Britain's Great War - WWI

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The Esk

The Esk

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Given this year is the 100th "anniversary" of the "Great War" I thought it would be interesting to start a thread.
I found Paxman's "Britain's Great War" fascinating, both in terms of content but also in terms of perspective.

Thought a thread would be interesting, especially if we can keep politics to one side.....
 

Did the family tree last year and found out three of grandads elder brothers served.

Amazingly although only in their early twenties one found himself in New Zealand and joined up in Otago and another had got to Canada and enlisted in Montreal the 3rd joined the Liverpool pals the family home was Stanley Rd Kirkdale.

Only the lad from Canada made it the other two were killed in action, very proud of them all but no idea how the 2 lads ended up enlisting so far away from home.
 

My descendents came over to America shortly after WW1, but since my three largest heritages are Italian, Swiss, and German, it's possible I had family on both sides of the conflict.

Never traced it down, though. Name and spelling changes make it really hard to track my pre-American lineage.
 
My Mother's step father served in the infantry, was deaf in his left ear after his best mate was killed right beside him. My Father's father was in the Artillery and served at the Somme, I had a great conversation with him as a teenager when preparing for an English assignment, the lids that were there actually lived through hell.

Any man or woman who volunteers to serve their country in time of conflict has my utmost respect and admiration, I am luckily of a generation where major global conflict has not required such sacrifice.

Lest we Forget.
 

Degs62 said:
My Mother's step father served in the infantry, was deaf in his left ear after his best mate was killed right beside him. My Father's father was in the Artillery and served at the Somme, I had a great conversation with him as a teenager when preparing for an English assignment, the lids that were there actually lived through hell.

Any man or woman who volunteers to serve their country in time of conflict has my utmost respect and admiration, I am luckily of a generation where major global conflict has not required such sacrifice.

Lest we Forget.
Click to expand...

In WWI and WWII they were mostly conscripted, and those who did volunteer went because they had nothing else but a life of grinding poverty. When they came back home they were sent back into their inner city slums/satanic mill towns and left to get on with it as their reward.

I do hope the BBC in all it's latter-day jingoism makes a documentary showing that experience, I wouldn't bet on it though. This year's gore-fest is, of course, a celebration of war, as the rewriting of that earlier conflict cracks on apace. No room for tales of returning soldiers with their minds and bodies transformed and battered into submission living brutalised lives having seen and failed to cope with the butchery (although the 'officer class' will no doubt get their massive amount of exposure and sympathetic hearing for facing up to the Bosch with great courage etc etc).
 
I actually have a bullet from the first world war in the house somewhere. It has been cleaned out for gunpowder but it is amazing to have something so old and symbolic. I got it from the Somme when we went on a trip, well worth the trip in my opinion. You can walk around in the trenches where the soldiers were and at one point you can look accross to a tree, where General Haigue ordered his troops to walk across in single file, only to have them all killed whilst doing so. The tree is only how far they got to the other side, it is extremely harrowing to stand there.
 

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