Monday 21 January 2013

First World War anniversary celebrations

The anniversary of the start of the Great War is already being hijacked by the bleeding heart liberals who believe that 'there is nothing to celebrate' and 'that the dead of both sides must be commemorated together' and other such rubbish. 

Well I don't agree.  There is a lot to celebrate.  First and foremost is the superb performance of the British Army in stopping the Germans dead (literally) in their tracks.  By doing so they prevented the defeat of France which would have led to the domination of Europe by Germany.

If you want to find out just how good the British Army of 1914 was then don't read the sort of drivel put about by the likes of Sebastian Faulks but a book by a truly brilliant historian, Lyn Macdonald,  who dedicated most of the last forty years to first hunting down survivors and then, when they were no more, their letters and diaries and weaving the resulting information into a series of superb books on the Great War.  Here, to give you a taster, is an extract from her book 1914 and is the account  of sixteen year old Jimmy Naylor a trumpeter with the Royal Field Artillery who witnessed the British infantry in action.

"He was saying , At four hundred.......At five hundred .......at threee fifty.......at three hundred. the rifles blazed, but still the Germans came on.  they were getting nearer and nearer and for the first time I began to feel rather anxious anf frightened. they weren't and indeterminate mass any more - you could actually pick out details, see them as individual men, coming on, coming on.  And the officer, still as cool as anything, was saying , At two fifty ....At two hundred ......And then he said ,ten rounds rapid!  And the chaps opened up - And the Germans just fell down like logs . I've never seen anything like it, the discipline, the fire discipline of those troops, I've never forgotten that, I was so impressed. As a boy of sixteen I was simply astounded. I thought, 'What a marvellous army we are!' The attack was completely repulsed - probably not for long but it was long enough for us to get the guns away. It saved us. "    

If that does not make the hair stand up on the back of your neck and your heart burst with pride at being British then you probavly live in Notting Hill Gate or Chipping Norton (or both).   

2 comments:

  1. It's nice to read an article like this rather than the crap that gets printed in the mainstream media, keep up the good work!

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  2. That's the issue, bloody lefties make celebrating your country's history some sort of crime punishable by excommunication from all their other lefty friends and letters of hatred about you to the guardian or something ghastly like that.

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