97 Years Ago Today The Battle Of The Somme Started...

[sandyRoe]

More than a million men from the UK, France, and Germany were killed or wounded. Did that butchery make the world a better or safer place?

[tonyav]

My Great uncle Ernest was killed in this battle, on the first day, 1st battalion South Staffs regiment fighting to take Mametz.

[maggiebee]

This song by the Corries is a bit long, but think it sums it all up perfectly.

Well how do you do, young Willie McBride,
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while 'neath the warm summer sun
I've been working all day and I'm nearly done.
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the dead heroes of nineteen-sixteen.
I hope you died well and I hope you died clean
Or Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene.

Chorus :
Did they beat the drum slowly, did they play the fife lowly,
Did they sound the dead-march as they lowered you down.
Did the bugles play the Last Post and chorus,
Did the pipes play the 'Flooers o' the Forest'.

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
Although you died back there in nineteen-sixteen
In that faithful heart are you ever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Enclosed and forgotten behind the glass frame
In a old photograph, torn and battered and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame.

The sun now it shines on the green fields of France
The warm summer breeze makes the red poppies dance
And look how the sun shines from under the clouds
There's no gas, no barbed wire, there's no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard it's still no-man's-land
The countless white crosses stand mute in the sand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
To a whole generation that were butchered and damned.

Now young Willie McBride I can't help but wonder why
Do all those who lie here know why they died
And did they believe when they answered the cause
Did they really believe that this war would end wars
Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain
The killing and dying was all done in vain
For young Willie McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

[tonyav]

Excellent, maggie.

My Great uncle was 21 years old.

[sandyRoe]

I once saw a facsimile of the Belfast Telegraph which carried first reports of casualties. There was a cluster of streets near where I used to live, Genoa St, Venice St, Naples St, and Turin St. And in each of them there were addresses of men who were killed.

[Captain2]

Lovely lovely song that maggiebee - very moving.
Called 'No Man's Land' by Eric Bogle. My favourite version is by The Fureys

[maggiebee]

Like the Fureys version too Captain2, but the Corries version is the one that makes me weep.

[tonyav]

Very sad isn't sandy.
I should add that my Great uncle won the Military Medal in that action, isn't much of a swop though is it, life for a posthumously awarded medal !

[tonyav]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUsUigWw19A

[chrissa1]

It just makes me so angry that the "donkeys" thought that was the way wars should be fought.

[tonyav]

Ah yes, 'The Donkeys' billeted many many miles behind the front lines usually in a very nice Chateau.

[Barmaid]

My great grandmother's fiance was killed - til the day she died she kept the little figurines that were meant to go on their cake. A few days later she received the news that her brother too had been killed.

On the other side, my great grandfather joined up a bit too young and was torpedoed. His brother was shot 3 times. They kept patching him up and sending him back.

Did it make the world a better and safer place? No, I don't think it did.

[murraymints]

Dulce et decorum est.....May God bless the lost souls of war....

[stewey]

For those of you interested in this battle I highly recommend "First Day On The Somme" written by Martin Middlebrook. Portions of it almost make you want to cry. He, and his book, are mentioned here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Middlebrook