Forum Topic

Take a break

From arguing about a couple of millionaires to remember why we are able to have a free, frank and sometimes unnecesarily rude exchange.80 years ago thousands of brave young men landed in France to ensure in the future we could have a free world.Thank you

Andy Pike ● 383d25 Comments

No Sunak is not worth talking about, let people remember their families, that is what this post was about. All the Service men and their childhoods taken away from them. Having to go to fight whether they wanted to or not. Loosing limbs their sight or not coming home at all. Families being evacuated to the country, children being taken away from their families. Some children were not treated that well either. Even to the age of 90 my cousin always said what an old bag she had to live with and just wanted her mum. Think of all the stories that all the people could tell of their days in the WW1 & WW2 but they kept going and were made stronger for it. If anybody wants to get off their chest, some stories, I'm sure we would love to listen to them. I would.

Barbara Stevens ● 382d

Just to add to that, it's worth looking in a bit more detail at Sunak's apology:He said "On reflection, it was a mistake. not to stay longer and I’ve apologised for that...."'it was a mistake' is very weak: whose mistake was it, for example? "Not me, guv" is what it sounds like, and a more honest person would have owned it and said unequivocally, "I was wrong...""....but I also don’t think it’s right to be political in the midst of D-day commemorations. The focus should rightly be on the veterans and their service and sacrifice for our country."That really is rich: he was the one who was being political, in scuttling off to do a tv interview for his, er, political campaign - and now he's trying to claim the moral high ground!A good example, yet again, of a non-apology apology.

Richard Carter ● 382d

Robert, of course it does require the incomer to be friendly and tolerant too, and clearly he is.  The shared festivals sound wonderful.

Judy Allen ● 382d

Clearly, Sunak missed the memo here!It's truly astonishing that he and his advisers completely missed the seriousness of the anniversary, and that was crass. BTW, to get a stronger sense of what it was actually like on the day and after, I can't recommend strongly enough the three-part series on the BBC, using remastered audio recordings of people on both sides: it's "D-Day: The Unheard Tapes" and it's on the iPlayer.Less seriously, I'm really enjoying the fact that Sunak's action (inaction) has absolutely infuriated the very people who would normally be the prime group of his supporters. Lol!

Richard Carter ● 382d

Michael in my experience Londoners have always been the most tolerant (may not appear so on this forum!).  Most people who end up in a City are a migrant from somewhere.  Judy one interesting fact our Afghan driver told us was he lives in North London, next door to him is a Jew and the other side of his house was a Lebanese all of whom celebrate festivals together along with Christian celebrations.  You don’t have to believe- just celebrate that is the essence of tolerance.

Robert Wheeler ● 382d

Robert, I think on the whole your Uber driver from Afghanistan is correct; London is a tolerant and nice, vibrant city to live in; ok, there maybe some exceptions but nowhere is perfect. 

Michael Ixer ● 382d

How lovely that he's found London to be a Magic City.  He's obviously only encountered nice, decent people.

Judy Allen ● 382d

Indeed great bombsite playgrounds.  Can you believe we are even saying those words now with heath and safety.  Having been raised in the West End of Central London my mother use to dress me up in my weekend finest only to find as soon as the service was over l would strip off so l could clamber over bombsites with my friends.  I do actually remember holding onto one friend who opened a first floor door of a bombed house to go running through only to find there was no first floor!  I am amazed we all survived.Different meaning of austerity.After a lovely lunch today using an Uber driver to get back to Putney the driver was from Afghanistan who called London a Magic City where every race, religion could live side by side.  We should be thankful of that.

Robert Wheeler ● 382d

The final nail Andy

Sue Hammond ● 382d

How I remember the bomb sites as a kid. Great playgrounds . We had one in our road in Shepherds Bush where the church used to be. There was a direct hit on the school opposite which also damaged our house and the neighbouring ones. The houses and school were repaired/ rebuilt  but not the church.in the 60s they put prefabs on it and now it is a lovely park.

Andy Pike ● 383d

I believe it's important we remember the devastation and sacrifices caused by facism in the last war. For those of us growing up in London during the 50s in the aftermath of the war against Hitler and Mussolini there were the reminders of it in the bomb sites - although I remember one near Smithfield still surviving as a car park I used in the mid 1990s! (More recently it was redeveloped as an office I worked in.)My father was called up early as he'd joined the TA prior to 1939 and after a brief time in Egypt (reached by a ship travelling around the Cape and through the Red Sea) he saw service as a motor cycle liason rider shuttling between UK and ANZAC units in Crete. He was involved in capturing German paratroops before he was subsequently taken prisoner himself when Crete fell to the nazis, and then spent the rest of the war in a work camp in Silesia.Interestingly, despite a tough time being forced to work in an open cast mine, my father never held a grudge against most Germans, just a hatred of nazis and the genocide and human misery they were responsible for. (And he was always ambivalent about the destruction of Dresden.) I think he'd be pleased that one of the people I caught up with recenly at Infosec was a German Cyber expert, who I've know for a long time, and who'd travelled from Cologne to visit ExCel.My mother, living in London and working as a secretary, was in the ATC and never having met a German hated them for a long time as all she saw was bombs being dropped on London killing many of her friends. She was finally reconciled with Germans when meeting those who moved to live in the UK in the 1980-90s.We must never forget the devastation and sacrifices of the last world war; sadly, if world war three were to happen, the bomb craters are likely to be city wide and terminal, not just car park size.

Michael Ixer ● 383d

Just another way to get attention for Sunak, which is exactly what he has done. This was about our War hero's, who suffered, not about Sunak who probably wasn't even interested.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

Very poor by Sunak

Andy Pike ● 383d

Yet another blunder by Sunak...

Richard Carter ● 383d

General Sir Richard Gale.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

There is in article on the front page, about Richard Gale.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

My dads older brother Alex was killed in the WW1 at the age of 19 and is buried in France.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

I think we all have family members who played a part in the war. My father was in the Cheshire Yeomanry, served in North Africa, Palestine (fighting the Vichy French), Italy, France and finally Germany. He didn’t get demobbed until 1947.  I’ve still got his medals. My mother was in the ATS. She lost her first husband when his Lancaster got shot down. She lost a brother fighting the Germans in Italy. He’s buried near Naples.  My parents met in 1949. She cried buckets at every Remembrance Day and she cried buckets whenever she heard Vera Lynn sing We’ll Meet Again. We played it at her funeral and of course we all cried buckets too. Today has brought it all back again.

Jonathan Callaway ● 383d

My dad was in the Royal Engineers in Bayeux at the end of the war.  He and the family told me he was burying the dead.  Also he learnt to drive in the Royal Engineers and was driving large vehicles for the army.  This skill enabled him to be a lorry driver on his return home.  On a trip to Paris in the army he met my mum.

Martine Guy ● 383d

Yes Sue it was a tough watch at times, but uplifting in equal measure.My dad was a Royal Naval rating on a DEMS (Defensively enabled Merchant Ship)he was charged with firing the back ack bolted tk the back of the ship. For volunteering to do this duty he was paid an additional 6d a day in wages.His 5 brothers were all in the army and thankfully they all came home physically unscathed.Ordinary young men ( my dad joined up on his 18th birthday) who did a great job when asked.

Andy Pike ● 383d

Absolutely Andy. Watching today's television coverage and listening to callers on LBC upset me and filled me with admiration and pride in equal measures. Dad served in the Royal Navy and his four Brothers were in the Army, and Mum was in the WRAF. That generation accepted it was their patriotic duty to help to keep their country safe and hopefully give their families a peaceful future. God knows what would happen now with the present molly-coddled generation many of which were not born here so have no allegiance to the U.K. anyway.

Sue Hammond ● 383d

.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

Hi Robert, I had 3 cousins who would be 88 now, went to Korea. All lived Hammersmith Area. Sorry about your father so sad.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d

Well said Andy.  They gave their lives for freedom against bullying and sectarianism.  My own father died in the Korean War.

Robert Wheeler ● 383d

My dad was in the Royal Navy. He would be 122 yrs old.

Barbara Stevens ● 383d