To have tears in my eyes at this?

[parmalilac]

Just seen in the news photos of the Somme soldiers at railway stations etc today, silently handing out cards with names of the fallen. What a wonderful way to to remind us of that terrible tragedy, and well done to whoever organised it.

They weren't at Victoria were they? Just as well, I'd've been bawling. Uniforms always gets me going.

Yanbu. It's unimaginable what they went through but we need to and should remember.

I must try to see where my great grandfathers were during the war. I know one was gassed in the trenches. I know a lot about my grand parents and parents during ww2 but not much about the great war.

It always makes me cry but this year feels even sadder because the eu was a legacy set up as a result of the wars to make sure they never happened again. I feel like we've betrayed those young men who suffered and died.

As a mother of two boys I cant imagine the pain their own mothers mist have gone through, and how terrified those lads must have been. Never forget x

mavis, I'm happy to try to look up some records for you, if you wanted to PM me names and dates/places of birth.

I just blogged about it this morning, Bungle. My great grandma had her 16 year old and her 18 year old fighting on the Western Front by July 1916. The First Day of the Somme was my grandad's first action. His brother died the following year, at Passchendaele.

I look at my own nearly 16 year old and can't even comprehend how he would survive a day like that (then years of war afterwards), or how I'd feel knowing two of my children were there...

Let's also never forget Michael Gove said words to the effect that WW1 soldiers were donkeys led by lions. He buys the revisionist theory that insults every soldier there.

We have politicians 100 years on who are the same kind of braying donkey.

www.2br.co.uk/news/local-news/2025884/blackburn-statue-honours-the-lancashire-men-we-lost-in-the-battle-of-the-somme

I feel the same bungle

They were not even adults.... Just boys many of them

This song says so much

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing?
Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Gone for husbands everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing?
Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago?
Where have all the husbands gone?
Gone for soldiers everyone
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing?
Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Gone to flowers, everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

At school one of the most poignant things we did was the head master would read a list of the students from the school that went to fight and a sixth former would stand up.

It was really powerful at the end of list to see us all standing, each representing one of the fallen.

Wilber Triggs.

Yanbu

I knew my great Grandfather served in ww1 but found out last night that he fought in the battle of the Somme. He was 18. His parents received a telegram from the war office telling them that he was MIA presumed dead. He was in fact lost behind enemy lines and did somehow manage to return home. When my dad was 15 he was with him (his grandfather) when he died aged 82, and said that in the last 20 minutes of his life he was back on the front line. It had haunted him until.his last breath.

I was absolutely heartbroken to hear the story. My great Grandfathers sister was a nurse at southmead caring for the returned injured soldiers. She kept a diary that my grandmother has and let the soldiers write in it. It's a very moving read apparently.

(I know that was not to the point of the thread but never mind)

I remember being taken to the Somme fields when I was at school, not something you can, or should forget.

The service was so moving. The poem read by Charles Dance gave me goosebumps.

My great grandmother on my mother's side also married her childhood sweetheart at 17 she lost him to the war soon after. He is buried in France.

Iklboo I was filling with tears, May we never forget the human cost of war.

What a wonderful tribute; and what an important way of sending a message about the utter tragedy of war.

What for me made all this so terribly poignant now was that 100 years later this country has turned its back on the continent where these terrible events took place. A war which only happened due to the rise of competing European nations.

A true memorial to those who gave their lives would be to strive to make cooperation between nations work. Not insult our allies and gloat as a certain representative of this nation did a few days ago.

i always wonder what new inventions, art, books etc the world would have if Europe hadn't destroyed so many young people in WW1 and WW2.

I had a great aunt we called "auntie Anna" . She wasn't an actual relative but a neighbour of my grandparents. Her fiancé died fighting in WW1 and she remained heartbroken all her life. A lovely lovely lady.

Hear hear rennie
It was shameful behaviour. And I feel so sad that we will likely see the fragmentation of Europe again. Like all that history has been forgotten

Yy, the revelling in jingoistic slogans and hatred and nationalist insults scares me.

Can anyone tell me the poem Charles Dance read out ? Thank you

throwing when I was a young teen I used to do a weekly small shop for a dear old lady who'd similarly lost her fiancee in WW1 and never married - a personal tragedy for the women that never got to be wives and mothers too, although I don't compare it to the finality of having to walk towards a machine gun

Very moving