Tommy Doesn't Know What Day It Is

[A Very Super Market]

Don't mistake me for an intellectual, but I'm just trying to rant as far as I can.

[Strike For The South]

AVSM is not attempting to portray himself as an internationalist. I have good reasons to believe his stance is very close, if not identical to mine on this issue. He is merely being a pessimistic realist, as I am.


Strike, this has crossed the line. AVSM is not making it personal, but you are. I find it hard to recollect myself flaming others like this in the Frontroom (Backroom is another issue), and I have pages of warnings and infractions...

And faceless masses wasn't? This isn't an issue about peoples lack of respect, nearly everyone and every buisness I know did something today.

And I'm fully aware that there is tragedy in the world but it doesn't change the fact a 19 year old kid from Snyder Texas is in Bum **** Iraq because some politicians in DC decided it would be a good idea.

Both of you are taking this sweeping veiws on the issue when it is simply a matter of looking a fellow man in the eyes and saying thank you.

The guys on the front line have no control over western bias or what the war means in the context of history some just shake there hand tell them thank you and forget about all this other crap for one day.

Don't mistake me for an intellectual, but I'm just trying to rant as far as I can.

And you're clearly missing the point.

[miotas]

I think people are looking too much into this, it's just a day to stop for a minute and remember the tragic loss of millions of lives on all sides. Anyone who brings nationalism into it is perverting the day away from what it is.

[Monk]

I think people are looking too much into this, it's just a day to stop for a minute and remember the tragic loss of millions of lives on all sides. Anyone who brings nationalism into it is perverting the day away from what it is.

Yes.

Alright. You pay respect. Does everyone else? I take a look at the general ambivalence towards everything, and infer that there can be no way those faceless masses would go out of their to sincerely pay respect, any more than the respect they would give for July 4, Christmas, or whatever break off of work it is that day. Why do we do this? Why do we need a special day to remember, yet end up not doing so anyways?

I'm unsure I understand. It was very hard to miss people going out of their way to do what this day is intended for. The 'faceless masses' are much more caring than you give them credit for, of course some do not do so but that is their own troubles and not yours.

I've always thought of this day as what it means to you, not what it means to someone else. It's a personal day to take time and remember on your own time, when you can really let it soak in all the lives lost and those who serve for your nation even now. I think the question of "Why do we need it?" is rather fruitless, when more interesting questions of "What does it mean to me?" and "What will I do in light of that?" are on the table.

[Pannonian]

Eric Bogle - And the Band played Waltzing Matilda

Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said: Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they marched me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As the ship pulled away from the quay
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving and tears
We sailed off for Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was waiting, he'd primed himself well
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us back home to Australia

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
Well we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Oh those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead
Never knew there was worse things than dying

For I'll roam no more Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and free
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The the legless, armless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

But the Band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

And so now every April I sit on me porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reviving old dreams of past glories
Amd the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore
They're tired old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question

But the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

[Major Robert Dump]

While I agree with Strike that's its just a day to say thanks to certain people (I was surprised with a few today when I opened my wallet and they saw my military ID, hell, maybe I would have gotten free lunch in uniform)...the fact is that most people see it as a day off work and don't do jack.

My father goes to his dead dad's grave every veterans, memorial and birth day and drops flowers. He was 6 when he died and never knew the man. HE always cries. It perplexes me, but I guess I understand.

[Banquo's Ghost]

Ahoy! What's this? A young, innocent thread from the Frontroom wandering wide-eyed and lost in the Wasteland?

Come here little one, and let me whisper in your ear. You are growing up very fast now, and want to be beastly. Very well, but be beastly with respect.

Oh, and understand that unlike a soccer game where you get to mime and scream and play the referee, here it's rugger. Gamesmanship is of a different order here, and such posturing is more likely to get one a penalty and a ten-yard march closer to no posts.

Carry on.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Why does no-one take time to note the nefarious scam the Entente pulled off when they proclaimed the Armistice, which is, IIRC, legally defined as a bilateral, voluntary cessation of war in which no side declares victory or any sort of superiority? Germans agreed to much of the Fourteen points, yet in no way was it an unconditionally surrender. In fact, it was not even a surrender in many ways. Yet that is not what the Armistice was in the end, and the Treaty of Versailles did not help either, as it was a blatant example of victor's justice.

Nobody takes note because all of the above is untrue.

Rather than crush the routed German army, and push deep into Germany, the allies accepted Germany's plea for peace. The allies thus spared Germany from having to undergo what Germany itself had done to Europe.

Yet from the very beginning, Germany undermined this most magnanimous armistice, for which it itself had asked and to which it had agreed.

After the armistice, the retreating German army plundered and destructed on an enormous scale, wantonly destroying property. It returned home with victory parades, under improvised triumphal arches.
Then rather than aiming for peace, Germany abused the good will of its victors by spending the next twenty years undermining the peace and preparing for another war, starting it all over again. Sixty million deaths later, it had finally sunk into the German nationalists that the combined forces of the civilised nations are stronger. (<- The real tragedy of the armistice. A million more German deaths in 1918 would've spared the world WWII)

Of course, contrary to what is constantly spouted on the internet, the German command already in the armistice agreed to occupation of the Rhineland and the payment of reparations. What's more, to ensure keeping the peace in Europe, the final peace treaty of Versailles was even more magnanimous than the armistice was.

Terms of the armistice here:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/armisticeterms.htm

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Nobody takes note because all of the above is untrue.

Rather than crush the routed German army, and push deep into Germany, the allies accepted Germany's plea for peace. The allies thus spared Germany from having to undergo what Germany itself had done to Europe.

Because naturally, Germany was guilty for World War One.

After the armistice, the retreating German army plundered and destructed on an enormous scale, wantonly destroying property. It returned home with victory parades, under improvised triumphal arches.

This isn't true. I won't comment on the "destruction" for now, but only von Lettow-Vorbeck was allowed an actual triumphal parade, and that was because he was the only one who actually was victorious.

Then rather than aiming for peace, Germany abused the good will of its victors by spending the next twenty years undermining the peace and preparing for another war, starting it all over again.

Germany abused the terms of the treaty, but not goodwill. This is because whatever "goodwill" the victors had certainly didn't make it into the treaty. The terms of Versailles were harsh, and based on a presumption that wasn't true, at least not entirely. If you say that Germany got off lightly, you are basing your argument on precisely the same flaws.

Sixty million deaths later, it had finally sunk into the German nationalists that the combined forces of the civilised nations are stronger.

I've never known you to troll before.

wut

More power blocs, an upset in the balance of power, a potential civil war, I could go on. I don't think Fragony is using the best analogy, I'd prefer to use the collapse of a more recent empire.