If everyone can chill out, I recommend this thoughtful article on the hundreds of soldiers who died in WWI between the armistice being signed (at about 5am) and coming into force (at 11am). The poor, poor guys.

To be fair, this is what happened:

* You said something a bit insensitive
* Grim... reacted angrily
* You clarified your comments
* Grim... said, 'Phew, ok then'

And all that's missing is the apology for the overreactive insult. Stu never apologised for anything either.

Fuck off, Comical. Seriously.

I wonder how the statement 'to preserve our freedom' really applies. It rather suggests that we'd be living under a German totalitarianism right now, but would we?

This country is at risk of being so caught up in the tradition and protocol of the event that the whole point is almost missed.

Colour me intimidated.

Personnaly I think every one should wear a poppy, if only to remind people why it has be come a tradition.

Nonsensical FTL.

Do you even know what nonsensical means?

I find the subject of WWI baffling, probably because to understand how and why it started seems to require huge in-depth knowledge of about sixty years of European political history from the mid-1850s onwards, which itself can only be understood in the context of the three hundred years before that. MyFinger tried to explain it to me once but to no avail. Am I alone here?

Definitions of nonsensical on the Web:

* absurd: incongruous;inviting ridicule

Yes, I do.

I find the subject of WWI baffling, probably because to understand how and why it started seems to require huge in-depth knowledge of about sixty years of European political history from the mid-1850s onwards, which itself can only be understood in the context of the three hundred years before that. MyFinger tried to explain it to me once but to no avail. Am I alone here?

How about "sarcasm"?

Nonsensical FTL.



But then you get people wearing poppies because it's tradition to do so, rather than it evoking any kind of proper contemplatiion of what happened 90-odd years ago.

I find the subject of WWI baffling, probably because to understand how and why it started seems to require huge in-depth knowledge of about sixty years of European political history from the mid-1850s onwards, which itself can only be understood in the context of the three hundred years before that. MyFinger tried to explain it to me once but to no avail. Am I alone here?

Colour me hypocritical.

No your not alone there. What annoyed me in school was the fact that we studied Arab Israeli conflicts and suchlike in depth and not this-I mean...why not? Shouldn't it be taught in History as standard and go 'in depth' and do papers on it? Or was that just my school being shit?

FTFY, Captain Clarification.

Fuck me, you're such a petty child.

No, you're not. I studied it back in school, but it still seems to come down to "we really needn't be having this war, but these bits of paper say we must".

No your not alone there. What annoyed me in school was the fact that we studied Arab Israeli conflicts and suchlike in depth and not this-I mean...why not? Shouldn't it be taught in History as standard and go 'in depth' and do papers on it?

Says the guy that won't play unless everyone plays the way he wants them to.

Thing is, I was talking to Mr Chris, but you assumed I meant you. Zounds, non?

Does it matter whwy they wear them, as long as they do, and remeber the two 2 min silences

why is WWI comparatively overlooked?

No your not alone there. What annoyed me in school was the fact that we studied Arab Israeli conflicts and suchlike in depth and not this-I mean...why not? Shouldn't it be taught in History as standard and go 'in depth' and do papers on it? Or was that just my school being shit?

edit: Took me ages to get that in-someone done gawn and broke the thread

Serious question - which school did you go to? I also studied this and it's more than likely you and I studied the same stuff out of the same local textbooks. I went to secondary school in Llangollen.

Yes, it absolutely does matter why they wear them. If they don't care about the reasoning behind it then wearing a poppy is nothing more than a fashion accessory, and that's just wrong.

I've always liked Blackadder's explanation of how WW1 started. "The plan was to have two vast armies, with each acting as a massive deterrent to each other. There was only one tiny flaw in the plan. It was bollocks."

Or words to that effect.

I don't think it helps that, as far as I can tell, to bring it down to a real Hollywood story kind of thing, there were no particular bad guys. Certainly nothing like was the case in WWII.

Hmm, that provokes another thought, why are there no WWI films? Or are there some that I'm not aware of? Given how thouroughly WWII, Vietnam, Westerns, even the Boer War has been explored on celluloid, why is WWI comparatively overlooked?

They weren't evil monsters, like you could argue the footsoldiers of the Nazis were. Just regular guys, being told to go and sit in a trench and shoot at other regular guys for no fucking reason at all.

From a military history point of view, though, WWI is fascinating. Some of the people fighting in it were Boer War veterans who trained with cavalry, sabres and muskets; as I said earlier in the thread, it's barely more than twenty years after the Wild West period with repeating shotguns and six shooters. And yet by the end of WWI, the vast armies had tanks, aircraft, modern artillery, and telephones. What a collossal shift in how wars were prosecuted.

I studied at Church Stretton School for that-long live the hills!!!


Also:
Please stop the pissing contest guys, as we are now starting an arguement when we should be remembering the soldiers and speaking of the sacrafices made-sorry if that sounds pansy and 'gay' but I'm a bit fed up because it's reduced to name-calling and it's petty

Gaz-don't you start

Lave- I know but still I'd like it to be taught in schools more-it's overshone by the Arab Israeli conflict-why can't it be sort of 'shared' with it? I don't want my heritage looked over

This was true of a hell of a lot of German soldiers in WWII of course, mind you. Very few frontline soldiers were Nazi party members, for example.

Tell you what I thought was a fucking excellent idea, this:

http://www.artfund.org/queenandcountry/index.php

It should be in everyone's face, every day and not just a dewey-eyed set of news reports and silences once a year about something that happened far enough in the past that it feels safe, like history. The Royal Mail won't get involved though because they fear that it is somehow more subversive than a simple remembrance.