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Post by ARENA on Sept 15, 2016 11:09:00 GMT
Today is memorial day.
So let us remember, that apart from the pipe-smoking English ex public schoolboys,usually potrayed in our jingoist films there were.:
CREWS:
POLAND...... 145 crews
CANADA ......112
NZ...........127
CHECS........ 88
AUS...........33
BELG..........28
S.AFRICA......25
FRANCE........13
IRELAND ......10
JAMAICA........1
BARBADOS.......1
LEST SOME OF US FORGET!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2016 11:19:01 GMT
Indeed, look at the number of currently much maligned Poles. My mother always maintained that these highly passionate young men were made very welcome by UK ladies who's husbands were away fighting
It will soon be Remembrance day, it seems to be part of the curriculum these days to take parties of schoolchildren to visit the war graves in Flanders. Those of us who have visited will be only too aware how memorable such visits are
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Post by HILD on Sept 15, 2016 11:40:16 GMT
Today is memorial day. So let us remember, that apart from the pipe-smoking English ex public schoolboys,usually potrayed in our jingoist films there were.: CREWS: POLAND...... 145 crews CANADA ......112 NZ...........127 CHECS........ 88 AUS...........33 BELG..........28 S.AFRICA......25 FRANCE........13 IRELAND ......10 JAMAICA........1 BARBADOS.......1 LEST SOME OF US FORGET! |
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Post by HILD on Sept 15, 2016 11:42:33 GMT
Today is memorial day. So let us remember, that apart from the pipe-smoking English ex public schoolboys,usually potrayed in our jingoist films there were.: CREWS: POLAND...... 145 crews CANADA ......112 NZ...........127 CHECS........ 88 AUS...........33 BELG..........28 S.AFRICA......25 FRANCE........13 IRELAND ......10 JAMAICA........1 BARBADOS.......1 LEST SOME OF US FORGET! Lets remember that the majority of Brits who were part of Battle of Britain were not ex public schoolboys, but ordinary working class young men and women. The public school boys mostly went into the Army and some the Navy but the Air Force at that time was completely dependent on ordinary lads and lasses. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2016 12:43:58 GMT
Lets remember that the majority of Brits who were part of Battle of Britain were not ex public schoolboys, but ordinary working class young men and women. The public school boys mostly went into the Army and some the Navy but the Air Force at that time was completely dependent on ordinary lads and lasses. Is that true? They always seemed to speak with a plum in their mouths, and were incredibly young
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Post by ARENA on Sept 15, 2016 12:49:19 GMT
Unfortunately history is always papered over to make it seem better.
The winners were always the good guys ,who played by the rules. The losers were despicable.
How did Prince Charlie get to be Bonnie Prince Charlie the pride of Scotland? He was the Nigel Farage of the day. A total reject whom no one liked.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2016 15:22:46 GMT
Unfortunately history is always papered over to make it seem better. The winners were always the good guys ,who played by the rules. The losers were despicable. How did Prince Charlie get to be Bonnie Prince Charlie the pride of Scotland? He was the Nigel Farage of the day. A total reject whom no one liked. Because he stood up to the hated English in the same way that Farage stood up against the hated EU |
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Post by ARENA on Sept 15, 2016 15:27:51 GMT
Unfortunately history is always papered over to make it seem better. The winners were always the good guys ,who played by the rules. The losers were despicable. How did Prince Charlie get to be Bonnie Prince Charlie the pride of Scotland? He was the Nigel Farage of the day. A total reject whom no one liked. Because he stood up to the hated English in the same way that Farage stood up against the hated EU Charles is perhaps best known as the instigator of the unsuccessful Jacobite uprising of 1745, in which he led an insurrection to restore his family to the throne of Great Britain, which ended in defeat at the Battle of Culloden that effectively ended the Jacobite cause. Jacobites supported the Stuart claim due to hopes for religious toleration for Roman Catholics . The Scots didn't want him or an RC monarchy and they certainly didn't want Farages Nazi lies. |
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Post by HILD on Sept 16, 2016 11:47:39 GMT
Lets remember that the majority of Brits who were part of Battle of Britain were not ex public schoolboys, but ordinary working class young men and women. The public school boys mostly went into the Army and some the Navy but the Air Force at that time was completely dependent on ordinary lads and lasses. Is that true? They always seemed to speak with a plum in their mouths, and were incredibly young
It is very true, some were posh and some had qualified as pilots before the war but on the whole they were ordinary people who were capable of passing the tests to become a pilot. At the start of the war the Air Force was quite small and the rate at which it lost pilots meant class couldn't be a deciding factor. Typically posh kids went into the army like their fathers before them, with some families it was the Navy. The Fleet Air Arm wasn't that high on their list and neither was the Air Force. A few posh kids might join up for the 'adventure' but let's not forget that it wasn't just a pilot in most planes and it wasn't just a pilot on the ground either.
War Films from the 40s/50s have a way of presenting people in the lead roles as always posh and very plummy, there's usually a Cockney, a Scot, sometimes a Welshman, now and then a Yorkshire lass etc. in the lower ranks, but normally someone 'awfully ever' so plays the pilot and his lady wife. There is often some young kid who you know is going to cop it in there for the pathos - War films still often do the young kid who either dies or ends up getting the sergeant killed. Don't forget that most actors in those days went to elocution lessons and they were very popular lessons for anyone wanting to get a job in a bank or the civil service!!
The female pilots came from all sorts of backgrounds and are often forgotten, but if they hadn't flown the replacement planes from the factories at night in the blackout with no maps to guide them we would have lost the Battle of Britain most likely anyway. Amy Johnson died during the war on such a mission.
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Post by lana on Sept 17, 2016 9:27:33 GMT
The female pilots came from all sorts of backgrounds and are often forgotten, but if they hadn't flown the replacement planes from the factories at night in the blackout with no maps to guide them we would have lost the Battle of Britain most likely anyway. Amy Johnson died during the war on such a mission.
There was a terrific documentary on the BBC about these courageous women a while back... Here's a short clip... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b0zts |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 11:15:04 GMT
The female pilots came from all sorts of backgrounds and are often forgotten, but if they hadn't flown the replacement planes from the factories at night in the blackout with no maps to guide them we would have lost the Battle of Britain most likely anyway. Amy Johnson died during the war on such a mission.
There was a terrific documentary on the BBC about these courageous women a while back... Here's a short clip... www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b0ztsI sometimes wonder just how "courageous" these women and the men who signed up really were Yu have to remember the tremendous pressure from their communities to "do their bit" with questions often being asked by their peers of those who seemed to be not doing anything to help the cause The propaganda was very effective for everyone to do their bit
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Post by lana on Sept 17, 2016 14:25:27 GMT
I sometimes wonder just how "courageous" these women and the men who signed up really were Yu have to remember the tremendous pressure from their communities to "do their bit" with questions often being asked by their peers of those who seemed to be not doing anything to help the cause The propaganda was very effective for everyone to do their bit
You can wonder all you like,gus. I don't |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 17, 2016 14:51:58 GMT
I sometimes wonder just how "courageous" these women and the men who signed up really were Yu have to remember the tremendous pressure from their communities to "do their bit" with questions often being asked by their peers of those who seemed to be not doing anything to help the cause The propaganda was very effective for everyone to do their bit
You can wonder all you like,gus. I don't I wonder because I remember what it was like during those awful days |
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Post by aubrey on Sept 17, 2016 16:35:01 GMT
I'd have thought that both signing up and not signing up would have taken a lot of courage; signing up would be easier at the start - just going with the flow - but not so once things had got going.
I'm basing this on autobiographies - Brian Aldiss, for one, and Kingsley Amis and Anthony Burgess - though the latter two did no actual fighting, they did not know that would happen when they joined. Aldiss wrote the thing (in a series of novels very closely based on his own experiences) as a sex comedy, with the hero more interested in getting laid than anything else ("A Soldier Erect" is the title of one of them).
Orwell seems to have signed up (for the Spanish Civil War) without a qualm; he tried to do the same in WW2, knowing exactly what it would be like, amd that he would probably be killed, but was stopped on health grounds.
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