This story was previously titled "The Great War And The Words We Mustn't Forget"
The Great War And The Words We Mustn't Forget »
Posted By Mikunited 1 week, 6 days ago in Political OpinionWhy has the Great War of 1914-18 remained so central to our lives? The Second World War produced its crops of names, easy to remember, like punctuation marks: Dunkirk, the fall of France, the Battle of Britain, el-Alamein, Stalingrad, Normandy, Dresden, Hiroshima. But somehow those earlier 1914-18 slaughters, their geographical location so scarred into our historical conscience, are wounds that will not close. Or wounds whose terrible consequences cannot be erased. Ypres, Verdun, the Somme have a doom-like quality that have fully retained their semantic origins. The very name of the Somme has an assonance which still fills us with despair. Just as Passchendaele seems to include the very word
Read Full Story at independent.co.uk »
104 Views Share Story 3 Comments Report
Submitted By:
Mikunited
I'm 49 and work as a painter and decorator.I live in London,with my long time partner,she is a teacher.We have ...
Who Also Submitted:
Other Related Articles:
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 3 (view all)
-
100%
jimdoze1 week, 6 days ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month.
Reply
The U.S. averaged 6,157 dead soldiers PER MONTH during her 19 month participation. This was the first of two very good, but now seemingly forgotten, reasons for Pax Americana. The second was to begin devastating Europe again 21 years later. -
Neutral
Mikunited1 week, 6 days ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
In a way The States help was even more welcome in WW1,because in many ways it wasn't even it's war. Yet it was a crazy war,so many lives lost,for so little gain.The USA and the UK have their differences,But I think we are the best of friends and long may it be so.
Reply
In WW2, though the USA's fight was with Japan,on the surface,I feel the whole civilized World had enemies with the Nazis. -
100%
albionperfides1 week, 6 days ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
For my parents the very name Somme was as the depths of despair and I must say the first time I saw it on a French sign post I felt a black cloud over us as we travelled south to the Cote d'Azur.
Reply
For we Lancastrians the 1st June 1916 meant the slaughter of 20,000 men in one day and the wounding of 40,000. At the end of the 3 battles of the Somme in November 1916 400.000 British soldiers had died - for really nothing. That is why the British Government in 1938 did its best to appease Adolf Hitler but to no avail and we bankrupted our country by declaring war in September 1939 and standing alone against Nazi Germany from May 1940 to December 1941. Thanks to FDR we survived and "we" includes me.
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.