On This Day ... in 1918
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the Armistice saw the cessation of hostilities with Germany. Peace was not finally secured until the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Britain had lost some 888,000 men killed, India 72,000, Canada 65,000, Australia 62,000, New Zealand 18,000 and South Africa 9,300.
Smaller parts of the Empire and Dominions had also made huge sacrifices: of the 6,500 men who served during the war with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 1,250 men were killed, the 1st Battalion having suffered perhaps the worst casualties of any unit on the first day of the Somme, when 91% of its men were wounded or killed in just 40 minutes.
Comments
The thought of the people from any one of those places, actually moving from one chair to another to save the UK nowadays would be quite unlikely, yet they did it expecting nothing in return.
Posted by: Oubaas | November 13, 2006 7:45 AM
And thank you to those that did!
Posted by: TimC | November 11, 2007 5:00 PM
Thank you Veterans!
Posted by: Amy | November 11, 2008 12:32 PM
I am asking those who thank veterans now to look at those few remaining ones and realise that although they have almost all gone there are plenty of others who served their nations since in need of help and there are many that still do.
Spare a thought!
Posted by: TimC | November 11, 2008 2:57 PM
Oubass, back then they went to fight for mother england because they knew mother england would have come to fight for them if the natives had decided to get a bit ahead of themselves. Now? The UK Govt wouldn't send anything these days, so why should we?
Posted by: Rhys | November 12, 2008 7:50 AM
Let us remember them, and the debt we owe them all.
You didn't list them separately, Mr FM, but over 50,000 Irish soldiers are thought to have died in the Great War, and they are often forgotten or, worse, villified in recent times as anti-patriots.
Here's a tidbit for your "on this day" entries...
"The first shot fired by the British Army in the War was discharged by Corporal E. Thomas
of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards just north of Mons on August 22nd. On the following
day, Lt Maurice Dease from Mullingar, who was serving with the Royal Fusiliers, attempted
to stop the German advance into the city with his machine gun unit. He died fighting and
was awarded the first posthumous Victoria Cross of the War."
Posted by: Denis | November 11, 2009 7:53 AM
One more quote, from The Irish in Gallipoli by Francis Ledwidge...
"Neither for lust of glory nor new throne
This thunder and this lightning of our wrath
Waken these frantic echoes, not for these
Our cross with England’s mingle, to be blown
On Mammon’s threshold we; but war when war
Serves Liberty and Justice, Love and Peace."
Posted by: Denis | November 11, 2009 7:57 AM
"Oubass, back then they went to fight for mother england because they knew mother england would have come to fight for them if the natives had decided to get a bit ahead of themselves. Now? The UK Govt wouldn't send anything these days, so why should we?"
To be fair, "Imperial Defense" died when the UK left Australia, New Zealand and the other Pacific members of the Commonwealth dangling in the wind before the Japanese in WWII. Note that the post-war ANZUS treaty quite pointedly wasn't BANZUS - the lesson was learned and resentment lasting.
Col Beausaber (Who dated a girl from Oz while in grad school. She came from a military family and her opinions of "the mother country" were unprintable)
Posted by: Beausaber | November 11, 2009 10:56 AM
We will remember them.
Posted by: Kim du Toit | November 11, 2009 3:43 PM