What did Grandad do during the war?

My dad is now nearly 90 and I was born during the last war. During the war he was in REME Bomb Disposals Unit. I often wonder how his experiences really affected him - and the family. One old photo shows him with a bomb being removed from a pit in the ground in a Southern town - he is smiling at the camera!

The above is very touching. My dad was in the Commandos,No 2 or something? and the Black Watch. He did not speak of it much. What I find immeasurably sad though, is the the fact that we have learned not an iota from it all. WE 'shall never forget' is right. Unfortunately, my sons and daughters already have. The poor Jews of Europe, at least had somewhere to flee, given the chance. Imagine the same situation on a small island? Like Timor. The older ,but post war generation, have no time for remembrance. They are too busy doing it all over again. Sorry for my scynicism. And my spelling.

This poem was indeed a hard challenge to myself, my Father used to tell us he was one of the first British Soldiers to enter Belsen Concentration Camp at the end of the war, what he saw that day and days onwards, he found difficult and painful to talk about even many years onwards.

This following poem perhaps reflects what it must have been like to him seeing this as a soldier entering the camp, and also remembering myself from a very old war film based on similar lines


Concentration Camps

Faces were sunken as if into the skull
Heart strings ached, tugged with a pull
Bodies were lying every where around
Silence was deafening hardly a sound

Many asked for food we%u2019d none to give
Surviving only through sheer will to live
The stench of carrion burned at my nose
Some walked about as if the dead arose

Imagine the worst nightmare ever seen
Horrific sights turning stomachs green
Zombies the dead walking right there
Pitiful looks of such torturous despair

We were quite lean fed and watered
Walking amidst near dead or slaughtered
As long as I live this will ever haunt me
Every day passing clear in mind to see

The pains of world war the true evil of man
Tortured souls endless a woman and man
Only with time would these souls yet tell
The very real truth, their sheer living h**l

Poet Christopher Robin 2008

Today we can only begint to imagine what that war was really like

Lord Acton wrote in 1887:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."
Cassy writes: "Wars are made by small men trying to be big men with very few brain cells between them".
The latter is not exactly true, but I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that wars are wrong. I have done quite a bit of research on this topic and I am highly convinced that wars have been created by rich and powerful bankers and corporate elites wishing to consolidate their power even further by their ownership and control of the armaments industry-(note:there is a term used to describe these powerful elite and it is referred to as 'the Illuminati'). It is not widely known that both world wars and many others have been funded and supplied by the same finance and armaments companies, which in turn are run by the powerful elite(big bankers,Illuminati). This is why there is so much confusion about why those wars are perpetuated when all along nationalism is blamed. Firstly, let me tell you that the Federal Reserve (which is neither Federal, nor a reserve)was formed in 1913 with the Federal Reserve Act. The Federal Reserve was formed by a coterie of powerful merchant and commercial bankers (who were likely members of the Illuminati) that thought up the idea of gaining greater power than ever before. They wanted to dominate the world. Some say this is when the term "New World Order" was devised. Their private meetings were held at Jeckyll Island, near New York and with their fingers in powerful pies, which helped to fund and support Woodrow Wilson's rise to power they were able to coerce the naive Wilson into signing the Federal Reserve Act. This meant that the money-making machines were now owned by this group who took advantage of their position by making money from nothing. Instead of the Dollar being based on the gold standard it became reliant on the profits which their new lending ability granted them...in other words the interest made on loans and inflation which is the inflation of the currency to more than it's worth. Now you may ask-what has all of this to do with war?
Well, note that several months after the Federal Reserve Act we have the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand which historians say is likely to be the crucial point where the escalation of WWI began. In fact, although they are in part correct, it is not exactly known in history how much the little coterie of power hungry bankers had conspired to use the weaker elements of nationalist sentiment to arrange for his assassination. In fact, these bankers are very clever and know how to take advantage of the state, its citizens and national sovereignty. How else could we all be so confused as to why war exists and is perpetuated at all. The elite do not care for other humans, but call us "useless eaters" as we are seen to be taking up valuable resources from the earth which they feel is theirs. I could not make all of this up my friends.
As an ex-Forces soldier myself (six years) I have tremendous admiration for the military and the high standard of discipline and regimentalism which has existed for years. Sadly it is exploited by the elite for their own profiteering and imperialism. This is very much the case today too.
I do hope this has enlightened some readers, but if you have any doubts about my facts just type "Federal Reserve" into YouTube
Use your own ability to watch,read and decide about this corrupt system which runs our world...this includes GB.
Enjoy the research.

margarita bennett hits the the nail on the head; there are no winners out of war. The Russian (not Communist, Socialist or anything else) people suffered brutally under the Nazi onslaught and it's actually difficult to get your head round the total figures of slaughter in Russia. On a more humanitarian note, my father served with the RAF during WWII, as a humble aircraftman/driver. In the latter stages (1945) he entered Germany as part of the occupying forces. He came from a less well off family and could not bear to see any child going hungry and often shared what he could out of his own rations
with desperate German children. He only told the family this shortly before his own death. I think there's a message there for all of us.