I will be burning a candle between 10pm-11pm to mark the 100th anniversary of Britain's declaration of war in 1914. I hope that fellow member's of the forum will join me in this moment of reflection. The initiative was inspired by the Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of WW1 'THE LAMPS ARE GOING OUT ALL OVER EUROPE. WE SHALL NOT SEE THEM LIT AGAIN IN OUR LIFETIME'
Will be doing this - having visited Ypres and seen all the names listed on the Menin Gate, and also taken part in the Thankful village run last year it is so easy to forget what a huge impact WW1 had on millions of people. What shocks me is a 21 year at work had never heard of / was oblivious to the Berlin Wall escapes and thought East and West Germans hated each other, thought the important world event I said was '100 years ago' was the holocaust.
We did as well. Wifes Great Grandfather was killed fighting around the Somme, she sat out about 20 years ago to find out more, finally tracked down a small war graves cemetery and found the grave, to her knowledge the first family member to visit, as there was confusion in the records as the grave had been moved from one cemetery to another. The headstone had a spelling mistake on his name, the War Graves Commission were brilliant, had the headstone altered and sent pictures after the change. The only downer is that you have to cross a small area of farm land to get to the cemetery, and the local farmer is not cooperative, so having returned a couple of times you notice these things, but you get assholes in all walks of life wherever you go I guess.
