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Armistice Day 2009
Nov. 11th, 2009 09:02 amOn the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war.
The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
For Armistice Day 2009, there are only 3 combat veterans of the Great War still alive, all aged near the limits of human longevity.
May there come a day when only an aged few have first hand memories of the horrors of any war.
Let us once again raise our voices in a song from the Great War:
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land.
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause he'll never understand.
Why should he fight in some rich man's battle
While they stay home and while their time away?
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose;
For I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
"I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" with MIDI. Sing along!
Peace, -- Froggy
The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
For Armistice Day 2009, there are only 3 combat veterans of the Great War still alive, all aged near the limits of human longevity.
May there come a day when only an aged few have first hand memories of the horrors of any war.
Let us once again raise our voices in a song from the Great War:
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land.
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause he'll never understand.
Why should he fight in some rich man's battle
While they stay home and while their time away?
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose;
For I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
"I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" with MIDI. Sing along!
Peace, -- Froggy
Armistice Day 2008
Nov. 11th, 2008 03:55 pmOn the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war.
The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
Armistice Day recalls the over 9 million soldiers killed in the war. As this site notes:
"World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective."
That 9,000,000 is merely the military casualties; 12,500,000 civilians killed as well. As is usual in war, innocent bystanders commonly become victims in greater numbers than the soldiers.
.....
In 2008, for the first time, France has no living veterans of the Great War. The few remaining of other countries are all aged near the limits of human life span.
One survivor, 112 year old veteran Henry Allingham recalls:
"I recall too many things I would like to forget.... arms, legs, everything, human flesh blown to pieces. "
"I hope there'll be no war. Pray that in the whole world there'll be no war. Nobody wins the next war. Nobody."
May there come an Armistice Day when only an aged few can recall the horrors of any war.
The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
Armistice Day recalls the over 9 million soldiers killed in the war. As this site notes:
"World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective."
That 9,000,000 is merely the military casualties; 12,500,000 civilians killed as well. As is usual in war, innocent bystanders commonly become victims in greater numbers than the soldiers.
.....
In 2008, for the first time, France has no living veterans of the Great War. The few remaining of other countries are all aged near the limits of human life span.
One survivor, 112 year old veteran Henry Allingham recalls:
"I recall too many things I would like to forget.... arms, legs, everything, human flesh blown to pieces. "
"I hope there'll be no war. Pray that in the whole world there'll be no war. Nobody wins the next war. Nobody."
May there come an Armistice Day when only an aged few can recall the horrors of any war.
The Christmas Truce
Dec. 23rd, 2004 01:55 pm90 years ago, during the Great War, on Christmas, 1914, troops on both sides disobeyed orders from their superiors. They stopped killing eachother. They sang songs, came out of the trenches on to no-man's land and helped eachother bury the corpses that had been lying there for months. They exchanged small gifts, and shared their food, drink, and smokes. At one place along the lines, someone had a soccer ball and the men played a game until the ball was ruined when it snagged some barbed-wire.
"It was a day of peace in war," commented a German participant, "It is only a pity that it was not decisive peace."
BBC article
About.com article
First world war.com article
And 90 years later, one man still remembers... first hand.
Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow (from The Observer) "'I'll give Christmas Day 1914 a brief thought, as I do every year. And I'll think about all my friends who never made it home. But it's too sad to think too much about it. Far too sad,' he said, his head bowed and his eyes filled with tears."
"It was a day of peace in war," commented a German participant, "It is only a pity that it was not decisive peace."
BBC article
About.com article
First world war.com article
And 90 years later, one man still remembers... first hand.
Last survivor of 'Christmas truce' tells of his sorrow (from The Observer) "'I'll give Christmas Day 1914 a brief thought, as I do every year. And I'll think about all my friends who never made it home. But it's too sad to think too much about it. Far too sad,' he said, his head bowed and his eyes filled with tears."
Armistice Day
Nov. 11th, 2004 11:14 amTime to repost this in my own journal...
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war. The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
Armistice Day recalls the over 9 million soldiers killed in the war. As this site notes:
"World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective."
That 9,000,000 is merely the military casualties; 12,500,000 civilians killed as well. As is usual in war, innocent bystanders commonly become victims in greater numbers than the soldiers.
In honor of Armistice Day, here is an anti-war song from the days of The Great War:
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land.
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause he'll never understand.
Why should he fight in some rich man's battle
While they stay home and while their time away?
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose;
For I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
"I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" with MIDI. Sing along!
Peace, -- Froggy
On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, The Great War was stopped, and it was declared that henceforth the 11th of November of each year should be called Armistice Day, to celebrate the end of war. The war was so terrible that many hoped that leaders would no longer be so foolish as to start new wars, or if they did that the people would refuse to fight.
Armistice Day recalls the over 9 million soldiers killed in the war. As this site notes:
"World War I; 9,000,000 dead young men equal 1,350,000,000 pounds of bone and flesh, 27,900,000 pounds of brain matter, 11,250,000 gallons of blood, 414,000,000 years of life that will never be lived, and 22,500,000 children who will never be born. The dry if imposing figure "9,000,000 dead" seems a little less statistical when we view it from this perspective."
That 9,000,000 is merely the military casualties; 12,500,000 civilians killed as well. As is usual in war, innocent bystanders commonly become victims in greater numbers than the soldiers.
In honor of Armistice Day, here is an anti-war song from the days of The Great War:
Ten million soldiers to the war have gone,
Who may never return again.
Ten million mother's hearts must break
For the ones who died in vain.
Head bowed down in sorrow
In her lonely years,
I heard a mother murmur thru' her tears:
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.
Who dares to place a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother's darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It's time to lay the sword and gun away.
There'd be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
"I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier."
What victory can cheer a mother's heart,
When she looks at her blighted home?
What victory can bring her back
All she cared to call her own?
Let each mother answer
In the years to be,
Remember that my boy belongs to me!
I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier
To go fighting in some far-off foreign land.
He may get killed before he's any older
For a cause he'll never understand.
Why should he fight in some rich man's battle
While they stay home and while their time away?
Let those with most to lose
Fight each other if they choose;
For I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier!
"I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier" with MIDI. Sing along!
Peace, -- Froggy
He said things like "The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without." While I certainly can't agree with all of his polticial decisions-- some I would rank very negatively in fact -- he seemed to have a element of common sense and compassion lacking in more recent leaders of his party.
I am talking, of course, about Dwight David Eisenhower, who 60 years ago led the Allied assault against the Fascist forces on D-Day.
On the 20th anniversary of D-Day, in an interview with Walter Cronkite on Omaha Beach, Normandy, Eisenhower remarked:
"These young boys were cut off in their prime. I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned. We must find some way to gain an eternal peace for this world." - 6 June 1964
Imagine that. The USA had a President who served in war himself, and was wary of sending other people to die in wars.
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity." - January 10, 1946
Can you picture any of "Ike"'s quotes here comming from the mouths of this country's current "leadership"?
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it." - August 31, 1959
"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose." - Farewell Address, January 17, 1961
"We have arrived at that point, my friends, when war does not present the possibility of victory or defeat. War would present to us only the alternative in degrees of destruction." - 1954
"There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads"- 1949
"The only way to win World War III is to prevent it." - Radio and TV Address, September 19, 1956
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - April 16, 1953
"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." - Press conference in 1954
I am talking, of course, about Dwight David Eisenhower, who 60 years ago led the Allied assault against the Fascist forces on D-Day.
On the 20th anniversary of D-Day, in an interview with Walter Cronkite on Omaha Beach, Normandy, Eisenhower remarked:
"These young boys were cut off in their prime. I devoutly hope that we will never again have to see such scenes as these. I think and hope, and pray, that humanity will have learned. We must find some way to gain an eternal peace for this world." - 6 June 1964
Imagine that. The USA had a President who served in war himself, and was wary of sending other people to die in wars.
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity." - January 10, 1946
Can you picture any of "Ike"'s quotes here comming from the mouths of this country's current "leadership"?
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it." - August 31, 1959
"We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
"Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose." - Farewell Address, January 17, 1961
"We have arrived at that point, my friends, when war does not present the possibility of victory or defeat. War would present to us only the alternative in degrees of destruction." - 1954
"There is no way in which a country can satisfy the craving for absolute security, but it can bankrupt itself morally and economically in attempting to reach that illusory goal through arms alone."
"If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They'll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads"- 1949
"The only way to win World War III is to prevent it." - Radio and TV Address, September 19, 1956
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - April 16, 1953
"May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion."
"A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility. I don't believe there is such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." - Press conference in 1954
Bear Memorial Parade Pix
Oct. 15th, 2001 08:28 pmA friend just pointed me to a website with pix of some friends of mine and I on 30 Sept, when we had our Memorial Tumble Parade for our departed trumpet playing comrade "Bear" Lemonie (see 12 Sept Journal), late king of the Carnival Krewes of MOMs, Dreiux, & Kosmic Debris.
It's the "Birdsong Photography" site. The front page has a picture of the wreath traditionally cast into the river along with pix of the band roving through the French Quarter giving Bear his musical send off. More photos of this procession at Farewell To Bear, "The Tumble Continues" and "More Tumble". Includes several views of Froggy playing his silver trombone and wearing his characteristic pink shirt with a pattern of green frogs. The object seen sticking out of my band cap in some pictures is a local tourist postcard depicting Bear playing on the "Moonwalk" riverfront park-- where we threw the wreath and other memorial objects.
At one of Ms. J's Kiddie-Pool Parties I recall having a long talk with Bear where he talked about how he was a fellow pacifist, and how war experiences had messed up his father for the rest of his life. In honor of those beliefs, the march included a detour to the front of the Catherdral on Jackson Square, where a Vietnam Vet Against Another Vietnam War was on a pro-Peace hunger strike. There we played and sang "Down By the River Side... Ain't Gonna Study War No More".
It's the "Birdsong Photography" site. The front page has a picture of the wreath traditionally cast into the river along with pix of the band roving through the French Quarter giving Bear his musical send off. More photos of this procession at Farewell To Bear, "The Tumble Continues" and "More Tumble". Includes several views of Froggy playing his silver trombone and wearing his characteristic pink shirt with a pattern of green frogs. The object seen sticking out of my band cap in some pictures is a local tourist postcard depicting Bear playing on the "Moonwalk" riverfront park-- where we threw the wreath and other memorial objects.
At one of Ms. J's Kiddie-Pool Parties I recall having a long talk with Bear where he talked about how he was a fellow pacifist, and how war experiences had messed up his father for the rest of his life. In honor of those beliefs, the march included a detour to the front of the Catherdral on Jackson Square, where a Vietnam Vet Against Another Vietnam War was on a pro-Peace hunger strike. There we played and sang "Down By the River Side... Ain't Gonna Study War No More".
