17-9-2 Garand Picture of the Day

[Mark in Rochester]

Wearied by long marches on foot, a Turkish U.N. solider sits astride a mule he took from an enemy soldier in Korea on May 5, 1951. He ambushed the advancing Chinese and grabbed the mule for use in directing stragglers to the rear in ruins of Uijongbu during the recent communist offensive

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[CINDERS]

36 years previously our forefathers and theirs were trying to kill each other on the Gallipoli peninsula, how the passage of time alters things......!
As the campaign had just started on Sunday 25th April 1915 so was just 10 days old.

[Ovidio]

36 years previously our forefathers and theirs were trying to kill each other on the Gallipoli peninsula, how the passage of time alters things......!
As the campaign had just started on Sunday 25th April 1915 so was just 10 days old.

My Grandpa said something like that in the far 1986.
We were having an Austrian boy of same age (16-17) as host for teaching him Italian, while me and my brother then went to his home for learning German.
My Grandpa, at that time 86 years old and WWI + WWII veteran (he joined at 17 as officer in the bersaglieri an remained until 1922 as occupation troops in Austria) looked at us joking and being friends and suddenly said: guys, imagine that 70 years ago you would have been killing each other. How much better it is right now.
He never talked about WWI. He lost his elder brother Ovidio (1898 class, fallen in July 1918 on the Piave during a brief counteroffensive to straighten the lines) and suffered a lot because of that.
But he was elated by the fact that we, Italian and Austrian boys, were very good friends at that time.

[CINDERS]

I think Ovidio after the May truce to bury the 0000's of Turkish dead our diggers gained a respect for the Turkish soldier that they never lost as they saw him as good as they were and treated him accordingly I cannot say that any of the German officers if captured were given the same respect but Abdul or Jacko well he was alright in their eyes.

Sadly all the years and countless deaths have led us to an incipient enemy that preys on the weak to gain fear from the many and is hard to find the other is a lunatic of a regime that knows nothing else but blind obedience and now he has the Hydrogen bomb with his finger on the button!

[Ovidio]

I read a wonderful book about Gallipoli some years ago.
Will look for it.
It was really a great reading!

[CINDERS]

See if you can remember the title of it Ovidio I have a few on that campaign if I do not have that one I may be in the mix to buy a copy.
Cheers.

[Ovidio]

Hi Cinders, it's Gallipoli, by L. A. Carlyon.
One of yours?

[CINDERS]

I must say the Author rings a bell I may have stored that one to make room as the collection is fairly large and growing, but here is a small book that shows the painting was on the wall as a fruitless endeavor for anyone interested in Australian WWI battles. Its pretty frank in the exchanges between the Author and the Prime Minister of Australia.

[Ovidio]

Thanks. I'll look for it. Gallipoli is one of the most interesting chapters of WWI in my opinion.