Pete McCluskey.
Lifetime Supporter
If this is true we are going to form a bloody republic you Pommie bastards.:furious:
No Cookies | The Courier-Mail
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That's it we are forming a Republic.
- Thread starter Pete
- Start date
I read it and re-read it all and can't really understand what all this is about. I understand there is to be a 100 year commemoration of the beginning (?) of WWI and we have all this palaver about ANZACS not being SPECIFICALLY mentioned, but in what? What exactly are the ANZACS being missed out from? OK, just guessing but, if the COMMONWEALTH is the subject of a commemoration is the argument that Australia & New Zealand should form a completely separate part of that? Is that the argument?
I do think it right to recognise less obvious national contributions, such as the Indians who were struck down in their thousands from influenza still in their UK bivouacs before they even made it to France - and who can forget pictures of Cameroon Islanders fighting knee deep in mud during blizzard conditions in France with less than ideal gear.
I'll have to find out more. But as usual, reading though the maelstrom of half truths in the various stories brings me no nearer the actual truth of the scenario.
Also as usual, if you read on, you have the anti British brigade moaning on about if it hadn't have been for 500 blokes 'plugging the gap' Britain would have lost the war blah blah blah...
Truth to tell, as an aside but a pertinent fact, Britain and it's allies had the war pretty much won by 1916. The Naval blockade was so effective that the Kaiser had simply run out of almost every munition needed to continue, and starvation on the home front was at an appalling level of attrition.
It's a pity that hundreds of thousands of fine young men had to continue to die in a senseless melee..
I do think it right to recognise less obvious national contributions, such as the Indians who were struck down in their thousands from influenza still in their UK bivouacs before they even made it to France - and who can forget pictures of Cameroon Islanders fighting knee deep in mud during blizzard conditions in France with less than ideal gear.
I'll have to find out more. But as usual, reading though the maelstrom of half truths in the various stories brings me no nearer the actual truth of the scenario.
Also as usual, if you read on, you have the anti British brigade moaning on about if it hadn't have been for 500 blokes 'plugging the gap' Britain would have lost the war blah blah blah...
Truth to tell, as an aside but a pertinent fact, Britain and it's allies had the war pretty much won by 1916. The Naval blockade was so effective that the Kaiser had simply run out of almost every munition needed to continue, and starvation on the home front was at an appalling level of attrition.
It's a pity that hundreds of thousands of fine young men had to continue to die in a senseless melee..
Not to the original point, but I wouldn't limit the dismay to the final two years, and the number of deaths is off by an order of magnitude. Just the causualties has been variously given for just the Summer Offensive of 1918 as 1,500,000 with the Meuse as 1,750,000.
Somme - 1916 1,200,000
Verdun 1916 - 976,000
Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) 1917- 475,000
Meuse-Argonne 1918 1,750.000
Summer Offensive 1918 1,500,000
Jeff Young
GT40s Supporter
Nothing of importance happened prior to 1917.
(that's a joke)
(that's a joke)
I understood your regret as being that the war continued past the point when its conclusion was inevitable, resulting in several hundred thousand needless casualties post 1916. I was, perhaps unnecessarily, pointing out that the deaths were much higher than that. Nothing more.
That's what I thought...
"Hundreds of thousands" was not meant to mean a specific 'body bag count', it was merely an expression of loss and given the pedantic nature of some, if I had said "millions" there would have likely been a correction.
Whatever the number it's a horrific sacrifice and one we would do well to remember.
"Hundreds of thousands" was not meant to mean a specific 'body bag count', it was merely an expression of loss and given the pedantic nature of some, if I had said "millions" there would have likely been a correction.
Whatever the number it's a horrific sacrifice and one we would do well to remember.
No there wouldn't!
