You came here, all those years ago, when the old country was in turmoil,
You made such a sacrifice, leaving your wife, to land on our soil.
It must have been hard, but you stood fast in the face of the enemy,
You arrived in a strange country, to give what you could without ceremony.
In those dark days, you lost some of your pals as they paid with their lives,
So that we could be free, you flew missions again and again.
I wish I had known you for longer and I could have listened to your story,
I have my Nana - your daughter to tell me about the triumph and glory.
I will hold your distant memory in my heart, always close inside,
I will never forget what you did for us and I'm wearing my poppy with pride.
My father was Polish and came to the U.K. to continue the fight. First he retreated to Bulgaria when the Germans invaded, was imprisoned as an alien escaped and went to Greece, then to France joined their air force and again had to retreat to the U.K. where he joined the R.A.F. and spent the war servicing Mosquito fighter bombers. At the end of the war it would have been dangerous to return to his own country because despite its invasion being the initial reason for the U.K. declaring war on Germany after the war it was no longer free as the allies had lost the war in Europe. Now I am trying to prove his nationality during that time but despite his name and rank being on Polish web sites as a member of the Polish forces fighting in the U.K. the Polish authorities can find no record of him. So much for being willing to die for one's country. The joke gets deeper - that part of Poland he was from is now part of the Ukraine. It is not impossible to say that Poland could in some scenario declare war on Ukraine so which country would he be willing to die for in that instance? The whole thing is obscene.
That must be very frustrating for you. At least you know what he did.
I know there were some boundary changes. It happened with Czechoslovakia, too.
D x
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Written by John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and doctor in the wake of WW I. I believe that this is the origin of the poppy we wear in the weeks preceding November 11. The poppies are then placed on local war memorials, blanketing them in red.
My father was one of the first U.S. Army military police officers on the beach on D Day at Omaha Beach. Just as the door dropped down on their landing craft, there was a direct German artillery hit on the craft next to them that decimated a platoon of their fellow MPs, so body parts rained down on them as they waded ashore. Dad was shot as soon as he took his first steps on Omaha Beach. He was sent to a field hospital in France, where he was recovering. He and some other wounded troops were swimming in a pond when an artillery shell hit the pond. Dad had just stepped out of the water, so he was wounded again, while the others were all killed. Soon after he recovered from that, he was in liberated Paris in December, when he was sent to Belgium to help secure convoy routes at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. He and two other MPs were investigating a roadblock outside Bastogne which was not on their list. It turned out that it was part of a German effort to interrupt resupply for the Americans. The three MPs all got machine gunned, but managed to report back to HQ. That was dad's third Purple Heart. He recovered, and in the Spring, got his final WWII assignment. Nothing that had happened before prepared him for the horrors of Buchenwald. He was supposed to help survivors recover and try to get repatriated. His father had died when he was 12 and said that was the last time he had cried before Buchenwald. While he was at Buchenwald, he cried every single night. The stories he told me about Buchenwald will always be with me. Forgetting will never be an option for me.
Reading these stories made me sad, it made me think of my father who just passed away at the age of 98. He served in the Navy, as a Gunners mate on the USS Iowa during the wwII .he only got hurt by the ejected shell
He made rank to chief pety officer. He always said they loved giving a ride to the other military units.... like the Marines. It made me laugh to hear him talk about some of the things that he used to do on the ship.
I thank God he could come home in one piece. Every three years members of the Iowa would get together . At his last reunion there was only,15, left living out of 75
I miss him every day. But I am proud to be his daughter.
The only national war museum in the US not in Washington is the World War I Museum in Kansas City, MO. When you enter and pay the admission price, you enter the exhibition space over a large Plexiglas bridge. Below you is a field of poppies - one poppy for each US war dead. On the wall is that poem. It is very moving.
Wilfred Owen is the poet who best captured the futility of war. He was killed on the Somme on 4 November 1918 just one week before the end of the war. This is his last poem.
STRANGE MEETING
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”
So all this adds up to the fact that war is a bad idea. So don't do it rather than eulogize the poor bastards who you conscripted to carry out the insanity.
I thought maybe people would like to learn a little history about the poem, ‘Flanders Fields’, and would like to know how the poppy became associated with November 11, Remembrance Day. Why has that distinctive red flower become such a potent symbol of our memories of the sacrifices made by our fallen heroes in past wars?
Scarlet corn poppies (popaver rhoeas) grow naturally in conditions of disturbed earth throughout Western Europe. The destruction brought by the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th Century transformed bare land into fields of blood red poppies, growing around the bodies of fallen soldiers. Once the conflict was over the poppy was one of the few plants to grow on the otherwise barren battlefields.
World War 1 ripped those same fields open once again as it raged through Europe’s heart in late 1914. Flanders Fields is a common English name of the World War I battlefields in an area straddling the Belgian provinces of West Flanders and East Flanders as well as the French department of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, part of which makes up the area known as French Flanders.
Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial is a World War I cemetery on the southeast edge of the town of Waregem, Belgium. The architect Paul Cret designed the memorial. This is the only American World War I cemetery in Belgium and 411 American servicemen are buried or commemorated there.
The Battle of Flanders (French: Bataille des Flandres) is the name of several battles fought in Flanders (a region in northern France and Belgium) during the First World War. First Battle of Flanders (19 October – 22 November 1914) - The First Battle of Ypres - a battle fought during the Race to the Sea.
The significance of the poppy as a lasting memorial symbol to the fallen was realised by the Canadian surgeon John McCrae in his poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy came to represent the immeasurable sacrifice made by his comrades and quickly became a lasting memorial to those who died in World War 1 and later conflicts. The Royal British Legion, which formed in 1921, adopted the poppy as the symbol for their Poppy Appeal, to aid those serving in the British Armed Forces. That simple flower has been the symbol of Remembrance ever since.
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (November 30, 1872 – January 28, 1918) was a Canadian poet, physician, author, artist and soldier during World War I, and a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He is best known for writing the war memorial poem ‘In Flanders Fields’.
The sight of poppies growing in battle-scarred fields inspired him, so on May 3, 1915, shortly after he presided over the funeral of a friend and fellow soldier, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, who died in the Second Battle of Ypres, wrote the now famous poem. We may never know the exact details of how he wrote the first draft, because there are various accounts by those who were with McCrae at that time.
‘In Flanders Fields’ is a war poem written in the form of a rondeau. The poem describes poppies blooming between gravestones. The major theme of the poem is the juxtaposition between life and death and talks about how quickly the world spins between the two. It is a poem about soldiers dying in combat, and Flanders Fields is a graveyard. The poem is from the view of the dead soldiers. The rhyming scheme and choice of words, give it a very emotional and dramatic tone.
If you're feeling bored during this Covid-19 epidemic I’d like to suggest
you take a peek at a story I collaborated with SueBrasil, a brilliant author.
It's about a mistake in judgment a lady makes concerning a friend, based
on the hurtful words of someone that only thinks of himself. Will that
conniving person succeed in ruining a beautiful friendship, or will she see
through his lies? It's gradually creeping up towards the 30,000 mark
and we’d love any votes or hearing whatever comments you may wish
to make. It is listed in my profile under ‘FAVOURITES’ as Apologize.
www.lushstories.com/stories/first-time/apologize.aspx Just adding to your thread Danny, with one of my favourite poems by Edward Thomas. He was a professional prose writer, mainly about countryside matters, before the outbreak of war in 1914. Despite being in his 40's and married with a family, he joined up in the latter part of WW1, and died at the Battle of Arras in 1917. This poem is so beautifully understated, and not what we might perceive as a war poem, but for me anyway, its sense of humanity speaks volumes.
The Owl
Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.
Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl’s cry, a most melancholy cry
Shaken out long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cause of merriment,
But one telling me plain what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.
And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird’s voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.