WWI centenary

[TheMightyTen]

I just saw this article on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19904844

and I applaud and think it is only right that we mark 2014 as the centenary of the start of The Great War in a special way. I'm just not sure that it should be on Rememberance day 2014. Rememberace Day as we all know falls on the 11th November to coincide with the official cessation of hostilities in 1918 and it just seems innapropriate to use the same day to mark the start of what would become one of the biggest social, political and financial change events of the modern era, surely it is only right that 28th July or even more accurately 4th August are set aside as the memorial to this momentus event.

I know 11th November is the dedicated day for rememberance and adding anymore onto the calender can cause disruption but 11th November is the day for remembering all our lost not just those of 1914-18 War, also I think the 2018 Remeberance day should be the one where mark a centenary as that is exactly what it would be.

On top of all this I think important days over the years 2014-2018 should be given over to educate and mark important centenary events, just for example:

19th January 1915 -Zeppelin Bombing of Great Yarmouth by Zeppelin L.3 the first Air Raid on Britain
1st July 1916 -Start of the Battle of the Somme where on day one Britain suffered approximately 58,000 casualties (approx. 20,000 Dead)
15 September 1916 -Battle of Flers-Courcelette, the first time Tanks were used in Battle
7th June 1917 -Start of the Battle of Messines Ridge where 19 British mines detonated in tunnels under the German front line were so large the explosions, it is claimed, were heard in London and as far away as Dublin.

As I said those are just examples but now we no longer have a living connection to combatants of the war it is so important that we spend the 4 years setting aside time to remember the sacrifice of the people who fought in horrendous conditions (that includes sailors and airmen) and educate our young who will not have the chance to grow up with people who remember the era and hear their accounts.

If it is decided that the centenary event will only be marked on Remeberance Day 2014 I shan't complain because at least it will be marked but I will think it is an awful opportunity missed.


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

 

[TheMightyTen]

good post, and I agree.

p.s. typo in 'condemn'

Cheers, not enough sleep and sausage fingers make me a dull boy

 

[TheMightyTen]

I'm certain it will be as well and as I say in my opening post it would be more appropriate to mark that on the 11th November than the centenary commemoration for the start of the war.

 

[TheMightyTen]

A commemoration is not a celebration it might do you well to learn the difference.

 

[TheMightyTen]

That is a lame excuse, one does not necessarily deny the other from existing.

No, but I don't see a lot of celebrating amongst the rows of gravestones in Belgium and France. I don't see a lot of celebrating at the Cenotaph or countless (and now sadly, often vandalised) village and town war memorials. If you think a commemoration of the beginning of one of, if not the most momentus events in the 20th Century is nothing but a political celebration then that is your own skewed political agenda creating a paradox of your own accusations.

 

[TheMightyTen]

Personally I don't think commemorating the start of a War that killed millions as a good thing. I would far rather commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the end of the First World War in 2018. A rather more fitting tribute to the sacrifice of countless men and women on all sides.

Although I do understand your sentiment, wouldn't it be better to spend the 100th anniversary of the war years educating and informing? In the media saturated world of today highlighted commemoration is a very good way to place things at the forefront of peoples thoughts and actions.

 

[TheMightyTen]

£50m??? Seriously , in any case you commemorate the end of a war not the beginning, and as there is no one left alive from WW1 we should commit it to the history books, frankly the whole idea is retarded.

So it is wrong to mark the event that began a European war that did not end until 9th November 1989??? Every day farmers across Belgium and France find unexploded ordnance, the bodies of the lost of both sides are still being recovered and attempts made to identify and repatriate them.

The part of your quote I have bolded I find quite odd and to be honest flippant bordering on offensive, what does it matter whether anyone is alive or not, visit the battlefields, visit the row upon row of grave stones, read the horrors perpetrated and suffered in the first great industrial war or the modern world and their alone is a reason to not consign it to the history books. The war wasn't just a war on the battlefields it was a war at every level of the social strata that irrevocably changed the fabric and make up of modern Britain, a war where the current events in the Middle East can be traced directly back to. In short the events that began in 1914 are very much part of who I am and what I am, the same for all of us, it was such a monumental event it will forever leave a mark on the national psyche.

In the words of R. G. Collingwood

"History is for human self-knowledge ... the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is."

 

[TheMightyTen]

I too would much rather see this celebration in 2018, to celebrate the start seems rather odd and it will be even more odd if they then 4 years later spend even more money trying to out do the previous 'celebration'

It's not a celebration, it's a commemoration, as I stated above it really would do people well to learn the difference.

 

[TheMightyTen]

..........Just slightly off topic. I have a lady where I live who dedicates her spare time to commemorate the fallen victims of conflict. I built her a website to help ( www.galleywoodfolk.co.uk ). She has written a book too which is very copmprehensive and goes into much more detail. On speaking to her, I'm always overwhelmed by the stories I hear......

Sorry Admiral, I can't view the site at the moment as it's blocked by my work filter as Adult/Sexually Explict I will have a good look when I get home, thanks for posting

That or 28th July (the date WW1 began).

Or it could be 4th August which is the day Britain declared war on Germany. The state of war existed form 11pm Tuesday 4th August to be more precise it was the day after a bank holiday so it took quite a few people by surprise as they had been away.

One of my favourite accounts of the start of the war and a grand example of the society and world the outbreak of war would ring the death knell of is that of Charles Chabot who was living in Bankok at the time:

We’d been playing a series of rugby football games and as a final game of the session the Germans had challenged the rest, and this was to be followed by dinner at the German Club. We were all seated around the table, mixed up obviously, there was a German here and next to him there was an Englishman and next to him there was a German and next to him there was a Frenchman and so on, and so on, and we were starting the rugby football dinner, and it was very like other rugby football dinners have been from time immemorial. A bang at the door, and a runner from the French Embassy with the extraordinary news of outbreak of war… None of the chaps here had ever seen a declaration of war before, we didn’t know what we ought to do, whether we ought to seize a knife off the table and plunge it into the next chap or what! But after a little bit of discussion we decided that as far as we were concerned the war was going to start tomorrow and it wasn’t going to start tonight, and the party proceeded and that was that.