Remembrance Day

kerby · Remembrance Day

I do not know how you spent yesterday but I made sure I took time to spend a few minutes to remember those that gave me a happy and sucessful life. I was not a regular soldier, only doing National Service, but I remember as a child, counting German Bombers going over Coventry and coming back and flattening the centre and also houses a couple of doors away. I saw bombs being 'dug out' unexploded and human remains being cleared up. Last December I visited a cemetary north of Hanover to visit my wifes uncle who lost his life 2 weeks before Monty signed the cease fire. He was only twenty one. This brought it home to me that a lot of guys, and gals, gave their all so that we could have a good life.
My thoughts are with all those that gave their all. Keith Kerby

marleneandgypo

Hi Keith

Thanks for your post.

You know it had always been strange for me on Remembrance Day. I guess you can call me a kind of 'child of peace' being born of a German mother and an English soldier who met in Bad Lippspringe just after the war around 1946. Obviously I had relatives on both sides who had seen some dreadful things and some who were lost or seriously wounded.

My Great Uncle Will, I still have a letter written by him in the trenches in pencil to his father in the first world war and it really brings it home to me. He was married with three children, one of whom he never saw except in a photo. Part of his letter says "I got burned with a shell last January and I went to hospital in Boulogne. I am getting pretty well worn out now as I have been out here just on 11 months and last winter was enough to do you in. Sometimes it is like all hell let loose and the guns are kicking up a fine dust while I am writing this letter, but they are getting all they want this last couple of days" He talks about his family at home, his sister (my grandmother) and my grandad who was also there. and he talks about the children he was never going to see again. He was killed soon after the letter was written. I then have another letter from his wife also to my great-grandfather (her father-in-law) saying how she had now met someone else, a fine man who could be a father to her children and although Will would never be forgotten, she needed her children to have a father.

Meanwhile over in Germany my grandad was also in the war on the Russian front. His wife was over in Bad Lippspringe with 4 children to bring up alone, life wasn't easy as they had a smallholding as well as the big house she shared with her parents. Opa (my grandad) was also in the trenches and it was so cold, bitterly cold that he became seriously ill. He took off his shoes and socks and his toes came with them. He was sent to a hospital in the Black Forest and his records were lost so he was reported missing believed dead. 6 months later one of the villagers came to my Oma and said she thinks she saw my grandad in the market place. Still with her apron on she and the children ran to the market place and sure enough it was him! He has hobbled and hitchhiked all the way from the south to the north to come home.

So two extreme examples of the similarities in the lives of two families on opposite sides. Just normal family folk.

I do know that Oma was a bit of a rebel and never liked the 'Heil Hitler' salute and when she had to go to a government office one time she said "Gruss Gott" as they used to say and still do in the south, the officer there shouted at her and said "kennen sie nicht den Deutsches Gruss?" (don't you know the German greeting) and she was forced to half heartedly raise her hand and do her bit as she would have been arrested if she hadn't and she had 4 children at home who depended on her.

My Opa was always popular with the English soldiers as the years passed and they used to ask him to do magic tricks for him. he was also a tailor and he would make army dressing gowns for them out of army blankets. I think my mum still has my dad's one. Mum and her sister went to work in the kitchen of a big house which was housing a few English soldiers and that was where they both met my dad and his army buddy, my Uncle Stan. Dad married mum and Auntie Elli married Stan and we all moved to Wimbledon. Well initially mum and dad went to Paddington but koved to Wimbledon when I was born so i was brought up there.

Opa and Oma used to come to England and we went to Germany a lot but also had a lot of contact with the English side of the family too.

So a mixture there.

So that's my story and why I used to feel strange on Remembrance day with the focus here, obviously, on English soldiers as I thought of both sides doing all they could in their own way to just bring peace and a correct way of living to all of us here today.

Love
Marlene

Bill Lloyd · Remembrance Sunday.

May I please add to this correspondence?

I have moved around the UK over the years as one had to do with one's job, and many a Remembrance Sunday has been spent in different places.

The one Remembrance service that always comes to mind however, is the parade of 12 Wireless at Durnbach War Cemetery, Gmund am Tegernsee, Miesbach on 11/11/ 1957...yes, 50 years ago this year.

A cold and snow covered cemetery that day, but proud that the Squadron had turned out to remember all those who were buried there.

Bill Lloyd.

Tom Neal

Last Sunday together with about 40 other members of the Y Branch of the Royal British Legion I attended a service of remembrance at the church of St Mary in the Elms at Woodhouse which many of you will remember is situated just outside the old camp gates.
Afterwards we laid wreathes at the memorial just outside the church.
Our members had come from the far north of Scotland and the very south of England.
A small honour guard was provided by Chicksands and included all three services and all of them had volunteered to attend.
Tom

paul croxson

I, too, had planned to be there Tom but 'family' matters came first. Following meeting Skip on the Forum I signed up with the Y branch recently. My membership of the Legion had lapsed years ago during one of my many moves.
In addition to the Service I had hoped to promote the 'History' project too at the AGM. I sent my apologies and hope that the history got a mention. I still have hopes of getting Dennis Weir to contribute. There is a sort of a promise to do so!

kerby · Remembrance Day

Hi Marlene, That was a very interesting piece you submitted. My wife and I enjoyed our visit to Hanover last year, so much so that we were going back last week but unfortunately I developed a chest infection so we had to call it off. However, we will be going again probably spring next year. I must say that I always enjoy my trips to Germany. I used to go quite regularly when I was in my main employment. We had a factory near Frankfurt and I had regular contact with the people there and made some good friends. Good luck to you both, Keith

David Thomas

Hi All, Yes Remembrance Day is a peculiar time, mostly I've not been one for ceremony or overt shows of patriotism, but remembrance Sunday has always been a bit different. I invariably have this sneaky feeling of being a bit lucky, having made it through another year. Most of us seldom had any choice about whether we attended a remembrance service or not, but while I was at Sandhurst, all the cadets went, but us mere mortals were not seen to be important enough to be considered. So being at home (probably for the first time) I decided to go to our local Methodist Church in uniform and medals as is the norm for such an occasion. This was in 1982, I had not long returned from Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and the lads had just got back from the Falklands so feeling were running pretty high. The minister was visiting from somewhere, and spent forty minutes telling us how useless and surplus to requirements the armed services were. It was one of the most uncomfortable forty minutes I can remember. I should have walked out, but didn’t, I still don’t know why.
Marlene raised the spectre of divided loyalties, but similar experiences. One difference that has always struck me quite forcefully, is the way Germans look after their cemeteries, while we neglect ours. I was reading quite recently that there is to be a government white paper on public open spaces, which will include green belts, cemeteries and parks, which it is purported will change the way we treat these areas. Why am I so suspicious that this will just end up being another way of selling of more open spaces now that they are running out of school playing fields?
All the best, Dave T.

Gordon

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"

shorep

Marlene you struck a cord,it is not a day about the wrongs but about a generation that will never pass by again,people who had no doubt about their duty and place in society.
As a legion member I meet them and hear what they did and it is never boastfull or said for 'bragging rights',they did their duty.
The programme about the Bismark survivors on the history channel was an emotional return to the spot in Germany where there is a memorial in a forest,and they sang the 'deutche cameraden'.
The rememberence service on telly is an emotional event but to see so many different groups attending is great.
Now the light relief,at our local rememberence parade,brownies and cubs stood outside the church in the rain,burly coppers and old sweats went to find out why,THE VICAR would not allow them in the church,so they all came in the legion clubhouse for drinks and choc bars from the machine.

marleneandgypo

I agree totally Pete.

One thing I always remember from my German grandad in the early 60's was going to the Möhnedam. We stood on it in the place where it had been rebuilt. I was 13. As we looked down we could just see little rooftops in the water and Opa toold me it was the remains of a village that had been flooded the night the dam had been bombed. People had gone to bed that night, just ordinary folk and suddenly all that happened that night took place. I know there were reasons why it had to happen, my point is that contrary to what I am sure SOME people thought post wartime and expressed to me angrily like i had caused the terrible events personally that happened in wartime that all Germans were Nazis. Just before I went to Langeleben I was working in London in a stockbrokers office and a man used to say to me "the only good German is a dead German." Wouldn't be allowed to say it today I know. But then maybe he had family or friends who died or worse in the war and I was his scapegoat.

I think that is why I felt it such an honour to be accepted by all of you at Langeleben and here. Just a few months after working with someone like that I meet and work with people like you and it took my breath away. And look - one of you even married me! (Nutter... Wink

)

marleneandgypo

Hi Dave

It's true that Germans do look after their cemeteries and the remembrance sections more than any other. However I really don't like that we can only have the plot for 25 years. My Oma died in 1956 at a very young age and our family got the plot and ensured there was room for her husband, my Opa. Opa died in 1971 and was buried alongside her. It was a beautiful spot, well looked after with pink shingles and a place where a glowing candle burned and a fine headstone. When I went there in 1992 following the death of my nephew age 8, I buried one of Andrew's favourite little red cars near the headstone and tooks some pine cones from Andrew's 'spot' here and had them incoorperated into a spray of red roses to leave there.

Four years later the area was dismantled, the headstone dug up and the area 'recycled.' There is now nowhere to go to lay flowers.

I know and truly believe that my grandparents aren't there, just their physical 'overcoat' and not even that anymore, but I found that terrible. The children (my mum and siblings) were all still around and I know it upset them a lot.

At least here things are different. We have more of a respect for our loved ones I think.

But then as the world gets bigger and land gets less who am I to say who is right and who is wrong? There is no answer really. Maybe my mum and dad have it right. Their church have a rose garden and dad planted over 100 roses in it. The ground was consecrated and we had special permission for dad's ashes to be put there with a lovely standard Prince William Rose in the place. When mum's time comes she will go there too.

This is the kind of thing I love about England in general. In the main, the deep respect given and received to each other living or dead. The way that rules can sometimes be broken or changed when enough people speak up and say what they want and why. I think the English are much more egalitarian.

Mind you, as a half and half, I have to say that growing up post war in Germany and England I never ever had a parent tell their child not to play with me because of my nationality. I was just Marlene from the Diekneite family. In England I was sneered at, bullied and mocked (and that was the parents) and I was only little. Which goes back to my earlier mail where I said, as an adult I can now kind of understand it as I didn't walk in their shoes, maybe they had family they lost as well. It's a bit sad to blame a little kid for it though.

Love
Marlene

paul croxson

It has always struck me as bizarre that it is 'Governments' that send people to war and they go, sometimes willingly but often unwillingly and then it is the 'People', in the form of charity, that have to pick up the pieces.
In an honourable country should there be a need of a Poppy Day? Do other countries throw their wounded and crippled veterans upon the mercy of charitable organisations, I wonder?
Remembrance Day? Now that's a different matter altogether. On this subject should it be only in the form of a Christian Church Service (I know about the Jewish Cenetaph Ceremony) but then they do have the best songs, (to paraphrase General Booth), don't they?. Mind you, Jerusalem was never intended to be a hymn I believe.
When writing about National Service in the History I touched briefly, at the end, on the Conscientious Objector.Of course, with a totally volunteer army the problem never arises. That is something to be thankful for!

ken vipond

Hi everybody,just been reading the messages on rememberance day,a pal of mine and his wife just this last weekend went over to Dunkirk for the rememberance day,they had a grand time with all of the services in various parts of the town,what he could,nt understand was that he seemed to be the only one wearing a poppy,has any one got a explanation for this,best regards from Ken.

paul croxson

Good morning Ken
As far as I know the poppy waspart of the Flanders Field idea generated by a poem by a Canadian doctor. Then an American took up the idea and sold poppies to raise money for war veterans. When the Legion took it over as a fund raising idea I have no idea but the WEb undoubtedly will tell us.
At one time the Peace movement started the idea of a white poppy for those who believed in the Pacifist concept. I don't know if it still goes on. Personally I buy a poppy ( I used to sell them assiduously when younger) but do not wear them - but then I never wear any charity flag. Any giving that I might do is strictly a private matter. I find the BBC obsession with wearing them a bit too much.

Gordon

Dear readers

The white poppy is alive and well, and a number of them were visible at the church service I attended on 11 November without, as far as I can tell, arousing any antagonism. Even those of us who wear the red kind wonder whether the focus of Remembrance Sunday is now far too narrow. No one wants to take anything away from the honour due to those fallen on the field of battle. But where now is the field of battle?
"We don't do body counts" said General Franks. He should start. According to the Iraq Body Count organization (www.iraqbodycount.org) some 83000 Iraqi civilians have died since 2003. The medical journal The Lancet puts the total at around 100,000.

On another small, but not unrelated matter, can any one name for me a single member of the cabinet with military experience?

Gordon

paul croxson

Good evening young Gordon. it pleases me that the white poppy still flowers. There is a strong pacifist streak in me but at 18 it was not strong enough nor had I total conviction so I took the coward's way out. I do recall in retrospect being carefully groomed/nourished by Peace News and the Peace Pledge Union from the age of 16. I was also involved with the United Nations Assocn through which I met my first live Germans other than prisoners of War. One of them Hildegard Stoffregen from 135 Dusseldorfer Str., Oberkassel was the object of my unreturned affections for several years
I would feel that the military trained mind would not bend to politics either easily or with pleasure hence, perhaps, the lack of politicians with a military background. Also, a Socialist upbringing is very alien to militarism except in times of war (such as the Spanish Civil War). I also think the Military mind leans/tend towards the non-political. I know that when Michael Mates MP had suggested to him that he stood for Parliament he did not know which party to choose.
On the subject of poppies, am I right to believe that farmers do not plough deeper than 12" since if they do they waken all the dormant poppy seed? This is why, I was told, roadworks are often found to be covered with poppies

Gordon

Just another quick thought. There is an out and out, uncompromising pacifism, and there is a pacifism which recognizes circumstances where force may be necessary. Both positions raise huge problems. An outstanding example of the latter position is the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his earlier life he was much influenced by the passive resistance policies of Gandhi. Later he came to see that removing Hitler by force was the lesser of two evils. He joined the bomb plot, was arrested, and hanged on 9 April 1945. He is honoured, along with other martyrs of the twentieth century, by a statue in Westminster Abbey.

Gordon

marleneandgypo

Hi Ken

I am our church magazine editor and this month my brother Mike wrote a piece on this very subject, it went thus:

"Throughout the world the poppy is associated with the remembrance of those who died in order that we may be free, but how many of us are aware of the reason of how and why the poppy became the symbol of remembrance and an integral part of the work of the Royal British Legion.

Flanders is the name of the whole western part of Belgium. It saw some of the most concentrated and bloodiest fighting of the First World War. There was complete devastation. Buildings, roads, trees and natural life simply disappeared. Where once there were homes and farms there was now a sea of mud - a grave for the dead where men still lived and fought. Only one other living thing survived. The poppy flowering each year with the coming of the warm weather; brought life, hope, colour and reassurance to those still fighting.

Poppies only flower in rooted up soil. Their seeds can lay in the ground for years without germinating, and only grow after the ground has been disturbed.

John McCrae, a doctor serving with the Canadian Armed Forces, was so deeply moved by what he saw in northern France that, in 1915 in his pocket book, he scribbled down the poem "In Flanders Fields."

McCrae's poem was eventually published in 'Punch' magazine under the title 'In Flanders Fields'. The poppy became a popular symbol for soldiers who died in battle.

In 1918, Moira Michael, an American, wrote a poem in reply, 'We shall keep the faith', in which she promised to wear a poppy ‘in honour of our dead’. This began the tradition of wearing a poppy in remembrance.

The first actual Poppy Day was held in Britain on November 11th, 1921 and was a national success raising £106,000. Since then, during every November, we keep the memory alive by wearing a poppy to commemorate those who sacrificed their lives during war".

If that information is wrong I will take our Mike to task.

Love
Marlene

Gordon

Andrew Marr. in his excellent "History of modern Britain" has an interesting comment on the capacity of the British public to remember. Writing of the Korean war he observes: "By the time of the armistice in July 1953 returning British troops, including prisoners who had endured appalling torture and malnutrition, found the public largely uninterested in them". He also notes that the NS conscripts who made up three quarters of some regiments in Korea earned just £1.62 a week. The only army that paid its men less was the Chinese!

Gordon

Remembrance Day

Remembrance Sunday.

Remembrance Day