Remembering Grandad

[Chris152]

That's him, one in from left in the photo, and the disc on the right is what came back from Northern France instead of his brother - apparently killed by a sniper a couple of weeks and 100 years ago. (I photoshopped his name out, seems too personal.)

I remember staying at a friend's house in Hamburg and noticing a photo of his grandfather with his regiment in the same war. We mused at the thought that our grandads could have been in combat against each other, but that fortunately they were both bad shots.
I'm not at all sure this is of any interest to anyone else, but sometimes it's worth remembering and being grateful.

 

[AES]

Yes, it IS interesting to other people. Well to me anyway. We're talking about "ordinary" people thrust into extraordinary situations here - mostly without a chance of having any control whatsoever over what happened to them.

I well remember standing in the "memorial church" in Nuremburg some years back, and thinking of all the Bomber Command lives lost in that raid - one of the worst ever for losses apparently.

And just a few weeks ago, at a family reunion on my wife's side, I saw a copy of the De-Nazification form (about 7 pages) that was filled out in the most minute detail by the lady's parents in 1945. AND then a whole load of paper work about someone on the "wrong" side of the border (no wall then) in Berlin in about 1948 who wanted to make a visit to someone on the "good" side. The "request" was turned down BTW. NO reason given.

You get a real "cold" but personal feeling about how just ordinary people were affected by wars and politics back in the time, both world wars.

We may well have problems in 2018, but "so far, so good"!

Thanks for posting.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I went to Bavaria on a school trip in 1969. I always remember being taken to see the border, it was as if it had been barricaded the day before - the road was just ploughed up, the railway lines cut and bent back and the power and phone lines cut and hanging loose. Quite scary. There was about three quarters of a mile of ploughed land and beyond that the gun turrets, the actual border was nothing more than a single strand of barbed wire, which we were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to step over .........................
I was the only person on the trip to actually go to East Germany.

 

[thetyreman]

my great grandad died in the battle of somme aged 19, all we have remaining is the brass tin from 1914 which has bullet marks on it, and it still works...my family never visited his grave in france because they were too poor to travel, I'd really like to go one day to see it and pay my respects, I would not be here if it wasn't for him.

 

[Marineboy]

Yes, it IS interesting to other people. Well to me anyway. We're talking about "ordinary" people thrust into extraordinary situations here - mostly without a chance of having any control whatsoever over what happened to them.

I well remember standing in the "memorial church" in Nuremburg some years back, and thinking of all the Bomber Command lives lost in that raid - one of the worst ever for losses apparently.


.

We should also remember the 6,000+ “ordinary” people killed in the Nuremberg bombing raids.

 

[Kieran62]

We should also remember the 6,000+ “ordinary” people killed in the Nuremberg bombing raids.

Your point being?

Today is the day to remember our service men and women killed and injured during conflicts around the world.
Having just returned from a service where we as a family, paid tribute to our nephew killed in Afganistan and his cousin who lost both legs and part of his hand in the same tour, find it incredible that you find it appropriate to throw some political/social conscience skew into a thread discussing rememberance.
Keep it for the BBC/ Brexit rant.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I'd have thought his comment far more apposite than yours.

 

[Marineboy]

No political skew intended, nor any wish to demean the sacrifice given by our servicemen and women, just a gentle observation that war inevitably causes many more casualties to civilians, who never have the choice of volunteering to be on the front line.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I was brought up to think that I wore a poppy to remember the people killed and to be reminded of the futility of war - I think I was adult before someone told it was only to remember fallen servicemen. I rather preferred to first version.

Aaaannyway ...... back to woodwork - if anyone goes to Germany try to see a altar by Tilman Riemenschneider. Absolutely stunning. Mind blowing. Amazing. There aren't words enough to describe them. There is I believe one in Nuremburg, but the one I saw was in Bamberg - I touched it :shock: - the weren't so protective in those days.

 

[treeturner123]

Dear All

Yes, we need to remember our servicemen all conflicts, but have any of you looked at war memorials in France? We were in he Ardennes a few years ago and I was really shocked, though of course I should have realised, that the war memorial in the local village had not only men with their regiment, but women and children as this was in the part of France that was over run by the Germans in BOTH world wars.

We also went to Verdun. The cemetery there is just horrendous as is the 'Ossuary' and museum is a worth a visit as well. It shows photos of villages in the area before the war where there are none any more; just wiped from the face of the earth!!

Phil

 

[AES]

@Marineboy, you wrote: We should also remember the 6,000+ “ordinary” people killed in the Nuremberg bombing raids. UNQUOTE:

I must say that like some other posters above, your comment jarred a bit. But perhaps you didn't intend that, I dunno. For me the point is that PEOPLE died in that raid (and all the other horrific things that happened in both world wars). AND not only that, MANY "ordinary people" (on all sides) were conscripted into the military - AND many other "semi-military" organisations too. They were by no means all "war loving volunteers". So what?

But let's not get too "political" about all this. I was talking about "ordinary people" getting killed, no matter on which side and whether in or out of uniform as being immaterial - as I suspect was the OP.

I used my examples in my first post on this subject "only" because, unlike the OP, I have no pictures at all of my Dad who, incidentally was born in 1898 and who was wounded in the trenches on the Western Front in 1917.

Whatever else happens, today of all days, IMO we should remember ALL those who gave their lives (on both sides) and hope like hell that whatever other misbegotten "mischief" our esteemed leaders (on ALL sides) get up to, we don't go back to 1914 or to 1939 or indeed to Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I & II, Afghanistan, etc, etc, EVER again.

Just one TINY illustration further if I may, harking back to one of my examples in my first post on this subject, namely the De-Nazification form I saw all filled out.

The father of the woman who showed me the papers was a member of the local wood turners club in 1934. "Why did he have to fill all that stuff in (dates, names, places, in excruciating detail)?" I asked. "Because just like everything else in Germany at that time - EVERYTHING please note - that club was part and parcel of the whole National Socialist (Nazi) "system".

"There but for the grace of "something or other" we all go". And I think I know who/what that "something or other" was.

Respectfully submitted.

 

[Marineboy]

Just a small correction AES. I never said ‘war-loving volunteers’.

 

[AES]

No, I know you didn't. I was just trying to make the point, NOT put words in your mouth. Sorry if I offended, NOT my intention, really.

 

[Marineboy]

Ok thanks. It is an emotive issue, particularly on this day, and easy to tread on someone’s sensibilities, particularly those with personal experiences of loss.

 

[AES]

Fair enough Marineboy. Going back to my first post when I was talking about the Bomber Command lives lost, it would also have been MUCH better to have written about all the German lives (mainly civilian I guess) lost in that raid. That was certainly what I was thinking of (as well as Bomber Command), and, incidentally, that's exactly what is commemorated in that church.

As I say, it would have been much better if I had written exactly that first time around.

 

[heimlaga]

I was a bloody disaster. The whole damned war that is. It should never have been allowed to happen.
There are just a few thousand heroes in a war. Tens of thousands of villains. Millions of victims. That's the proportions.......so I have learned from those who were there.

According to my grandfather who spent 4 years on the east front in the second world war .....and sent his medals back to government..... most of those few heroes never get any official recognition because if there is no officer in sight or if the officers in sight don't bother or don't survive nobody will report the heroism....... and in most cases the hero will be dead anyway before a report is written. Those few heroes who survive don't usually want to talk about it for at least 50 years. They just want to forget that they ever were there.
He told me a lot about the reality behind the propaganda and the books and films made by people who don't want to know what reality was like.

It is easy to end up on the "wrong side" in a war. Finland was driven to become an ally of Germany in the second world war by the very real invasion threat from the Soviet Union. A few survivors from Stalin's mass exterminations and government induced famines and terror had reached Finland across the border so there was no doubt whatsoever on what was awaiting if the Soviets invaded.
"The English offered us help. I got a pair of trousers. They weren't very warm." is how my grandfather summed it all up. Britain and France didn't dare to upset Stalin and maybe loose an ally so the help they sent wasn't worth much. Sweden was neutral and couldn't send much help officially but ordinary Swedes got together and helped us with what they could.
Germany was the only country offering any weapons and munition to Finland and therefore ended up becoming an ally. Though it seems like most people wieved it as a pact with the devil for one's own survival.
And so it went...........

There were plenty of good people in Germany too.
Sane and in some cases very intelligent people who didn't really belive in what the nazis said. However lots of clever young lads had been braiwashed to believe what they would never have believed in if they had grown up in a free and democratic society.
Refusal to go to war meant ending up in the death camps so they wanted to believe or at least pretend to believe in the words of "Gröfaz" just so they would be classified as believers and therefore be spared from the death camps and their families spared from bullying.
Old men and children and women who didn't have to go to war were bombed and massacred anyway.
They all........ good and bad and brainwashed....... Brit and Finn and Russian and German... ended up in the same damned meat grinder. Some came out minced. Some came out as barely living remnants of what had been a human.........
All this just because of the egos and power hunger of two mighty dictators, Josef Vissarionovitz Dzugasvili (took the name Stalin) and Adolf Hitler (rightfully Schiklgruber) and their followers.