100 years since the start of WWI

[Cutter]

Interesting, follows the war week by week, will end in 2018.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0x ... w3KxuKsMvT

[J.D.]

Excellent! Thanks Carl.

[Cutter]

WW1 in pictures, interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/static/infoc ... roduction/

[durbster]

I guess today would be an appropriate day to bring back this thread.

I saw a comment today from one of the key men behind the arab spring, who said he found the ceremony in France with Merkel and Macron very moving, but he didn't think many Europeans fully appreciated the freedom, peace, stability and accountability we have. He's probably right, and with everything happening at the moment, today was a good day to acknowledge that.

We went to watch a small parade in my home town, and there are poppies on the lampposts in most villages and towns around the UK. There are also large poppy signs in the windows of the shops with the names of the men from the town who lost their lives in the conflict.

I wonder how many people at the time thought that we'd still be in their thoughts in a hundred years.

[Dr. Pain]

A question was asked by an Australian solider to Charles Bean (our official war correspondent), Will I be forgotten? We remembered.

Yesterday was a big turn out to all the events around the country here. For the past four years we've had a piece in the local paper about events that happened during WWI. Like many small country towns, we had men go join the big adventure.

But one thing that stands out to me is, once the war ended, we had the issue of bringing men home and who should be first home. The last of our soldiers did not come home until 1920.

My mum when she was little always remembered her uncle on her mum's side having a terrible cough and not being able to do much. He was gassed at 18 or 19 on the Western front and lived with it's after effects until the late 1950's.

But for me two stories stick out. One was three British soldiers killed about 9/10 am on the 11th of November 1918. All three had been awarded the Mons star, a decoration indicating that they had taken part in Britain's first battle of WWI, only to die and hour before the war ended. The other was a German machine gunner who was still firing his machine gun at the enemy in the last minute of the war. At 11 am he stopped, stood up, doffed his helmet and walked off.

[norbs]

Cant recall where I saw it, but the last person to be killed was apparently standing up to let people know hot soup would be served after 11am, and got shot!

[Montey]

This was the first armistice day celebration without my grandfather.

He was born in 1919 and passed away 1 week ago today. :-(

He was a WWII vet, having survived in the engine room of an aircraft carrier on the Malta relief convoy.

It made yesterday just that little bit more poignant for me.

[Cursed]

Well I followed the entire YouTube series through. It was regular Saturday morning viewing.

The same folks have done a short series on the inter-war period: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLfMmO ... 5JhHpnj4Ng
Sorry, here is the link to their "Between 2 Wars" playlist of 10 videos -


And they started a week by week for WWII starting with the invasion of Poland a month or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1Aej ... YkZAELRhHQ

[durbster]

I saw this incredible photo on Twitter yesterday.

According to the tweet, the top photo is a battalion of the Cameron Highlanders in 1914, prior to being despatched to the front line and below is the same battalion upon their return in 1918 after the armistice.

Edit: OK, found some more info and it looks like it's not two real photos but a composite to represent the loss, so I think that's valid.