Remembrance Sunday: 'At least we knew what we were fighting for in 1944'
This year's commemorations were given added poignancy by events in Afghanistan. Cahal Milmo reports
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CPL STEVE BAIN (RAF)
Troops from British and coalition forces lay a wreath at the Remembrance Sunday service held by the senior padre, Mark Christian, in Lashkar Gar, Helmand province
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In a quiet corner of Westminster Abbey, away from the crowd gathered at the Cenotaph, Arthur Bright's voice cracked as the 11am tolling of Big Ben approached. Stood in front of rows of small wooden crosses marking the British dead from Afghanistan, the D-Day veteran said: "There was a time not so very long ago when this day was a history lesson. Not today. Young men are getting killed again. And I'm not sure why."
The 85-year-old former infantryman, with a row of five medals glistening on his chest, was one of dozens yesterday whose Remembrance Sunday route through central London to participate in two minutes of silence in Whitehall included a detour to the neat rank of rain-streaked crosses, each adorned with a photograph of one of the 231 soldiers killed in Afghanistan since 2001.
Music from military bands was relayed across Parliament Square via loudspeakers while tourists mixed with grey-haired veterans and uniformed servicemen and women. But beneath the sombre dignity and pomp of the state occasion, it was not difficult to find the raw emotion caused by the steady stream of British deaths and casualties from Helmand.
Mr Bright, from Chatham, Kent, whose closest friend was killed inches from him during the Normandy landings, said: "When you see something like all these [crosses], it brings it home that there are lots of mothers, brothers and daughters waiting for terrible news again. Seeing this brings back what it was like to be at war. At least we knew what we were fighting for in 1944. We knew if we didn't win, our country would be destroyed. In Afghanistan, these boys are fighting for people who don't even want them there. That must be hard. That's the thing about war, you've got to believe the deaths of your mates are worth it somehow."
Carol Brackpool's son, John, was killed on 9 July this year when he was struck by a Taliban bullet during a gunfight near Lashkar Gah. The 27-year-old private from Crawley, West Sussex, who served with the Prince of Wales' Company of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, was one of eight British soldiers killed in 24 hours. Mrs Brackpool, who after meeting the mothers of those other soldiers jointly set up a charity, Afghan Heroes, to help bereaved families, attended her local church for the two-minute silence she had routinely observed in previous years.
She said: "It is the first Remembrance Sunday since Johnny was killed.
Every day since has been hard but of course this is especially so. I always
observed Poppy Day because we have lost so many in previous wars but because
of current events I think there is greater awareness and respect for the
fallen."
Hitherto supportive of the need for British troops to remain in Afghanistan, Mrs Brackpool said the latest spate of deaths, including the killings this week of five soldiers by an Afghan policeman they were helping to train, had made her reconsider the purpose of the conflict. She said: "After this week, I've begun to think for the first time that this is too much, that these young are being killed without enough progress. I had always thought we needed to stay until the job was done but I am really beginning to question that. I am only worried that if we do bring the troops home, does that mean all those who have died did so for nothing?"
In Helmand, British forces attended services on the day it was announced that the 200th from their ranks to die in combat in Afghanistan since 2001 had been killed on Saturday. At Lashkar Gar, Padre Mark Christian, the senior chaplain of 11 Light Brigade, spoke of the five soldiers – from the Grenadier Guards and the Royal Military Police – killed by an Afghan policeman. He said: "Of course, I was the chaplain to the Grenadier Guards so last week's incident was personal for me too. So I stand here and I grieve, I think of the pain of their passing and I think of their families. But that of itself is not what remembrance is about. When we remember, we think of those who have gone before us, the tens of thousands of people who have given their lives for our nation and for what they believe in."
Back in the Garden of Remembrance at Westminster Abbey, a young woman who gave her name only as Kate briefly knelt down to study the Afghanistan crosses. A veteran came over to comfort her after noticing that she was in tears. Kate, who explained she was the girlfriend of one of the men pictured on the crosses, said: "It's nice to know other people realise the sacrifice of the guys. But it doesn't make it easier."
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Comments
I think he's implying that Mr Karzai and his novel attempt at Afhan democracy might not be as inspirational as presumed. What a cheek?
How can anyone suppose that our politicians could possibly be lying about the need for sacrificial suckers to get killed in order to prevent terrorists returning to that country? Surely, all that stuff about brave boys and heroes who never died in vain and will never be forgotten can't be a load of old cobblers intended to deceive the public? Good grief!
Whatever next?
Our people are dying in Afghanistan to prop up corruption, to prop up proposals for a now defunct pipeline, to save the American's face, to keep the flow of Opium running via American government to whoever has the cash, this is not how Britain does things, we are the worlds foremost nation builders but today we are complicit in the destruction of two nations that have not offered us a legitimate reason to go to war with them.
Our politicians have betrayed our soldiers, have allowed the massacre of innocent people at the behest of corrupt American politicians, our honour and our reputation is all but evaporated as we wilfully continue to abet America's second Vietnam, when the wheel turns full circle I would hope that there would be justice for our people and justice for those that we have killed, maimed, dispossessed and that justice would be served with the indictment of the traitors in our government current and past, those that put America's needs before our own... I hope they rot in hell.
The opposition had the decency to wear the uniform of the country they represented and while war was not then gentlemanly respect was felt from some of the opposition.
Now the war in Afghanistan is a totally unwinable different battle not only do we NOT know who we are fighting but WHY we are fighting. The government keeps on banging about the dangers of the Taliban to the UK but we are increasing the threat every time we kill more Taliban. As has been stated before not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims
Another point revolves around the 9/11 strike on the Twin Towers. The attack was not made by the Taliban so why blame them? Should we strike where the real attack originated? I doubt it as the Saudis are suppliers of much of the worlds oil
If in Afghanistan you were to line up 100 from that country is it possible to pick out all the Taliban members? Accepting this fact is probably why the "trainee" policemen turned and murdered our warriors.
Just as a matter of interest I wonder how many of our government ministers have sons, daughters or close family in Afghanistan?
Did we really know?? Only a very few knew what was being fought for and why. It was not for "Freedom and Democracy".
Wars are deliberately brought about by rich and powerful people, for the sole purpose of their becoming more rich and more powerful.
It is for the same people, and for the same reason, that present wars are being fought. It is those same rich and powerful people who send our young men and women to die. And it is all for the profit of those same rich and powerful people. It was the same in 1939. Nothing has changed. The rich and powerful people don't fight, but they send our red-blooded youth as cannon fodder, to die for their gain, and their gain alone.
And where do our governments get the money to finance these wars of aggression? They borrow it from the banks, of course. And just exactly where do these banks [which are owned by those rich and powerful people] get the money to loan to our governments, by which loans they put our governments, meaning us ordinary citizens, in their debt?? All while charging usurious rates of interest on their loans to our government??
Precisely. meaning precisely, where does the money come from?? It is created out of thin air, at the very moment it is accepted by our government as a loan. Quotations below verify this statement.
Those same rich and powerful people control the media in all its forms, so that you and I are not told the truth, but are told what they want us to think, which they, themselves have boldly stated at times. WW2, started by us in 1939, was brought about by those same rich and powerful people, because they were not able compete with Germany in the business of manufacturing and world trade. They realized that they would shortly lose both power and money, because Germany was outclassing them in quality and production in the world markets.
The love of money is the root of all evil. (The Bible)
"The very idea of a government that can create money for itself, allowing banks to create money that the government then borrows, and pays interest on, is so preposterous that it staggers the imagination." William Hixson, Canadian Economist
"Once a nation parts with the control of its credit and money, it matters not who makes the nation's laws. Usury, once in control, will wreck any nation. Until the control of the issuance of currency and credit is restored to government, and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty, of parliament, and of democracy, is idle and futile." William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada
"I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England, to rule the Empire. The man that controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply. " - Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild London financier, Rothschild bank
"The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent." – John Kenneth Galbraith Canadian economist, Harvard professor.
"The issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the banks." John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, First Baron Acton of Aldenham
"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." - Napoleon Bonaparte, French emperor
"It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning." - Henry Ford, Founder of Ford Motor Company
Grenville Rogers
Lively ON Canada
Since then however, warring has become about ideals. Vietnam, Korea and others were about the spread of communism...
Do we have the right to dictate which ideal a country lives by? It seems the Afghans and others may want to continue living in the 15th century. Should we insist they come kicking and screaming into this 21st century mess?
If a system of government oppresses, it is only a matter of time before the indigenous peoples fight back, aggressive governing has a limited shelf life
therefore wouldn't it be better to leave each country to govern itself.. by all means do not trade with a country that oppresses or victimises its own people. after all, corrupt governments are only wealthy because of foreign trade.
There are more ways to pressurise administrations into being democratic and fair. War, especially in the case of Afghanistan, is not now working.
We forget that it has taken the western world thousands of years to reach the levels of technology and understanding that we have. Many peoples of the world, having these advances thrust upon them within a few short decades, will obviously fight back, as the way of life thay have followed for centuries is being ripped apart by foreign intervention
As a result of these massive enforced financial reparations, by 1923 the situation in Germany became desperate and inflation on an astronomical scale became the only way out for the government. Printing presses were engaged to print money around the clock. In 1921 the exchange rate was 75 marks to the dollar. By 1924 this had become about 5 trillion marks to the dollar. This virtually destroyed the German middle class (Koestler The God that Failed p 28), reducing any bank savings to a virtual zero.
According to Sir Arthur Bryant the British historian (Unfinished Victory (1940 pp. 136-144):
?It was the Jews with their international affiliations and their hereditary flair for finance who were best able to seize such opportunities.. They did so with such effect that, even in November 1938, after five years of anti-Semitic legislation and persecution, they still owned, according to the Times correspondent in Berlin, something like a third of the real property in the Reich. Most of it came into their hands during the inflation.. But to those who had lost their all this bewildering transfer seemed a monstrous injustice. After prolonged sufferings they had now been deprived of their last possessions. They saw them pass into the hands of strangers, many of whom had not shared their sacrifices and who cared little or nothing for their national standards and traditions.. The Jews obtained a wonderful ascendancy in politics, business and the learned professions (in spite of constituting) less than one percent of the population.. The banks, including the Reichsbank and the big private banks, were practically controlled by them. So were the publishing trade, the cinema, the theatres and a large part of the press ? all the normal means, in fact, by which public opinion in a civilized country is formed.. The largest newspaper combine in the country with a daily circulation of four millions was a Jewish monopoly.. Every year it became harder and harder for a gentile to gain or keep a foothold in any privileged occupation.. At this time it was not the ?Aryans? who exercised racial discrimination. It was a discrimination that operated without violence. It was exercised by a minority against a majority. There was no persecution, only elimination.. It was the contrast between the wealth enjoyed ? and lavishly displayed ? by aliens of cosmopolitan tastes, and the poverty and misery of native Germans, that has made anti-Semitism so dangerous and ugly a force in the new Europe. Beggars on horseback are seldom popular, least of all with those whom they have just thrown out of the saddle.?
A book unexpectedly published by Princeton University Press in 1984 by Sarah Gordon (Hitler, Germans and the "Jewish Question") essentially confirms what Bryant says. According to her, ?Jews were never a large percentage of the total German population; at no time did they exceed 1% of the population during the years 1871-1933.? But she adds ?Jews were over-represented in business, commerce, and public and private service.. They were especially visible in private banking in Berlin, which in 1923 had 150 private Jewish banks, as opposed to only 11 private non-Jewish banks.. They owned 41% of iron and scrap iron firms and 57% of other metal businesses.. Jews were very active in the stock market, particularly in Berlin, where in 1928 they comprised 80% of the leading members of the stock exchange. By 1933, when the Nazis began eliminating Jews from prominent positions, 85% of the brokers on the Berlin Stock exchange were dismissed because of their "race"..
'The Israeli Prime Minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million' (extract from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso, London and New York, 2000, p.83).
[Googling "holocaust survivor" supplies 1,710,000 items]
Statement by Richard Lynn, Professor Emeritus
University of Ulster, December 5, 2005:
"I've checked out the six volumes of Churchill's Second World War and the statement is quite correct - not a single mention of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a 'genocide' of the Jews, or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war.
Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; Churchill's Second World War totals 4,448 pages; and De Gaulle's three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages.
In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi 'gas chambers,' a 'genocide' of the Jews, or of 'six million' Jewish victims of the war."
Elie Wiesel vs Encyclopaedia Britannica
Wiesel has been one of the most prominent spokesman for the very sizeable group of people known as Holocaust survivors. Wiesel has chaired the US Holocaust Memorial Council and has been the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Peace Prize...
Time Magazine, March 18 1985:
?How had he survived two of the most notorious killing fields [Auschwitz and Buchenwald] of the century? "I will never know" Wiesel says. "I was always weak. I never ate. The slightest wind would turn me over. In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day. I was always in the last hundred near the gate. They stopped. Why?"
Compare this with Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993), under ?Buchenwald?:
"In World War II it held about 20,000 prisoners.. Although there were no gas chambers, hundreds perished monthly through disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings and executions."