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Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest
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TOPIC: Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest
#64788
Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
On behalf of God; bless these soldiers who have killed human beings.
I find it all rather strange.
Are there Fields of Remembrance for German soldiers who died killing people because their Government told them to?
 
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#64789
veritas

Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
I met an East Berliner after the wall came down. He was for a time a neo-nazi and then went the other way and became a socilaist.

What he couldn't get over was that his father was in the Resistance in Poland and after the war they all got nothing.

Meanwhile all the old Nazi officers or their widows were on generous state pensions for decades after 1945!
 
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#64793
Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
JK2006 wrote:
Are there Fields of Remembrance for German soldiers who died killing people because their Government told them to?

I believe so, yes.
 
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#64796
SJB
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Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
I venture to suggest, JK, that you sometimes don't give due credit to how different views were about national identity and international relationships 100 years ago.

WW1 soldiers were quite prepared to "bash the Bosch" for King and country, having never seen or met a German, nor ever having travelled outside Britain before. So, perhaps it was easier to have a them-and-us attitude and see the enemy as unlike us and therefore not as people or as humans. Interestingly, many soldiers promptly realised that the enemy was made up of young men exactly like them, and began to wonder about the point of it all.

Nowadays, our old European enemies are only a short flight away, or available instantly on email or skype and the similarities are plainly obvious. Indeed, we might think we have more in common with the Germans than with some recently added cultures within British society.

My personal opinion is that WW1 and WW2 remembrance should always carry a note of criticism for the stupidity and futility of these wars, while recognising the men's bravery and tragedy on a personal level, even though it was not in a worthwhile cause.
 
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Last Edit: 2010/11/09 15:20 By .
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#64800
Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
I'm uncomfortable about the media's reluctance to differentiate between conscripted and professional soldiers. The poor souls who fought in the world wars were young - and quite old - people who were ordered to fight. Nowadays you have people who have consciously chosen to serve as a career (thanks in part to some quite outrageous advertising campaigns that imply everyone else is too cowardly to take part). Watching those two uber-career soldiers, Princes William and Harry, help glorify the cause niggles me far more than priests mourning the dead.
 
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#64801
Jim

Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
Perhaps a better question is, "Are there Fields of Remembrance for our victims?"

Best Wishes,
Jim
 
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#64803
Tim

Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
Jim wrote:
Perhaps a better question is, "Are there Fields of Remembrance for our victims?"

Best Wishes,
Jim


Were fascists intent on shoving some into gas ovens and others into subjection the mere 'victims' of those who had the temerity to resist, or is this just meek liberal claptrap?

Best wishes,
Tim
 
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#64806
Jim

Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
Thanks Tim,

What's your point?

Best Wishes,
Jim
 
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#64807
Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
Is it just me, or does anyone else, on seeing the word "liberal" rendered as an insult, start wondering exactly how illiberal the views of the writer might be?

I don't, for the record, subscribe to the view that we shouldn't recognise the sacrifice of the fallen of two world wars. I have deeper misgivings about more recent military adventures, Let's leave it at that.
 
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#64816
Re:Field of Remembrance blessed by a priest 14 Years, 8 Months ago  
I think the adjectives applied to such words as 'liberal' or 'conservative' are the pertinent things. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the actual terms themselves, except for imprecision - hence the adjectives. (Hence 'wet' Conservatives, limp Liberals and 'New' Labour. And all of the rival socialisms and communisms rated in Marx and Engels' Manifesto.)
 
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