Thanks, Veterans!

[synkr0nized]

It's been another year, another Veteran's Day finds us.

Do you folks outside of the US have a similar holiday?


In any case, thanks to all of you who have served, regardless of country!

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by synkr0nized

In any case, thanks to all of you who have served, regardless of country!

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

In Canada we have Remembrance Day where at 11:00 we have a moment of silence for those who gave their lives for peace.

We will remember them.

---------- Post added at 09:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:51 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

And fuck you.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by DaimoMusic

In Canada we have Remembrance Day where at 11:00 we have a moment of silence for those who gave their lives for peace.

We will remember them.

Thats memorial day here. Veterns day is for those that are still alive and kicking. They get free pancakes

[synkr0nized]

All right, let's keep it civil.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Since it's America and nobody knows what it is or what day Remembrance day is I've been wearing a poppey pin most of the week.

Originally Posted by Aerozord

Unless it was germany in the 40's, you guys were kinda dicks

This was wholly uncalled for and I hope you realize how bad of a thing it was to say.

That said, you have it backwards. Memorial day is for those who died during a war, Veterans day is for any who served, living or dead.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

At our Remembrance Day ceremonies, we had a crowd of 300 (town size is roughly 2000) and the legion was packed. Our minister did a wonderful job and mentioned an editorial cartoon regarding the ottawa shooting. My father, grandmother uncle and I laid a wreath at the cenotaph and made me miss my grampa alot.

[Flarecobra]

I got a free lunch at the local VFW post, and took part in a little ceremony. Was kind of funny that I was the only female there, as well as the only Marine as well.

[Solid Snake]

For whatever it's worth, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of German soldiers serving in World War 2 A: didn't really care for the Nazi party, as a majority of German citizens didn't vote for Hitler, and/or B: were swept up in Hitler's nationalistic fervor, which was based on a lot of lies and misinformation and substanceless speeches, you know, the exact same thing every country does to some extent to fool their populaces into supporting wars.

The Holocaust is an incredibly ugly can of beans, but it's based on the same kind of objectively horrifying dehumanization that America employed to great effect against Native Americans and African American slaves, the Turks employed against the Armenians, the USSR employed against all of its minority ethnic groups as well as classes of farmers like the Kulaks, the Chinese employed against its own citizens and Tibetans, the Belgians employed against the peoples of the Congo, the Zulu Kingdom employed against minority tribes in modern day South Africa, the pre-Nazi Germans committed against civilians in their southwestern African colonies, the Spanish and Portuguese committed in pretty much all of their South and Central American colonies, natives then committed in retaliation against colonial civilians of European descent, the Japanese committed against the Ainu in Hokkaido, the Qing Dynasty committed against the Dzungar Oirats, the British committed against natives in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and around the globe of their empire, as well as the Great Irish Famine, similar atrocities committed by the French in their territories, the genocide the Russian Tsarists committed against Muslims and other dissidents in the Russian Empire, the genocides the Ottomans committed against the Assyrians, Greeks and Kurds, the Nanking Massacre, the systemic execution of all Haitians in the Dominican Republic, the genocide committed by the Indonesians against the East Timorese and the Papuans, mass killings in Ethiopia, the systemic obliteration of tribal peoples in Brazil, the countless conflicts between Tutsis and Hutus, not to mention Rwanda, Cambodia and Sudan...

You know what Nazi Germany's become? The whipping boy we focus all our negativity on to convince ourselves that we're better than that. We convince ourselves that it was just Hitler and some fucked up Germans who'd ever act so inhumanely so we never have to confront the inhumanity within ourselves. Don't get me wrong: Hitler and his stooges were utterly contemptible human beings. But at one point or another we need to give the Germans a fucking break and realize that antisemitism was absolutely a thing in all our countries and the Nazis only made explicit what had been implicit for centuries upon centuries.

Every nation has been the Nazis at some point during its evolution, and countless soldiers representing every nation in every conflict have committed wartime atrocities. The vast majority of soldiers on all sides of modern conflicts don't commit atrocities against civilians, at least insofar as we're talking about the era of human civilization when we've had clearly delineated international maxims about such conduct. So I have no problem whatsoever celebrating the sacrifices made by soldiers who were just doing their jobs, while saving all my pent-up aggression and ire for the fuckwits who ordered them to do all kinds of stupid shit because powerful, privileged people in positions of authority are generally awful shitstains.

[Seil]

VIMY
(Steve and Rob Ritchie)

CHORUS
Raise your flask; aim your rifles high
I've had a dream, I've seen we three should have no fear at all
You'll die in Kenora, Billy; you, Jim, in Winnipeg
And I will end my days in Montreal

These people come to see me in my bedroom
With faces dim and names I can't recall
Some woman with a golden ring she comes to comb my hair
Then she dresses me and walks me down the hall
Well I can still put one foot before the other,
If someone points the way for me to go
Today the sun is shining and a crowd has gathered 'round
They put circles of red flowers on the stone

Chorus

Old Jim Rankin stood behind me in the tunnel
Spat on his bayonet and he wiped it with his hand
And he rocked from heel to heel, blew out his cheeks and whistled
While we waited for the signal to advance
Jimmy Rankin he was twenty and we thought him an old man
He said he'd fathered children by the score
By girls back in Winnipeg and girls in Calais
And he bragged, by God, there'd be a hundred more

Chorus

And Billy Whitefish from Kenora: jet black hair and eyes like coal
We all called him 'Chief' behind his back
He never smiled or laughed or joked or spoke that much at all
Just sat and smoked while we waited to attack
Well they poured shells over our heads into the hillside
In thirty yards our kit and boots were full of mud
But as we made the ridge, Jimmy went down on both knees
And he coughed into his sleeve and there was blood

Chorus

The last sound I ever heard was an explosion
And bodies flew like apples thrown by boys play
When I could see again, I was alone Jimmy wasn't there
And a crater marked the hillside where he'd lain
And Billy Whitefish from Kenora wound up in a German trench
Where he captured their machine gun all alone
And held them off until his ammunition was all spent
And they swarmed around and they hacked him to the bone

Chorus

Now every day I still remember what I told them
My two friends who that day from this earth were torn
And the craters and the trenches where they died now bear the names
Of the cities and the towns where they were born

Chorus



---------- Post added at 10:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:42 PM ----------