Remembrance Sunday 2015

Topics related to Remembrance Sunday.

Moderators: Northern Lass, admin

Post Reply
apowell
Posts: 491
Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 9:02 am
Primary Surname Interests: Homer, Hadley, Haycock, Powell, and Tolley
Primary Geographical Research Areas: Black Country (West Bromwich, Tipton, Dudley, Rowley Regis and Wednesbury)
Location: Vantaa Finland

Remembrance Sunday 2015

Post by apowell »

Please take time to remember those who fought for us this Remembrance Sunday.

Here is the link for the Royal British Legion with lots of information on the great work done for service personnel and ex-service personnel making a real difference in theirs or families lives.

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk

A great idea is that you are able to make Order your poppy tribute and dedicate it to someone special to you or to all those who have given their life in Service. It can take the form of a cross, crescent, star or other symbol and will be planted in the Field of your choice in November.

Regards
Adrian
apowell
Posts: 491
Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2009 9:02 am
Primary Surname Interests: Homer, Hadley, Haycock, Powell, and Tolley
Primary Geographical Research Areas: Black Country (West Bromwich, Tipton, Dudley, Rowley Regis and Wednesbury)
Location: Vantaa Finland

Re: Remembrance Sunday 2015

Post by apowell »

This year will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign

Those of us with a Black Country heritage Gallipoli also is in our hearts because of the sacrifice of those Black country men who died serving with the Worcestershire and South Staffordshire Regiments.

This link interestingly gives some background to the sacrifice of our Black Country lads:
http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2015 ... gallipoli/

I've included some eyewitness accounts of those who fought:

Sister Anne Donnell
“In that terrible weather, with wind travelling 100 miles an hour, and rain and sleet, all seems so pitifully hopeless…during those fearful days our thoughts were constantly with the boys of the Peninsula and wondering how they were faring; but little did we realize the sufferings until the wind abated and they began to arrive with their poor feet and hands frostbitten. Thousands have been taken to Alexandria, hundreds, the boys say, were drowned because their feet were so paralyzed they could not crawl away safely in time. They endured agonies. Sentries were found dead in their posts, frozen and still clutching their rifles…their fingers were too frozen to pull the trigger. And some we have in hospital are losing both feet, some both hands. Its all too sad for words, hopelessly sad.”

Private Charles Bingham
“On one of the days we evacuated about 600 men wounded from Lone Pine, there were a colossal amount of casualties…I used to like being on the foot end, instead of the shoulder end, which was much heavier, but you couldn’t always get away with it. Sometimes you’d come to a bend in the trench and you couldn’t get the stretcher around it, so we’d take the fellow off, carry him round in a sitting position, then bring the stretcher round and put him back on it…some of them were about eighteen inches wide and about six or seven feet deep.”

Albert Facey
“The sight of the bodies on the beach was shocking. It worried me that I couldn’t stop and help the men calling out. (This was one of the hardest things of the war for me and I’m sure for many of the others. There were to be other times under fire when we couldn’t help those that were hit. I would think for days, ‘I should have helped that poor beggar.’

Signaller Ellis Silas, 16th Battalion
11 May 1915
“The roll is called – how heartbreaking it is – name after name is called; the reply a deep silence which can be felt, despite the noise of the incessant cracking of rifles and screaming of shrapnel – there are few of us left to answer our names – just a thin line of weary faced men, behind a mass of silent forms, once our comrades – there they have been for days, we have not had time to bury them.”

2nd Lieutenant FH Semple
“You can imagine what it was like. Really too awful to write about. All your pals that had been with you for months and months blown and shot out of all recognition. There was no chance whatsoever of us gaining our point, but the roll call was the saddest, just fancy only 47 answered their names out of close on 550 men. When I heard what the result was I simply cried like a child.”

God bless them all.
Post Reply

Return to “Remembrance Sunday”