[Closed] And the whistles blew

🙁

unimaginable

#lestweforget

When I was little my gran told me that they could hear the guns from Surrey.
Hell on earth.

We will remember them

Of all the stories and pictures and occasional video from WW1 none of it has as much effect on me as that clip from Blackadder ^

Brought home the horror for me in a way the other 'stuff' never did.

My gran had a bookcase at the bottom of her dark hallway and one day i found a book of poems by Siegfried Sassoon, i vividly remember wedging myself in the corner and reading through the poems, one one of them : Suicide in the Trenches in particular struck home with a power that still affects me to this day

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Not hijacking the purpose of this thread, but the story behind how that iconic Blackadder scene came to be is very interesting. They nearly screwed it up, and then got it spot on almost by chance.

My grandfather was a Tommy at The Somme. According to family legend and records, there's a very good chance that he had cousins on the other side.

Never again.

We all say we will 'remember them' and 'never again'

But sadly we have been involved in wars, or started wars, since the beginning of time.

We have also probably forgotten most of them.

These have been happening in a lot of cities this morning
[url= https://twitter.com/weegiejoe/status/748780600903905280 ]#wearehere[/url]

The whistle blow in the Blackadder scene (I agree, one of the most powerful peices of TV ever) always sends shivers up my spine.

Such a senseless sacrifice paid by so many