Somehow I think my recollection of French may have failed me just now but never mind. The point is this. Its snowing. Again. I have break duty. I may die. If this is my last post, then bless you all, it was fun.. and dying from a snowball applied to the inner ear isn't such a bad way to go!
A week today, when all the furore has ebbed and the markets have bottomed out, our nation will awake to the sounds of bugles and church bells as we commemorate 100 years from the start of the Battle of The Somme. I am an historian by background, and the Somme for me is emblematic of a human tragedy that need never have happened. My reading of it is this: we began a war from a variety of odd alliances and murky motivations, capped off finally by a sense that no-one had the will to stop it. In order to give the war effort impetus, posters, propaganda began to be bandied around about the enemy, about what they would do to children and how they needed to be stopped. It worked as a recruiting effort- young men, boys, and women all joined the war effort. They joined as an act of patriotism, tinged yes with fear, but also a sense that it might be the right thing to do. They joined from across the country- but at the heart of the front line forces were thousands and ten of thousands...
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