You know chaps, I was going to put a post up about Armistice day on the 11th, then thought nah, I'll get the pis* taken. So didn't bother.
Big old background of the services in my family.
Great Uncle Sid - gased at Hooge 1915
Great Grand father WW1 The Blackwatch
Uncle Stan - Torpedo'd in the Pacific WW2 spent 48 hours in the water. Went back through the hole in the ship before it sank to get his best mate. No medals for that.
Uncle Ernie RAF WW2
Uncle Bill - RATC Burma WW2
Uncle Vernon - Ditto
My Granda Casson - Border Regt WW1
Grandma Casson's brother WW1 Pioneer Corp - Buring bodies mainly.
My Granddad Cpl Peaper- 1st/7th Mddx Regt. DOW at Dunkirk June 1940
The owd mon R N - Palestine 1947-9
We didn't find out where Granddad Peaper was buried until 1984 we started looking in 1966; and either I or my mum have gone to Ypres every year since for 11th Nov.
Any others of you reading this post, get on a Eurostar or ride over to Belgium. Ypres is 1 1/2 hours from Calais on the bike. Get there as the sun comes up and stand under the Menin Gate, you can't miss it. And try and read the names at the top of the arch. Then go straight down the road ahead until you get to Tyne Cot, there are 12,000 brits buried in there and the rest of the memorial to the missing.
I think there are 35,000 names on it
One in four of all the missing of The Great war are missing in and around Ypres and GB took 900,000 dead and nearly 2 million wounded. They are found every year and are reburied in Bedford Cemetry just outside Ypres.
At 6PM every day the traffic is stopped by the Gate and the last post is played. EVERY DAY without fail. 4 buglers play it.
It never fails to make me burst in to tears.
11th November should be a Public Holiday in the UK.
Maybe one day all the little thugs and fuggin hooligans might be dragged over there for community service and made to spend a week tending the war graves around Ypres. It might teach the little sh*ts a bit of humility.
Ains.
PS: 11 bells on the boat I was on at 11AM 11/11 too. Always have, always will.
