Less We Forget

[Figure Mad]

I have just been shown this little piece of text, it means a lot to us all I think


11th November 1919
The First Two Minute Silence in London:

The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect.

The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition.

Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all.

~~From the Manchester Guardian, 12th November 1919.~~

 

[megroot]

Thanks Dave,
Yes, there are less who don't remember this war.

Nice "Klaproos" (that's what we called it here)

Marc

 

[Dan Morton]

Dave & Marc and everybody else - God bless the boys of all countries who going forth to "do their duty", lost their futures. May they always be remembered. Pray God that someday we may be able to find a better way to settle our differences than to send our sons and daughters to suffer.

Dan

 

[tonydawe]

November 11 commemorates the 89th anniversary of the end of the "War to end all Wars".

In some small way, my figures are one of the ways I choose to remember those who gave their lives in the service of their country.

Cheers

 

[vergilius]

Well, I live in Belgium so I don't think I will forget.
May they all rest in peace

 

[megroot]

Hello Guys,
If you will allowed me to made my contribution for this day.
I translate with my bad English a poetry off a troubadour from the West Flandres. He was born in Lauwe a part of the community Meenen. He made some very very nice songs and poet.
His name is Willem Vermandere



If you will pass here in the west corner
trough rain and northern winds
Our time come's back when you pass here
You gonna find the war here again

It's the war that you find again
and the grave's of thousend soldiers
Always someones dad, always someones child
At the moment mouse-still and banded by God

Let the threes be quied, and that the grass tell's nothing
The wind musn't sing either
That the dead of all off you helped nothing
That where abhorrence things

It goes very well with our country
Peace is made into the law
We make guns, but with our intellect
Only to prevent the war

Great missiles with atomic in the head
It is allowed to experiment
We point at eachothers head
It is just to amuse our self

If you will pass here in the west corner
trough rain and northern winds
The time comes again when you pass
You gonna find the war here again

It's the war that you find again
and the grave's of thousend soldiers
Always someones dad, always someones child
Thousand's and Thousand's and Thousand's soldiers.

Marc

 

[Mark S]

Thanks Dave for that dramatic and evocative piece.
It does mean a lot to us all.