Nice Street Signage

[Phil Perry]

[ATTACH]49651._xfImport[/ATTACH]

 

Portsmouth Council have done this to most of the streets. It’s fascinating, sad and scary. But hats off to them; it brings it home how many died.

 

[Phil Perry]

Was trying to post another one,. . .made by Primary school kids, but even with a cut down Screenshot, the file was too large for the site. .

 

Sorry.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

All over my country are declining or abandoned towns with lonely war memorials listing the young men who went away and those who never returned. On my annual return to my hometown I pass an obelisk at Liston which has more names than the current village population.

 

Nobody has yet provided me a convincing explanation for their loss.

 

 

[old man emu]

. On my annual return to my hometown I pass an obelisk at Liston which has more names than the current village population.Nobody has yet provided me a convincing explanation for their loss.

Next time you are there, write down the names on the obelisk. Use this link Places | Discovering Anzacs | National Archives of Australia and Archives NZ Enter the person's name in the Search Box (under the New Zealand logo).

 

This will give you a list of all persons with the same surname and each person's service number. Click on the relevant name (I picked William Liston at random) and you will go to this William Liston | Discovering Anzacs | National Archives of Australia and Archives NZ

 

Click on the "View/Transcribe" button and the person's military records will come up. The top of the page will show place of birth, where enlisted, and next of kin. (This person first was in the Light Horse, but was transferred to the 1st Battalion. He was killed at Gallipoli between the 6th & 8th August 1915.)

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

Thanks OME, but I fear I was misunderstood. I wasn't particularly interested in researching each of these young men, just appalled that nobody has yet explained why that pointless bloody war happened in the first place and why nobody had the nouse to bring it to an end sooner.

 

 

[Yenn]

The same could be said about many wars. WW2, Korea, Viet Nam, and the war against terror spring to mind.

 

 

[old man emu]

I put that up becasue of what happened to my grandfather.

 

He was living in Footscray before WWl and signed up in December 1914. He arrived in Egypt in early April 1915 as a 7th Bttn reinforcement. The 7th Bttn contained a lot of blokes from the Footscray area, so he would have been amongst people he knew. On 4th April he was pulled out of the 7th and went to the 5th Bttn.

 

Come the 25th, the 7th were part of the first attacking wave at dawn. E Platoon, which was mainly composed of Footscray men, was wiped out when they tried to land near a feature called "Fisherman's Hut" on the northern end of ANZAC Cove.

 

I suppose that if you looked at the Footscray war memorial, you would see a lot of names, and a great many would be from E Platoon. Maybe something similar happened the the boys from Liston.

 

 

[Bruce]

Here's my explanation Old K.

 

They went off completely ignorant, thinking it was going to be fun and a great adventure. Even the higher-ups thought it was all going to be over quick.

 

The Germans only had 6 weeks of ammunition at the start of the war, that's how quick they thought it would be.

 

Of course this is only true for the beginning. Why people enlisted after years of fighting when they knew what was happening is a mystery to me too.

 

 

[old man emu]

Why people enlisted after years of fighting when they knew what was happening is a mystery to me too.

It is very hard for us, one hundred years later to understand the social environment of the common man. Don't forget that Australian Society was British to the bootstraps, and remained so until the 1970s. Compared to modern-day Australians, people then were naive in their understanding of international politics. Don't forget that the majority of Australians then were descended from British stock. For close on a century, Britain had been the Western World's Superpower. There had not been a war on English soil since the mid 1600s. Britain ruled the seas and dominated much of the land.

 

Study the lyrics of this 1877 music hall song. <title>Macdermott's War Song (1877) It is said that the word "jingoism" originated from "jingo" in the chorus. Look at the militarism of these words:

 

Let them be warned, Old England is brave Old England still,

 

We've proved our might, we've claimed our right, and ever, ever will,

 

Should we have to draw the sword our way to victory we'll forge,

 

With the battle cry of Britons, "Old England and Saint George!"

 

 

[facthunter]

In those days Britain made enemies of most of the world. over a fair period of time and it's wealth was based on what they extracted from other places The "original" Navy was made of pirates who made generous gifts to the Queen. It's commerce was backed by the strength of it's forces which also kept it's colonies compliant.. Rule Brittania was OK for the brits but offensive to everyone else. Nev

 

 

[Bruce]

I find it hard to understand why Australia didn't become an enemy when we found out how badly they treated our troops. They got malnutrition at Gallipoli , eating far worse food than the Turks. They died from trench feet in France, since the British were too mean to pay for floorboards in the trenches.

 

This doesn't even count the pointless cannon-fodder casualties.

 

 

[Marty_d]

The age of empires is all but over. The queen is our queen pretty much in name only, we make a fuss of the royals but if they ever tried to interfere in our democracy they'd get the old heave-ho pretty quick.

 

Nowadays in a global economy the empires are big business who recognise no borders (except those of a tax haven). Google, Amazon and Facebook have more economic clout than the British empire did at its peak.

 

Of course we may become an outpost of the Chinese empire at some stage. Should get my kids to learn Mandarin.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

The age of empires is all but over. The queen is our queen pretty much in name only, we make a fuss of the royals but if they ever tried to interfere in our democracy they'd get the old heave-ho pretty quick.Nowadays in a global economy the empires are big business who recognise no borders (except those of a tax haven). Google, Amazon and Facebook have more economic clout than the British empire did at its peak.

 

Of course we may become an outpost of the Chinese empire at some stage. Should get my kids to learn Mandarin.

I agree entirely Marty. Maybe your kids learning the most spoken language on Earth would be a fine idea ?. . they learn languages quickly when they're young and their minds are more receptive. Whatever Trumpy and his United States successors do, I believe that the Chinese will be the next World superpower. . . Like it or not, it's certainly Looking that way.

 

 

[spacesailor]

"Why people enlisted after"

 

They didn't !, They were Conscripted, Just so the Kaiser's English cousin .didn't loose too many Brits.

 

Not just Aussies but all the common cannon fodder, was expendable.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Bruce]

Don't think you are right about the first world war, space. Australians were volunteers, much to the chagrin of the turncoat labor prime minister of the day who tried several times to get the constitution changed to allow for conscription for overseas service.

 

But Australians sure were more expendable than pommy soldiers, you see this from the casualty rates.

 

I wonder how they justified conscripts for Vietnam. ( I nearly was one but my marble didn't come up ). I think it was by redefining what "overseas" meant.

 

 

[Yenn]

During my lifetime there has been a massive change in how people think of the government and those in control.

 

When I was young we were taught to believe anything our elders and betters told us. Politicians were considered to be honourable, in fact I was taught at school that if I wrote to my MP I should finish the letter with "I remain Sir your honourable servant". Can you imagine anyone doing that now?

 

Being English we were taught that we were unbeatable, there will always be an England etc. The trouble is that we were brainwashed into believing it.

 

The general populace had no idea what was really going on, there may not have been censorship in the papers, but the editors knew what to write and what to leave out.

 

My involvement in the Suez war, opened my eyes to the lies and deception. The general population believed all the bull**** that they were told. Much the same as Australians and Yanks believed in the Viet Nam war

 

 

[Bruce]

Gosh Yenn, I thought you had to remain " your humble servant" . Regardless, I wonder if anybody still uses those phrases.

 

 

[Bruce]

How about publishing a full day's gallipoli menu for everybody to eat on remembrance day?

 

 

[spacesailor]

Vietnam was the French colony, that they couldn't control, so got the other nations to do their dirty work, never saw a casualty list of french loses for that war.

 

And they started it.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[old man emu]

What was the French death toll in their Vietnam War?

 

First Indochina War - Wikipedia

 

 

[facthunter]

The French had enough sense to pull out or opposition at home.. No people want to be occupied by foreign forces.. The whole thing relates to WW2 and the South East Asia Co prosperity Treaty. The Japanese were supposedly liberating all the people's as they advanced south, but didn't endear themselves a lot to the locals as they went. The end of WW2 was seen everywhere as the time to chuck the Colonising Countries out where they had been since about 1888.. Britain lost India too.. All good. It had to happen. Nev

 

 

[spacesailor]

Read the second link, but couldn't count any Total list of french casualties.

 

The 1st list say's about 100,000 killed all up.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

The French had enough sense to pull out or opposition at home.. No people want to be occupied by foreign forces...The end of WW2 was seen everywhere as the time to chuck the Colonising Countries out where they had been since about 1888...

Unfortunately the USA was out of step with that historic shift.

 

Ho Chi Minh was a great admirer of the USA, having lived there for a time. He based Vietnam's Declaration of Independence from France on the American document, expecting the Yanks to continue to help him, as they had done during WWII. Instead they helped the French commit atrocities against the Vietnamese, and took the country into its longest war, which they ultimately lost.

 

 

[old man emu]

Read the second link, but couldn't count any Total list of french casualties. spacesailor

The second link was put there to direct people (? persons ?) to a place where they could read about a war that most Australians know nothing of. (Said he, ending with a preposition). Note that the 1st Indochina war was fought between 1947 and 1954. Australian Forces were involved in Korea at the time.

 

Note that the Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, was an admirer of the American Constitution, and American history. I suppose that he thought that if the Americans could remove a European overlord, then the Vietnamese could do the same. Americans just can't grasp the concept of "what's good for the goose is good for the gander".

 

 

[facthunter]

The Americans pack a willy when any government has a social programme for it's people. Just WHAT "tribe" would go OK if they didn't help each other?. Nev