simply by taking a moment of quiet reflection, we can all show our gratitude and appreciation for the enormous sacrifices being made every day on our behalf by so many courageous men and women.”

Some of the Remembrance services and parades taking place across the city on Sunday include:

Royal British Legion Remembrance Day parade

When? 10am

Where? Meeting in St Giles Street

Details: The parade will head eastward to the Stone of Remembrance at the City Chambers where they will be met by civic dignitaries and representatives of various public bodies for the Act of Remembrance and a wreath laying ceremony. This will be followed by a service in St Giles Cathedral.

Corstorphine Remembrance Day service

When? 10am

Where? Close to the War Memorial at Corstorphine Kirk, Kirk Loan

Davidson’s Mains Remembrance service and parade

When? 12.30pm

Where? East Barnton Gardens, near to Cramond Road South)Details: The parade will move towards the War Memorial situated in ‘The Green’, where the Remembrance Service will take place.

Heart of Midlothian Remembrance Day service

When? 10.30am

Where? Grosvenor Street, from the junction at West Maitland Street

Details: Wreaths will be laid at Grosvenor Street (and later moved to Haymarket Junction). The Salvation Army Band will then march from Caledonian Place and Dalry Road to Grosvenor Street, where a one-minute silence will be observed.

 

Thunderclap encourages cycberspace to observe Remembrance Sunday silence

Twitter and Facebook could fall silent this weekend as The Royal British Legion launches a campaign to extend Remembrance Sunday’s two-minute silence to the online community.

Facebook and Twitter users will be encouraged to observe the silence by using Thunderclap, a new ‘crowdspeaking’ social media tool that allows users to issue a message simultaneously across social media channels.

The Royal British Legion is the first UK organisation to use the new tool, and the charity is encouraging people to visit www.britishlegion.org.uk and click on the link to the Two Minute Silence Thunderclap page. They can show their support by clicking to authorise their social media accounts to send the tweet or message that reads: ‘I’ll be remembering the fallen at 11 o’clock #2MinuteSilence #LestWeForget” at 9am on Sunday 11 November.’

When they sign up, their Twitter or Facebook feed will display the message: ‘I won’t forget to Remember on 11.11.11 Will you? #2MinuteSilence.’ It is hoped that, through retweets and online “liking” and sharing of the message it will reach many more of the UK’s ten million Twitter and 33 million Facebook users.

Helen Hill, head of remembrance at the Royal British Legion said: “We hope to create the largest ever show of online remembrance by using the communicative power of social media to remind millions of Britons that they have a very personal opportunity to honour the men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

The act of observing a two-minute silence began in 1919 following the signing of the Armistice that brought the First World War to an end at 11am on 11 November 1918. Up to 37 million people were killed or wounded in the conflict.

See previous post We will remember them

Will you be observing the two-minute silence? Is it important to you? Let us know

We will remember them

 In Flanders’ Fields

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.

 ‘We saw some infantry transport come up, and there was a lieutenant quartermaster there. I went over and he said: ‘How are you off for grub?’ so I said ‘We’ve only got biscuits and bully’. He gave us some bread and butter, tea and jam. He was  chap who was getting on for fifty, I should think; a lieutenant quartermaster, not a fighting man at all, and yet he’s brought up all these rations.

He was practically in tears – he said his lads wouldn’t need it. You see, when you lost men it was a day or two before you could stop their rations coming up. The Army Service Corps would still be sending up the rations of so many men while you might have lost half of them. And what happened to all that grub? You’d live like fighting cocks on what was left for a day or two!

In the evening Noble, Robbins and myself went up to Trones Wood. There were no trees left intact at all, just stumps and treetops and barbed wire all mixed up together. And bodies all over the place, Jerries and ours.

Robbins pulled up some undergrowth and as we fished our way through there was this dead Jerry, his whole hip shot away and all his guts out and flies over it. Robbins just had to step back, and then this leg that was up in a tree became dislodged and fell on his head. He vomited on the spot. Good Lord, it was terrible.’

Gunner Leonard Ounsworth , Royal Garrison Artillery: The Somme 1916

The only way up from Ypres was by a plank road fifteen to twenty feet wide. All munitions had to travel a considerable distance up this plank road, and the mud was so deep that on one occasion, with drag-ropes, it was still impossible to pull the guns out of the mud.

The mud and the conditions were absolutely indescribable, You saw fellows coming down from the trenches badly wounded, covered from head to foot in mud and blood, and perhaps an arm missing. You saw some fellows drop off the duckboards and literally die from exhaustion and loss of blood. Horrible, it was. 

Gunner Sidney White, Royal Artillery:  Passchendaele 1917 

I remember trying to help a lad in this copse about a hundred yards from our jumping-off trench. There was no hope of getting to him, he was struggling in the middle of this huge sea of mud. Then I saw a small sapling and we tried to bend it over to him. We were seasoned soldiers then, but the look on the lad’s face was really pathetic – he was only a mere boy. It pricked my conscience, I felt I should try to do something more for him, but I couldn’t do a thing – had I bent it a little more I should have gone in with him, and had anyone else gone near this sea of mud they should have gone in with him too, as so many had.

Sergeant Cyril Lee: Passchendaele 1917

 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.