D Day

[steve_b_wales]

On this day in 1944, many men lay down their lives so that many 1000's more could be rescued.

R.I.P.

[foxnet22]

Very brave men they where.I wonder how they would feel looking at the country they laid down there lives for now.RIP to all they are legends .

[Rewulf]

9 minutes ago, foxnet22 said:

Very brave men they where.I wonder how they would feel looking at the country they laid down there lives for now.RIP to all they are legends .

A bravery amongst the common everyday bloke you would find sadly lacking today.

If they could see this country now ,they wouldnt understand where it all went wrong, and why they even bothered.

RIP

[blackbird]

The first time I watched the film ( saving Ryan ) it brought it home to me the hell those brave men went through for us to live in freedom. Since then I have researched the history of WW1 & WW2 extensively & we can not forget those men & women that have given there life’s for us.

Edited June 6, 2018 by blackbird

[snow white]

Rewulf i total agree with you if my parents could see the state this country is in thay would be turning in there graves.

RIP all you brave people.

[Vince Green]

My Uncle Harry was sapper Harry Green in no 3 glider at Pegasus Bridge. As such he was one of the very first to set foot on French soil that day 

[mel b3]

they will always be remembered .

i have to wonder what my grandad would think of what weve done to his great britain.

[Grandalf]

10 hours ago, Rewulf said:

A bravery amongst the common everyday bloke you would find sadly lacking today.

Got to take issue with this I'm afraid.   Bravery has not been lacking in The Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq 1 and 2 or Afghanistan in recent times.   The armed services are much smaller and there has not been conscription for a long while but the young lads have always stepped up to the plate when required.

[Rewulf]

Just now, Grandalf said:

Got to take issue with this I'm afraid.   Bravery has not been lacking in The Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq 1 and 2 or Afghanistan in recent times.   The armed services are much smaller and there has not been conscription for a long while but the young lads have always stepped up to the plate when required.

By common everyday bloke ,I tried to differentiate between the men of today who sign up and put themselves in harm's way, and others who would have an issue with running out of moisturiser,or ruining their manicure, you know the type I mean?

Certainly no disrespect to our lads and lasses who step up to the plate.

[panoma1]

10 hours ago, Grandalf said:

Got to take issue with this I'm afraid.   Bravery has not been lacking in The Falklands, Bosnia, Iraq 1 and 2 or Afghanistan in recent times.   The armed services are much smaller and there has not been conscription for a long while but the young lads have always stepped up to the plate when required.

Yep!........Cometh the hour cometh the man!

Edited June 7, 2018 by panoma1
Predictive text error! Again!

[getthegat]

I know very little of army, navy or air force life, other than what I've seen on TV, learnt at school and the small amount relatives talked about, and yet I feel something very deep, emotional and somehow connected, whenever I am presented with memories of the two big wars. What those people did for their country, to protect their families and future generations, was astonishing. We now call it bravery, they called it doing their duty, doing no more than they were asked to do and no more than the next man. Modern day soldiers are no less brave, but boy is the world a very different place now. Not having your enemy wearing a uniform, not even knowing if the enemy's are men or women or children, how can a person cope with that. I love my guns and my shooting, but only as pest control, shooting human beings, suicide bombers, road side bombs, terrorism on an unprecedented scale.......Glad it's not me. Very grateful and thankful to all the brave soles, past and present.

[Retsdon]

On 06/06/2018 at 16:50, Rewulf said:

 

If they could see this country now ,they wouldnt understand where it all went wrong, and why they even bothered.

Haha. That was my father's regular lament "I don't know why we bothered to fight the war!' I can hear him now. He landed D-Day +4 and  finished up in Cologne. Wouldn't really talk about it though.

But you're correct. His generation would be utterly appalled.

[Ricko]

1 hour ago, Retsdon said:

Haha. That was my father's regular lament "I don't know why we bothered to fight the war!' I can hear him now. He landed D-Day +4 and  finished up in Cologne. Wouldn't really talk about it though.

But you're correct. His generation would be utterly appalled.

Coincidentally my grandfather landed D-Day +4, he fought up through the Belgian corridor with REME. I always remember the bottles of Belgian wine still at the back of the pantry given to him by grateful villagers.

[Retsdon]

11 hours ago, Ricko said:

Coincidentally my grandfather landed D-Day +4, he fought up through the Belgian corridor with REME. I always remember the bottles of Belgian wine still at the back of the pantry given to him by grateful villagers.

My father was with the RAMC serving as a company MO with the 1/4th KOYLI. Incidentally, if anybody could tell me where I could get hold of  a book by Godfrey Barker-Harland called" Battlefield Tour - a history of 1/4th KOYLI WW2, I'd be very grateful. My father and Godfrey were great pals in my early childhood although we kind of lost touch with them later other than Christmas cards. But no doubt I'd find out a lot of my father's war history from Godfrey's book, because my father himself very seldom mentioned it. No bottles of wine either.  He did once tell me though that there might be a Frenchman in Normandy with the incongruous name of Hamish, named by his grateful parents after the British Army doctor who had delivered him in a farmhouse in 1944. But as he said, the father had probably thought better of it once he'd sobered up!

Edited June 9, 2018 by Retsdon

[Lloyd90]

Can’t see the point in all this “would be turning in their grave” complaining... 

Housing  is 10x better than it was back then, they used to go to a hut down the garden to use the toilet. 

Life expectancy is right up, infant mortality is right up, back then my great uncle lost two siblings to a cough and another to TB. 

Technology is fantastic, almost every house hold owns a car, the world is more accessible, more people have travelled the globe in a short time space than ever thought imaginable. 

Medication, technology, quality of life, all huge improvements. Health and safety, put in place to stop men going to work and  never coming home to their families. 

And further, I see everyday men and women put their lives and safety on the line daily to protect vulnerable people and children in my line of work, perhaps your all living a bit sheltered if you think people are too concerned about their manacure to get stuck in to a dangerous situation? 

 

Change is normal, people are acting like everything should stay the same, which had never happened in any point in time, change is natural and will continue. 

 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Lloyd90

[Vince Green]

2 hours ago, Retsdon said:

My father was with the RAMC serving as a company MO with the 1/4th KOYLI. Incidentally, if anybody could tell me where I could get hold of  a book by Godfrey Barker-Harland called" Battlefield Tour - a history of 1/4th KOYLI WW2, 

British Library or the Library at the Imperial War Museum. You wont be able to take them away though Best to phone first and take some ID. Also, all their day to day war diaries and daily reports will be in Public Record Office at Kew, bundles of them.

KOYLI museum in Pontifract would be a good place to ask, also RAMC Museum at Aldershot would likely have records 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Vince Green

[figgy]

Sad to say but I think they will be forgotten by my children’s generation.

i remember them because as a child I was told stories of family lost ant those who fought and came home. Seeing severely disabled men in rotary hand propelled wheel chairs and at the cenotaph. The children of today don’t have that. 

Their bravery will always be remembered in history. But the old saying of you only last three or four generations rings true. 

Edited June 9, 2018 by figgy

[Retsdon]

Actually, it wasn't just the men. My mother was a nurse in Great Ormand Street Hospital during the Blitz. 

Like my father, she didn't talk to much about the war except to illustrate some other point or other.  To illustrate the improvements in working conditions, she once told me that she'd been stopped the price of a china bedpan from her pay for dropping and breaking it when a bomb had dropped in a nearby street. Apparently the matron hadn't considered the bomb sufficiently close to warrent her  reaction!

[Grandalf]

12 hours ago, figgy said:

Sad to say but I think they will be forgotten by my children’s generation.

i remember them because as a child I was told stories of family lost ant those who fought and came home. Seeing severely disabled men in rotary hand propelled wheel chairs and at the cenotaph. The children of today don’t have that. 

Their bravery will always be remembered in history. But the old saying of you only last three or four generations rings true. 

Just wait and see what the Royal British Legion does for the memory of the WW1 guys later this year.   One hundred years on and definitely not forgotten. 

[Retsdon]

6 hours ago, clakk said:

My Grandad did the "forgotten army " Burma thing

I'm leaving for Myanmar tomorrow. I'm not going as far north as where the 14th Army were fighting, but I'm going to stop on my way through and spend the night in Kanchanaburi on the Thai side of the border, and visit the cemetery, museum and the River Kwai bridge. 

[pinfireman]

21 hours ago, Retsdon said:

My father was with the RAMC serving as a company MO with the 1/4th KOYLI. Incidentally, if anybody could tell me where I could get hold of  a book by Godfrey Barker-Harland called" Battlefield Tour - a history of 1/4th KOYLI WW2, I'd be very grateful. My father and Godfrey were great pals in my early childhood although we kind of lost touch with them later other than Christmas cards. But no doubt I'd find out a lot of my father's war history from Godfrey's book, because my father himself very seldom mentioned it. No bottles of wine either.  He did once tell me though that there might be a Frenchman in Normandy with the incongruous name of Hamish, named by his grateful parents after the British Army doctor who had delivered him in a farmhouse in 1944. But as he said, the father had probably thought better of it once he'd sobered up!

I,ll ask about the book at the KOYLI museum in Doncaster...   It was the KOYLI who liberated Belsen concentration camp......my uncle was there.  He hardly ever spoke about what he saw................

19 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:

Can’t see the point in all this “would be turning in their grave” complaining... 

Housing  is 10x better than it was back then, they used to go to a hut down the garden to use the toilet. 

Life expectancy is right up, infant mortality is right up, back then my great uncle lost two siblings to a cough and another to TB. 

Technology is fantastic, almost every house hold owns a car, the world is more accessible, more people have travelled the globe in a short time space than ever thought imaginable. 

Medication, technology, quality of life, all huge improvements. Health and safety, put in place to stop men going to work and  never coming home to their families. 

And further, I see everyday men and women put their lives and safety on the line daily to protect vulnerable people and children in my line of work, perhaps your all living a bit sheltered if you think people are too concerned about their manacure to get stuck in to a dangerous situation? 

 

Change is normal, people are acting like everything should stay the same, which had never happened in any point in time, change is natural and will continue. 

 

No one is arguing about change, when it,s for the better, but when it,s for the worse!  A justice system working for some, but not for many others,  an imposition of a culture  none of us wanted, but had foisted on us....for every improvement, there seems to have been a loss.........and now it looks like freedom of speech may be next!

[Retsdon]

10 minutes ago, pinfireman said:

I,ll ask about the book at the KOYLI museum in Doncaster...

Thanks very much. You could PM me if you find out anything. I'd actually like to own a copy if that were possible, both because of my own father, and because I can well remember Godfrey Harland himself from my childhood. After the war he became a housemaster at Welbeck College, and as a child we actually went and stayed there during the summer holidays a couple of times.

I never knew that the KOYLI had  liberated Belsen. I know that my father absolutely never mentioned it, but perhaps the KOYLI had more than one battalion in Europe at that time...?

[pinfireman]

9 minutes ago, Retsdon said:

Thanks very much. You could PM me if you find out anything. I'd actually like to own a copy if that were possible, both because of my own father, and because I can well remember Godfrey Harland himself from my childhood. After the war he became a housemaster at Welbeck College, and as a child we actually went and stayed there during the summer holidays a couple of times.

I never knew that the KOYLI had  liberated Belsen. I know that my father absolutely never mentioned it, but perhaps the KOYLI had more than one battalion in Europe at that time...?

I believe they  had several............They had 9 battalions  by the end of WW2. During that war, the regiment fought in Europe, North Africa, and Asia.

Edited June 10, 2018 by pinfireman

[Rewulf]

21 hours ago, Lloyd90 said:

Can’t see the point in all this “would be turning in their grave” complaining... 

Housing  is 10x better than it was back then, they used to go to a hut down the garden to use the toilet. 

Life expectancy is right up, infant mortality is right up, back then my great uncle lost two siblings to a cough and another to TB. 

Technology is fantastic, almost every house hold owns a car, the world is more accessible, more people have travelled the globe in a short time space than ever thought imaginable. 

Medication, technology, quality of life, all huge improvements. Health and safety, put in place to stop men going to work and  never coming home to their families. 

And further, I see everyday men and women put their lives and safety on the line daily to protect vulnerable people and children in my line of work, perhaps your all living a bit sheltered if you think people are too concerned about their manacure to get stuck in to a dangerous situation? 

 

Change is normal, people are acting like everything should stay the same, which had never happened in any point in time, change is natural and will continue. 

 

I don't think anyone meant that 'things' aren't better, technology and comfort wise, but it's BECAUSE of those things,that I think you would find it difficult to acquire the sheer quantity of men in this country,who would be willing to climb down a cargo net and storm a beach, or jump in a plane so people could shoot high calibre projectiles at you.

Today's bravery is measured by some in purely psychological terms, as they have rarely faced physical challenges.

' He's so brave for coming out to his parents'

'Shes been on such a 'journey' with this divorce'

When physical challenges are undertaken, there is that much support and technology avaible, whereas our forebears had a jumper and a bit of rope, no calling for help,and a high prospect of death.

The bar is set so low these days,if they aren't spinning in their graves, they are certainly laughing their socks off.

[Scully]

Without trying to demean what that generation did, I grow a little weary of some claiming this generation wouldn't be capable of doing similar; I think people would be surprised just how this generation would respond to a world war. Lets not forget that most of the generation in question didn't have much choice in the matter ( unless they were conscientious objectors ) they may have felt duty bound but they were conscripts and not volunteers. My Dad was one of them, and I know for a fact he and his brother didn't want to go.

There were some very brave individuals amongst them indeed,  but it's more of a case of not letting your mates down rather than sacrificing your life for some ideal.