The Lost Soldiers

[Danhar1960]

Some here may not have seen this on Sunday Night.
Hundreds of pictures just found of Aussies in France in (Circa 1916).
Quite a few Enfields in there too.
They are looking for living relatives of those in the pictures. Maybe you recognise someone in there.

http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/...-lost-diggers/

Danny

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[RJW NZ]

awesome, thank you for posting it

[Brian Dick]

When I went to France with DRP in July 2009, we went to the town of Fromelle where they were doing a huge excavation of an Australian mass grave there. Maybe Roger can elaborate on the exact history behind it as I was a bit overwhelmed with it all. I sure hope I can get back over again one day. The tour was one of the highlights of my life. We did a whirlwind from the Somme to Ypres in two days. I never get tired of absorbing the history. War is such a testament to the stupidity of the human race. What a terrible waste of fine young men.

[RJW NZ]

One of the most stomach churning ww1 photos I saw was our troops heading single file up to the front for one of those big famous battles and along side them several very long empty pits were being dug, they were mass graves in readiness for the dead soldiers that the battle would produce. What a moral booster, how those men didn't take a rifle bullet to the drunken generals in charge I'll never know.

[Roger Payne]

Hmmm. Thanks guys. Glad to see you enjoyed the trip Brian......as soon as you can, come over again & we'll spend a little more time over there. My home is yours.................
Yep, I saw those photos a few weeks ago when my son (works for a TV company & is very clued up on the latest news & topical events), dropped his dad an email about them.
I suspect they are from the large batch that Dominique Zanardi of The Tommy Bar in Pozieres acquired. He has copies of many of them on the wall in his bar.

Yes, Fromelles was a complete & utter foul up of the first order. A joint British & Australian attack to pressurise the Germans enough to stop them sending reserves Southwards to The Somme.
It was The Aussies first taste of combat on The Western Front, & one that left a bitter taste in their mouths, even though the casualties there were soon to be dwarfed by those sustained on The Somme at Pozieres & Mouquet Farm.

I don't want to ruffle any feathers; the waste of young men's lives in any war is self-evidently tragic, but I lean a little more to the revisionst view on the generals. Some of them were out of their depth in modern war, & all were naive to the new technologies that were adapted to killing, but many did learn, & learn well. Haking & Gough were perhaps not the best (though ironically Gough was stellenbosched for his BEST performance in the field by holding the British line in the face of the almost overwhelming German onslaught of Operation Michael on 21/3/18). The line bent precariously, but never broke, yet a scapegoat was required & it came down to him or Haig. Look, however, at Plumer; a real soldier's soldier, meticulous & careful. Rawlinson, whilst not without his deficiencies, commanded the most efficient fighting force in the field during the final 100 days advance from August 1918 to the armistice....................................
I think much of the problem was that the ability to kill surpassed the ability to communicate; even just 25 years later new gadgets such as paratroops, landing craft, walkie talkies, apc's etc existed, which were not even dreamed of in WW1.

Sorry, I'm rambling. I'm obviously spending too much time over there.

ATB

[bearhunter]

You know, one thing that resonates through this site and most other sites of this nature is an interest in history and of course firearms. That being said it just goes to show you how unfairly painted we are by the antis. I can't think of anyone on this site that thinks war and its atrocities on the average everyday man is a glorious or vaunted thing. We all deeply appreciate the courage and sacrifices made by men serving in and out of uniform for the people and principles they believe in. Many are unwilling but do it anyway and do it very well. Many are willing, not because they lust for the glory of battle but because it is a way of life they can appreciate and fit into.
We all agree war is a terrible thing for a good reason, it is. Looking at the middle east right now really makes me wonder. It just never seems to stop. We all know better and don't want or like war but we can't seem to rid ourselves of the sociopaths in politics.
These battlefields and mass graves are a testament of man's frail existence. Reasonable men and women will go out of their way, oft times leading to their own demise because they would rather die than kill someone else. I don't know if that's a trained reflex or a naturally occurring condition?

I do know that everyone here is fascinated by history, firearms and fine soldiers, no matter what uniform or bag of rags they wear. We all admire courage and self sacrifice. That is a very good thing in my opinion.

I won't go into my feelings about the politicians that create these sporadic anomalies in our lives, I just feel there should be better ways of serving our fellow human beings without having to face perfectly decent people at the other end of a weapon sight. I know it can't be helped, but like everyone here, I don't like it one bit and the waste is unforgivable.

[fergs]

By the witnessing of these photos and by studying them we do honour to them in even a very small way. It is a window back into our forebears pasts with which we can understand even for the breifest of glimpses how they lived breathed and behaved. Yes we all collect milsurps for our own reasons, but id like to think that by research and by collecting these fine peices of humanities injinuity that we keep a small peice of history alive. All of the boer war and ww1 vets are gone now, how long before ww2 vets are gone. Then the only links to these conflicts will be the weapons, equipment and the stories of there sacrifice and there journey.
seek and preserve.
Regards
Fergs

[Brian Dick]

America lost her last WW1 veteran this week.

[Roger Payne]

You know, I've just got back from work. Sometimes I wonder about humanity; with some of the abject drivel I have to listen to all day; but visiting the forum restores my faith in humanity. I consider myself lucky to have so many on-line friends (most of whom I've never met face to face), who are so thoughtful, caring & perceptive; & who share my interest in history & the weapons used by the combatants therein. It is a pleasure to share knowledge & views with you gents............!

ATB

[boltaction]

I agree. Most of my friends who collect have a deep interest in history. I have a fascination with history. I consider myself lucky because in my profession I get to meet a lot of elderly patients, and always take their social history. My staff laugh at me when I find an old vet and can recite where he/she served. A few years back I saw, in the space of three weeks, a Canadian tank commander who lost most of his crew at Ortona when he jumped out of his tank on one side after it was hit, and they jumped out the other and got hit, a German artilleryman who was missing part of an ear from an American grenade fragment, an ex-pat British bomber pilot who flew over Germany, an Austrian who served as a Panther driver on the Russian front from '43-45 (!), and a few people who were civilians in East Europe, Holland, and Germany during the war and afterwards. All have fascinating stories to tell, most very hard to listen to at times, but all part of history. I like to hold my Brown Besses, Martinis, Rosses, Enfields and Mausers and wonder about the men who carried them, wonder who it was who carved his initials in the Boer Mauser (and what happened to him), and what my Kar98a manufactured in 1916, with a Reichswehr property mark and a Wehrmacht reissue date of 1940 has seen. I try to imagine what it would be like carrying a Mauser T Gewehr or a MG08/15 (the "light machine gun") through the mud along with a pack, ammo, helmet etc, and how terrifying it would be to be ordered over the top no matter which side you were on. It's neat to see a G98 sitting next to an SMLE in the safe--do they talk to each other? By knowing history, we honour the people who made it. I think that a full course in history should be absolutely mandatory for anyone entering politics, as it leads to a greater understanding of the world's situation.

Ed