I'll just leave this here if you don't mind

[selectedgrub]

Up the hill this one but all the towns have ceremonies at dawn.
Gearing up for Sunday.

 

[Cobbler]

Here is something you might find interesting, there was an ANZAC training airfield at Leighterton, this memorial is in the Aerodrome Garage. There are a dozen or more graves in the graveyard of NZ trainees that didn’t complete the training! It was a dangerous occupation

 

[selectedgrub]

Thanks for taking the picture and sharing it.
Cheers to all the Veterans.

 

[selectedgrub]

 

[Cheesie]

Here in N.Ireland remembrance can be a tricky subject, it is used and abused by both sides, my great-grandfather lost 2 brothers and an uncle in the first ww he was a recruiting officer for the second, my grandfather was sank twice while serving for the merchant navy during the second,
most of what I know gets passed on to my children now and again, hopefully they will retain some of what I know,

 

[Trevorleach]

And without the Russians we would be living under the Nazis. Or maybe not, because Germany and Russia would eventually have gone to war anyway.

I do of course agree, without the Americans we would be under the Russians, but if the Japanese hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbour, would America have joined the war soon enough to make any difference in the end?

Nothing about WW2 is straightforward.
The Russians tied up more than half the Nazi war effort in the Eastern Front and paid a huge price in military and civilians casualties. China came a close second in total casualties.

Stalin's plan (if he had a plan) was to let Hitler overrun the West and pick up the pieces.
Operation Barbarossa was a huge miscalculation and almost certainly changed the course of the war.

I watched a tv programme the other day that suggested that churchill knew pearl harbour was going to happen and let it happen knowing it would get the yanks into the war.

 

[Trevorleach]

Unfortunately the efforts of the allies during WW2 are slowly fading from the minds of the UK population. New Zealand armed forces suffered greatly during some poorly planned operations and do not get the recognition they deserve. ANZAC day is very important to both NZ and Australia but most Brits have no idea about WW2.
Without the support from commonwealth countries and the USA the outcome of the war would not have gone the way it did.
On a recent visit to the D Day beaches I discovered the war graves of a NZ aircrew near Arromaches. The fact that ANZAC personnel took part in the invasion mainly on Juno beach on the 6th June '44 demonstrates that every man was valuable that day.

I was talking to a young lad last year who does ww2 reenactments as a yank officer (apparently they are all officers!) and mentioned Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he had no clue what I was talking about.

 

[premmington]

I am afraid that there is now an element over here want to erase history and re-write it, removing statues and even buildings in their quest.

I think it is wrong to "erase history". Firstly you cannot change what has happened before.

Even if you don't agree with what has happened in the past - a reminder is always a good thing!

I read somewhere lately - Baden Powell was a Nazi. Maybe he was - maybe he was not!

Either way - this does not make the "Scouting movement" in 2022 a bad thing - does it?

Even if was a bad man - he has founded a good thing - why try and rip his statue down?

 

[arther dailey]

I fear the human race is incapable of learning from history , you only have to watch what is happening world wide to know this . respect to all those gone but never forgotten .

 

[atomant48]

I’ve got my poppie ready for tomorrow. Might even slip some rum into my coffee. WWRT.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

Very little in human behaviour surprises me any more.

 

[bourbon]

I was talking to a young lad last year who does ww2 reenactments as a yank officer (apparently they are all officers!) and mentioned Nagasaki and Hiroshima, he had no clue what I was talking about.

Unfortunately that seems to be common in WW2 re-enactment. Especially those who portray yanks. And another reason why my chosen period is late medieval

 

[Bullet2012]

Thank you to the ANZAC veterans

 

[Trevorleach]

Unfortunately that seems to be common in WW2 re-enactment. Especially those who portray yanks. And another reason why my chosen period is late medieval

I think the atom bomb was a little bit later than medieval

 

[selectedgrub]

Another year but we don't forget.

 

[Bullet2012]

Another year but we don't forget.

Ahh , thought it was the 25th.

 

[GRW]

My paternal grandather lost an arm & a leg in France in WW1 at a very young age (he died in 1962, before I was born)..... but he survived.

By the time I was a young child in the early 70's, there was plenty of WWII veterans still alive and around.... but being of that stoic generation, you never really heard it spoken of, and it became (to a child) something that seemed to have happened a very very long time ago, and its gravity didn't really register until much older.

All these decades on, and despite all efforts to Remember Them - you can see that the younger generations largely are so remote & disconnected that they think of the World Wars as like a movie they saw once.

 

[Bullet2012]

All these decades on, and despite all efforts to Remember Them - you can see that the younger generations largely are so remote & disconnected that they think of the World Wars as like a movie they saw once.

This is why it is important to educate the younger generations of the sacrifices that have been made and that wars are an awful thing that affect many lives for generations, and are not like a computer game where you get ten lives or such.

 

[Scalarocco]

Kids learn about ww2 etc from Call Of Duty. Heavy losses? I mean, why didn't they just respawn?

Reality checks are wasted on them because current teaching knows nothing of real life. Pick up your pronouns and throw them at the enemy. That'll show them...

 

[minimutly]

I watched a tv programme the other day that suggested that churchill knew pearl harbour was going to happen and let it happen knowing it would get the yanks into the war.

The Russians would have overrun Germany, and us if the US hadn’t got involved. That’s my take on it anyway.