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Post by bargemast on Dec 31, 2017 11:52:01 GMT
Never heard of this story before, what a strange- and unbelievable happening. Peter.
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Post by kris on Dec 31, 2017 12:08:31 GMT
I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before.
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Post by thebfg on Dec 31, 2017 12:13:15 GMT
Whilst I all ways try to learn stuff about the two great wars. We're lucky here that we have quite a strong link.
We regularly walk in the new forest and explore what's left of the airfields and such.
But what I can never learn or begin to understand is what life was like for the soldiers in ww1 also life at home during the second war.
That was a nice video. I knew of the football game. And the meet up on no man's land that Xmas but not the other stuff.
I never realised we had trenches so close they could talk to each other.
Thank you
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Post by bargemast on Dec 31, 2017 12:22:57 GMT
I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before. I was surprised too when I saw this and that's why I posted it, as I thought that maybe more people than only me didn't know about it. There are surely many other things I've never heard about too. Peter.
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Post by JohnV on Dec 31, 2017 12:29:06 GMT
I think in our generation here in Britain it was almost the status of a folk memory ...... I'm blowed if I can remember where/when I first learned of it.
(My parents were too young to fight in the Great War but were old enough to remember it clearly)
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Post by kris on Dec 31, 2017 13:16:33 GMT
I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before. I was surprised too when I saw this and that's why I posted it, as I thought that maybe more people than only me didn't know about it. There are surely many other things I've never heard about too. Peter. im sure there are lots of things I don't know Peter but this is one of those things that just seems ingrained. Same as John im not sure where I learnt it, I don't think it was school.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2017 13:50:52 GMT
I think my earliest knowledge of it came from this crap music video,from 1983.
Lead me to do a bit more research.
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Post by phil70 on Dec 31, 2017 14:28:59 GMT
I learnt of this from my grandad who was in the horse artillery. He passed on much knowledge to me and I am sure that I have passed it on myself. Prior to WW1 he was a keeper at London Zoo , and as far as the army was concerned this made him eminently suited to working with horses. My other grandfather was a sapper and he had been a miner so that was what he was set to work at, tunnelling under hills that the enemy occupied and blowing them to kingdom come Phil
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Post by bargemast on Dec 31, 2017 14:45:22 GMT
I learnt of this from my grandad who was in the horse artillery. He passed on much knowledge to me and I am sure that I have passed it on myself. Prior to WW1 he was a keeper at London Zoo , and as far as the army was concerned this made him eminently suited to working with horses. My other grandfather was a sapper and he had been a miner so that was what he was set to work at, tunnelling under hills that the enemy occupied and blowing them to kingdom come Phil My parents were born in 1907 and 1909, my dad lost his dad when he was 5 and his mum (I think) when he was 14, he was the youngest of their family and they suffered badly during that war, he lost several members of his family, a period that he didn't want to talk about. My mums dad died when I was 2, and her mum when I was 5, so I never really had any grand-parents that could have told me anything about this war. Apart from the dates, they didn't tell us much about WW 1 at school either. I do know more about the 2nd WW as my family had a very hard time during the war, and my dad told me plenty about that. Peter.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2017 14:46:47 GMT
Never heard of this story before, what a strange- and unbelievable happening. Peter. Whilst I admit that I don't know the full story, the shortened version as told to me many years ago was (and still is) a defining moment in my life. I'm very surprised that not everyone knows the basics of the story and the importance of it.
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Post by phil70 on Dec 31, 2017 17:30:57 GMT
Just to add to my previous post, I owe my existence to one of my grandad's horse's. It was normal practice for the lead horse to be ridden and one day my grandad noticed his lead horse was off it's food so he opened the horses mouth to find an enormous shell splinter in the roof of it's mouth. The old boy told me that if the shell splinter had not lodged in the horses mouth then in would most likely have brought about his demise and so my father would not have been nor would I Phil
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Post by patty on Jan 1, 2018 7:42:35 GMT
I think i heard the story as part of my history A level...my parents/grand parents would never talk of the war...I know both grand fathers went away to fight...one received quite a few medals but i never knew what for
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Post by lollygagger on Jan 1, 2018 9:47:38 GMT
It was certainly part of my kid's schooling. Not a good idea imo. Stories like this may have a grain of truth but the reality they try to obscure is of jumped up "betters" sending millions of plebs to their deaths, their military planning based on having more expendable millions of oiks to send to their deaths than the other side and slogging it out with little regard for the expendable lower classes that suffered the brunt of the slaughter. Footy on Christmas day? Pah!
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Post by Gone on Jan 1, 2018 9:55:11 GMT
It was certainly part of my kid's schooling. Not a good idea imo. Stories like this may have a grain of truth but the reality they try to obscure is of jumped up "betters" sending millions of plebs to their deaths, their military planning based on having more expendable millions of oiks to send to their deaths than the other side and slogging it out with little regard for the expendable lower classes that suffered the brunt of the slaughter. Footy on Christmas day? Pah! True, but I’m sure I read somewhere that the life expectancies of posh boys both in the air and on the ground was shortest as they were the ‘on the ground’ officers leading the charge against a machine gun. It was the older posh boys that sat in control that saw the soldiers simply as faceless numbers, ready to ‘do their duty’ or be shot as a coward.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2018 9:56:46 GMT
It was certainly part of my kid's schooling. Not a good idea imo. Stories like this may have a grain of truth but the reality they try to obscure is of jumped up "betters" sending millions of plebs to their deaths, their military planning based on having more expendable millions of oiks to send to their deaths than the other side and slogging it out with little regard for the expendable lower classes that suffered the brunt of the slaughter. To me the story didn't obscure anything. It highlighted the reality of war/politics/nationhood. Much better than all the stories of heroes 'winning' for our side.
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