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The Last Post under the Menin Gate is aired live at

Videozone

Commentary will be Dutch though

I'm watching it now.

WWI: The Battle of Vimy Ridge - Canada at War
The cost of Canada becoming a Nation.
Thanks to all our veterans, past and present.

I heard somewhere the other day that in Canada the average ww2 vet is 88 years old, and hundreds of them die each month.

I've been reading a fair bit here lately:
The Memory Project - Stories of the Second World War - Home

My grandfather served in Belgium, and my great uncle who was killed closing the gap on Falaise in August of 44

My grandfather was pretty quiet about the whole thing. He only ever talked about it when he felt he had to counter someone's ignorance. He would get FURIOUS if someone said or insinuated that the SS were no worse than any other soldiers (they were). But then again he'd be just as mad if someone painted too rosey a picture of the allied forces... he'd seen brits, canadians and americans execute german POWs, and abuse local civilians.

In the 50's, he became close with a couple who had made it out of soviet occupied germany. Very disturbing stuff in the weeks after victory... german civilians were absolutely brutalized, and german POWs were often tortured & killed. The wife had two sisters killed by soviet "liberators", pretty much raped to death... one was 13.

My grandfather said that some went to war as animals and thrived in the environment. Others went as good people and came back as animals. Others were just broken by it. He said it was ugly, but it had to be done. He hated the animals though, it sickened him.

My Uncle Carlton Church (mother's side, civilian contractor) was captured (one of the 98 civilians kept on Wake Island) by the Imperial Japanese Navy then murdered on Wake Island in WWII, my other Uncle Carl CWO-4 USA (father's side fought in Europe and the Pacific). My Uncle Phil (GYSGT USMC) was at the Chosin Reservoir. I bow my head in remembrance, and square my shoulders and proudly salute all those who have gone before us, and will follow in our footsteps. Happy Veteran's Day to ALL past, present and future Veterans.

GOD BLESS AMERICA

Phil Millard
SGT USMC
1969-1975

Quote:

Originally Posted by turbocarrera (Post 5667862)

There was a movie made in Canada a few years ago called Passchendaele - I highly recommend it. It's not a good movie, in the sense that a critic would view it, but the battle scenes are brutally realistic - far more so than any war movie I've ever seen. I became physically ill watching it and wept for the men that did and did not make it through the Third Battle of Ypres.

I just watched it, and no it's not a good movie at all.
As for brutally realistic, well, nobody left alive to tell us if those battle scenes were realistic or not.
But i can tell you from all the books a read, written by those who were there.. That a lot of things simply are terribly unrealistic.
For example, there would not be any nurses within walking distance of the front lines... And it would not be a leisurely stroll from the second line to the front line.
From front to medical posts with nurses.. would take the better part of a day.

Then there is the battalion retreating without order to do so, after having been relieved by only 60 men... Or the germans who stopped firing , just so the lead character could take his friend off some barbed wire cross...
They would have been ordered shot right there and then by the officer, that was the way it worked in that time, when there was a battle going on...
No court martial, no sentence to be shot at dawn, you refuse during the battle, your own officers would have shot you.

Lead character, who first bajonets somebody in the front of the head, the hardest point of the skull?? Then he holds a german, who bajonets him with a charge, and he grabs the bajonet and manages to stop it and inch before it kills him? kidding me?

Realistic battle scenes.. i think the movie made it look like a sunday picnic compared to what it really was... Especially if it's about the Battle of Passchendaele.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...re_and_Mud.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...erial_view.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Ypres_1917.jpg

I think they are still digging bullets and ammunition out of the ground around Oostend and Westend.

I think I landed a whale there one day about 5 years ago; they drove us all the way to Leuven in the middle of the night and I was asleep the whole way, dead tired. I remember the runway lights, setting the parking brake on my 747, and then falling into the Renault minvan's seats. Next thing I remembered was my FO shaking me at awake at the hotel. It was dark when we left, but the sun was up when we got to the hotel.

-There is a great boardwalk that they've built along the sea in Westend. It reminds me just a little bit of Venice Beach in Los Angeles. But of course, the croissants are far better...but the weather is WORSE!

N!

Turbocarrera , i think the director probably took a lot of liberties with his granddad's story... made it more Hollywood when he filmed it.

Normy, they are still digging bombs, bodies and everything in betweem, all over Flanders.. I think Oostende and Westende to a lesser extend WW1 artifacts, more WW2 artifacts, as that's the beach, and it was more prominent during WW2, as the Atlantikwall.
Oostende was occupied, but not so much a battle field, but it was the rear lines.
In between the front lines and Oostende, was the marchlands below sealevel, that had been drained as farm land.. When the Germans approached, the levey's had been openend to flood those farmlands and stop the Germans.. So anything found in Oostende, probably is WW2 artifacts..
I'm not saying it would be impossible to find something, just saying it's unlikely ,or rare if it happens.

The WW1 battle fields where more inland, because of the floodings...To give you an idea, last year they dug up a bunch of Phosghene shells, about 800 meter from my house. I live in Boezinge, just a mile west of Pilkem Ridge. There's a bunch of Trenches being dug up, discovered within the now industrial zone..

They even found 3 bodies, identified to be Summerset Light Infantry.. (Harry Patch, the last surviving Trench veteran, who died in 2008 was also in that unit)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1289555312.jpg

http://img424.imageshack.us/img424/5200/boezing1lb.jpg
Have a look at this forum , it's Flemish/dutch spoken, but i'm sure the pictures tell more then a thousand words...

Forum Eerste Wereldoorlog :: Bekijk onderwerp - Foto's van opgravingen (Diggers)

Neat thread. Thanks!

More pics from the Diggers group

Forum Eerste Wereldoorlog :: Bekijk onderwerp - De foto's van onze opgravingen. Deel 2/ The latest photo's

They have so far , over they years, dug up 40 tons worth of ordonance, is just amazing..
And from the threads i read, recovered about 10 bodies, of which some were identified, some were not , but all have been given a proper burial and resting place...

The pictures are a bit more meaningful now. Thanks, again!