Remembrance Day

[zekes]

As you may know, November 11th is a day to remember the lives lost during World War I.

I made this thread so you can share your thoughts, or mabye even stories of relatives in this war.

The Soldier

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[TD]IF I should die, think only this of me;[/TD]

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[TD] That there's some corner of a foreign field[/TD]

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[TD]That is for ever England. There shall be[/TD]

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[TD] In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;[/TD]

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[TD]A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,[/TD]

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[TD] Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,[/TD]

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[TD]A body of England's breathing English air,[/TD]

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[TD] Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.[/TD]

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[TD]And think, this heart, all evil shed away,[/TD]

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[TD] A pulse in the eternal mind, no less[/TD]

[TD] 10[/TD]

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[TD] Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;[/TD]

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[TD]Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;[/TD]

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[TD] And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,[/TD]

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[TD] In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.[/TD]

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Edited November 8, 2013 by zekes

[Camacha]

I hope people will finally start to remember the complete horrors of the war on both sides, and not just those of the other side. I think enough time has passed to be adult and civil about it. War is not about right and wrong. You just try to survive. After the war the victor will largely decide what was what, but that does not make it a universal truth.

The reason war is so horrible is not that it is us versus them, like some soccer match. War is so horrible because otherwise normal, sensible people do the most evil things to other normal, otherwise sensible people and vice versa. The Germans in the second world war were not that different from the Germans now, just like the Russians then are a lot like the Russians now and the same goes for pretty much every other nation. Technologies changes, believes came or went, but in essence they were the same people you and I are. Except that they killed each other in every conceivable way on an unimaginable scale.

I come from a country that was invaded in the war and I have heard terrible stories from my grandparents, but I get sick when I hear that a mayor is not allowed to also remember the fallen Germans in public. As if those people weren't people, with hopes, fears, dreams and loved ones. Doing that is the most horrible thing you can do, because it means you have learned nothing from the war. Which in turn means it could happen again, just like that.