Remembrance Day...lest we forget

[CRAZY-HORSE]

RED GUM "I WAS ONLY 19"

[video=youtube;Urtiyp-G6jY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urtiyp-G6jY[/video]

[Music Head]

thanks for that

[gryphon]

In The UK ,the radio stations that do a rememberance have tended to use this track at 11.11am

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szjv8TF8TGM


Looking at the other side of the fence , here in central Europe and around us 11/11 is just another day. Little is done as it has other significances here......................With this part of the world there is a full celebration on liberation day...........................However, there is a remembrance tribute just outside Maastricht in the American war cemetery in Margraten.........It is only when you visit places like that that you get a feel for the massive loss of life as the cemetery is a huge one: as fighting to liberate the south of the Netherlands was some of the heaviest in the second world war..............and went wrong several times
Down here they were the last to be liberated .....it only happened in May 1945!

[CRAZY-HORSE]

ok, thanks for that Gryphon...maybe 11/11 is a 'commonwealth' thing...with the poppys and minutes silence at 11am.
....didnt know Holland was the last to be liberated,guess we learn something new everyday.

i dont know about the rest of the world and their 'remembering' of the fallen in war,but do you guys find there is a new interest in these things from the younger generation now...ever since 9/11? its quite noticeable here at the public ceremonies.

[gryphon]

I think the central European approach is different , I live right next door to Germany and of course they don't wish to remember what happened. It is very strange to most people but the German people have a blank space in that department. It is not that they don't acknowledge what happened they do and with considerable regret .............more so than you might think But they had to move on and against very difficult circumstances , so their view is different and they have the approach that they look to the future.

Here in Holland especially in the South liberation came very late most people in Europe saw a lifting of the problems in late 1944..........The Southern Dutch were not so lucky they were liberated very late and there were several failed attempts and they were largely forgotten.............as a result many people in Southern Holland starved to death whilst the Germans over the boarder received help........................It is a rather forgotten story but it is called The Tulip Winter and is only now coming to light to the rest of the world...............The Dutch down here were so desperate that they even tried to eat the bulbs in the fields, rats and anything else they could whilst they waited and waited.......................

Also here I am near Vlanderen which translates of Flanders ...........It was on these grounds that the fighting of WW1 and WW2 happened .................The Belgians next door are still digging up bodies whenever they build something new..........They are sick of War and feel that the celebrations of 11/11 mean little to then as they had to bear the consequences of the battles twice in the last century

So here the big celebration is liberation day in May !

[CRAZY-HORSE]

yeh, i guess it is a lot different when war was on your doorstep, australia was very lucky in that respect with its relative isolation from the rest of the world. in WW2, the Japs bombed Darwin in the far north of the country, a german raider 'the cormorant' made it down to perth area but was sunk, think a few Jap subs made it to syney harbour, but thats as far as it goes...thankfully.