"Pardoned " WWI soldiers

AgentWood wrote: the best film about WWI that shows the horror in the trenches and switches almost instantly from innocence and humour to terrifying fear is gallipoli. everytime i watch it i can barely stand the final scene. when i went to the gallipoli national battlefield in 1995 it was by far the most moving experience i've ever had (worse than dachau or ground zero). the trenches are still there, along with thousands of gravestones, almost forgotten with the passage of time.

i think about what i would have done if i were an ANZAC soldier at the time, knowing that i was facing almost certain death if i went over the trenches. i don't know if i could do it; i don't know how anyone did it. sitting in the trench would have been enough to develop everlasting emotional scars--shellshock without the shelling, if you will.

Um, yes, but doesn't it have Mel Gibson in it :barf:

I refuse to watch anything featuring that mad ultra-catholic anti-semitic Brit-hating sexist tosspot.

Unless you are being smart-arse and referring to the later Turkish film? (that I've just found on google, never having heard of before, but thought I'd talk as if I knew about it all along to try and look more culturally aware than I am - doing a google)

Somewhere in France, there is a monument - and I think it is the only one so far, for the remembrance of all the ones who acted like this during this war.

I have to check when it has been built... but this is nothing new.

Jiphy wrote: Somewhere in France, there is a monument - and I think it is the only one so far, for the remembrance of all the ones who acted like this during this war.

I have to check when it has been built... but this is nothing new.

Yup, it was on the news the other day. It is in a cemetery somewhere and is a white statue of a man blindfolded, waiting to be shot by firing squad.

I have not found the one I was talking about, nor Burt's...

There are about 10 monuments built in the 20's through the country (when you think that every single village has its own, that is not much)

Here are the two most famous :

This is the one, Jiphy:

404 error wrote:

AgentWood wrote: the best film about WWI that shows the horror in the trenches and switches almost instantly from innocence and humour to terrifying fear is gallipoli. everytime i watch it i can barely stand the final scene. when i went to the gallipoli national battlefield in 1995 it was by far the most moving experience i've ever had (worse than dachau or ground zero). the trenches are still there, along with thousands of gravestones, almost forgotten with the passage of time.

i think about what i would have done if i were an ANZAC soldier at the time, knowing that i was facing almost certain death if i went over the trenches. i don't know if i could do it; i don't know how anyone did it. sitting in the trench would have been enough to develop everlasting emotional scars--shellshock without the shelling, if you will.

Um, yes, but doesn't it have Mel Gibson in it :barf:

I refuse to watch anything featuring that mad ultra-catholic anti-semitic Brit-hating sexist tosspot.

Unless you are being smart-arse and referring to the later Turkish film? (that I've just found on google, never having heard of before, but thought I'd talk as if I knew about it all along to try and look more culturally aware than I am - doing a google)

"Doing a google" is the way ALL the smart-arses on here manage to be such annoying smart-arses!

404 error wrote:

Um, yes, but doesn't it have Mel Gibson in it :barf:

I refuse to watch anything featuring that mad ultra-catholic anti-semitic Brit-hating sexist tosspot.

mel gibson or not, it's still a damn good film. i mean, i despise adolf hitler but that doesn't mean i'm not impressed with triumph of the will.

Burt Reynolds wrote:

Jiphy wrote: Somewhere in France, there is a monument - and I think it is the only one so far, for the remembrance of all the ones who acted like this during this war.

I have to check when it has been built... but this is nothing new.

Yup, it was on the news the other day. It is in a cemetery somewhere and is a white statue of a man blindfolded, waiting to be shot by firing squad.

I agree that the pardon is in order, but statues and monuments? I think that's a bit unnecissary.

JHC

Well, I think it's necessary to remember the men remembered unfairly as cowards as much as the men who died under enemy bullets.

68Pontiac wrote: I agree that the pardon is in order, but statues and monuments? I think that's a bit unnecissary.

JHC

Well, I think it is necessary. People had no choice. They had to go to the trenches, they were not volunteers. Every single family had at least someone killed within these four years of complete madness.

And it was not a political will. Veterans, by the beginning of the twenties, asked the authorities that their brothers in arms who were killed by our own army had their own munuments because they were all in the same shit.

And if the decision was up to me, even civilians should get their monuments. I do not understand why the soldiers are the only ones to deserve monuments.

If you are to go to France, go in the East. You will see all these cementeries... It is scareful to death. And even if most of the battlefields look like peaceful fields, you can feel the souls of the ones who died there... French, British, Germans, Russians, overseas poor people brought here by force and Americans... If you go there and feel nothing, I wonder how much humanity is within you.

Burt Reynolds wrote: This is the one, Jiphy:

Having a look at this picture Burt, I think that it is a British monument. The veterans wear berets the other side.

Must be somewhere by the Somme.

Jiphy wrote:

If you are to go to France, go in the East. You will see all these cementeries... It is scareful to death. And even if most of the battlefields look like peaceful fields, you can feel the souls of the ones who died there... French, British, Germans, Russians, overseas poor people brought here by force and Americans... If you go there and feel nothing, I wonder how much humanity is within you.

very well put. I've been to a few cemetaries in Belgium, pretty moving stuff.

Shellshock was woeful ignored, good to see it's historical effects being acknowledged now.

Gulf War Syndrome; Pretty obvious why this occurred- They fed us (I was there) a massive range of vaccines (some experimental) and gave us daily nervous system stimulant tablets (to protect against nerve agents). This overstimulation of the nervous and immune system has resulted in a range of nervous and immune system disorders in some people- Gulf War Syndrome.

Craig W wrote: Shellshock was woeful ignored, good to see it's historical effects being acknowledged now.

Thank you for the acknowledgement, CW!

Jiphy wrote:

68Pontiac wrote: I agree that the pardon is in order, but statues and monuments? I think that's a bit unnecissary.

JHC

Well, I think it is necessary. People had no choice. They had to go to the trenches, they were not volunteers. Every single family had at least someone killed within these four years of complete madness.

And it was not a political will. Veterans, by the beginning of the twenties, asked the authorities that their brothers in arms who were killed by our own army had their own munuments because they were all in the same shit.

And if the decision was up to me, even civilians should get their monuments. I do not understand why the soldiers are the only ones to deserve monuments.

If you are to go to France, go in the East. You will see all these cementeries... It is scareful to death. And even if most of the battlefields look like peaceful fields, you can feel the souls of the ones who died there... French, British, Germans, Russians, overseas poor people brought here by force and Americans... If you go there and feel nothing, I wonder how much humanity is within you.

I see your point and it is well taken. My point was that if they were pardoned then they automatically deserve place within the war memorials already in place. I suppose they could get their own memorial, but if every group of people got seperate memorials we might have more memorials than people on this earth.

JHC