General Chat

I attended the service at a town war memorial.There were many young people and children there.
As the wreaths were being laid, local school children read out the names of each person named on the memorial and then an adult read a list of names of all those killed in conflict since this day last year, which included many from the locally based Gurkha regiments..... So many names in the last year.

Locally I think children are taught about the loss and many support their friends when a family member is serving overseas. Perhaps because they see this link between the present and previous wars, they better understand how devastating it must have been.

Gwyn

there were lots of children at our service, apart from army and airforce cadets, there were cubs and brownies and scouts

all wars are dreadful but that first world war was horrific - run by higher ups who made monumentally stupid decisions - another of my Dad's brothers survived WW1 but he kept a diary for the first year and although he never got to the front he and his colleagues suffered appalling deprivation in France - many died of diphtheria and starvation

I sent the diary to the Imperial War Museum as they expressed an interest in it but I did take a copy of it first

My gran´s brother, aged 21 went to France on August 21st 1914 & was killed less than a week later. He was one of 7 orphaned siblings, their parents having died in 1901 & 1907 respectively.
I obviously never knew him, but he was never forgotten by his siblings & they talked about him constantly.
He went to war with his best friend who was my grandmother´s fiance. He too was killed, a few weeks before the war ended.

Ditto to what Sharron said, I also think that school children should read books and watch documentary films instead of just being given dates of the events.

I'm just back from our village remembrance service held around the war memorial in front of the library - lovely service, local silver band, wreath laying by all local organisations. I plant a cross for my Dad's brother - a brother he never knew as Dad was only about a year old when Jack went to France and was killed in 1916. He was only 19 years old and the spitting image of my Dad. I think of him coming from a loving family in a small village and then dying in a foreign field for something that he probably had little knowledge about. Just a great adventure for him and his pals

Why should that be contentious Sharron? It is very true

I don't think your post is contentious Sharron just true.

Which is why we must always remember what all who fought in those wars did for us.

Sadly wars are still going on and men and women are still being injured and dying in them.

Remembrance Day must continue and our children should be taught what it is about.

I am sure this will be contentious but can you imagine the world had we not had the two world wars.

Those wars were hell but the hell would have been greater had they not occurred.

Ann Just thinking of that as time approaches 11am. Apart from brother of my grandfather who died in 1917 in France, will be thinking of two young men who died this year - both from a small village near here called Llanharan.

When we realise just how many young families are without a husband/wife/ Father/Mother, and other families are without a son/daughter, brother/sister. And that is just those who died. The cost of this awful war and previous wars in human life is so great it is almost unbelievable.