Old Soldiers (rest in peace)
View allAll Photos Tagged servicewomen
In memory of all our brave servicemen, servicewomen and serviceanimals who lost their lives during time of war, armed conflict and peace keeping. We will remember them.
The Vietnam Women's Memorial is a memorial dedicated to the women of the United States who served in the Vietnam War, most of whom were nurses. It serves as a reminder of the importance of women in the conflict. It was designed by Glenna Goodacre and dedicated on November 11, 1993. (1/16/2017).
April 25 is Australia and New Zealand's war memorial day, ANZAC Day ** and is marked by dawn ceremonies, street parades and commemorations right around both countries in memory of those who served and those who paid the supreme sacrifice with their lives. I have chosen a different shot to commemorate this special day with a mural dedicated to them and those who helped and continue to help those who have returned and those left behind by the curses of war. That we should see our world engulfed in another as we speak after all the lessons we should have learned to avoid them is absolutely shameful.
Lest We Forget.
A Life Long Promise - Jodi Connolly (2018)
Jodie Connolly’s moving mural, A Life Long Promise, honours the integrity, history and the unwavering service to the community of Legacy House, a community pillar for the many Brisbane families who lives were affected through war over the past century. It’s tucked away in small commercial area, just off Fish Lane, opposite Saccharomyces Beer Cafe. The poem in the centre is particularly poignant.
The promise to care for and support the families of those who served their country and did not make it home, or were incapacitated, came from one "Digger"* to another in a foxhole in WWI at the battle of Pozieres, France in 1916.
In Brisbane this promise has been honoured and maintained by dedicated people in our community for nearly a century. Legacy House provides essential services and support to a vast number of our Australian servicewomen and men's families. This mural pays tribute to those who served, supported and committed themselves to the original promise all those years ago.
Apologies about the tight shot but it's a big mural in a very narrow spot!
* About the word "Digger"
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digger_(soldier)
** About ANZAC Day
"Honoring the Multitudes" was accepted for Photo Story 2018, Photojournalism Category - Photo Club Kumanovo (Kumanovo, Macedonia)
1.) A trinket box. Sold in craft stores. Usually displayed in a living room or a hallway at one's residence.
2.) A box where medals are displayed. Used by someone-anyone, ie: athletes, servicewomen and servicemen to display their medals.
3.) Many many years and wars ago, servicemen believed if one saw their shadow on the ground, prior to their boots hitting the ground, they would be coming home "just a shadow in a box."
Today is Memorial day in the USA. Many honor with remembrance the fallen soldiers that have served our country. We have ceremonies, parades and Memorial Day Sales!!!!! We play baseball, have the 1st BBQ of the year, and we open the pool. We "put the flag out."
Banks, post offices and governmental buildings are closed. Its a Holiday. Its the American Way.
Today is Memorial Day in the USA. Many honor with remembrance fallen anti-war activists that have served our country.
May our shadows, globally, never be seen.
Marvin Gaye - Whats Going On
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
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No Group Banners, thanks.
Join us for a Party every night in the Army OneSource Sims.
slurl.com/secondlife/Army OneSource VIII/94/102/32%c2%a0
We now have 4 public Sims. Come explore!
Memorial Day
Seaport Village, San Diego, California
With the retired aircraft carrier the Midway as a backdrop, the life size statues depict Bob Hope, as he did so frequently, expressing his thanks and entertaining men and women of the armed services.
Nikon D800
Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 at 26 mm
1/200 sec at f/5.6 ISO 100
Memorial Day, May 29, 2017
1986. Land Rover. C117 PUX. Green. 2500cc. Diesel.
Event: Bolsover 40s Fest. October 2022
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
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No Group Banners, thanks.
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
--
No Group Banners, thanks.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander War Memorial
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island servicemen and servicewomen fought and died for Australia.
They have served in every conflict and most peacekeeping missions in which Australia has been involved from the Boer War until the present day.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have served in defence of our country, but service policies have not always provided the opportunity for them to identify their cultural heritage upon enlistment.
This memorial is sited on the land of the Kaurna people adjacent to the River Torrens: Karrawirra Pari-ityangka “in the vicinity of the red gum forest river”, to recognise and commemorate the service and sacrifice of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have served Australia.
Today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Servicemen and Servicewomen continue to represent their people and their country as valued members of the Australian Defence Force.
Lest We Forget.
Dedicated by Her Excellency the Honourable Quentin Bryce AC CVO, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia and Marjorie Anne Tripp, formerly WRANS, 10 November 2013.
Excerpt from www.kitchener.ca/en/resourcesGeneral/Documents/DSD_ECDEV_...:
Jenny Wren // Frances Gage // 1972 Bronze Cambridge Libraries & Galleries, Queen’s Square
Artist, Frances Gage is well known for her commemorative sculptures. Jenny Wren is a national monument to the women who served in Canada’s Navy during World War II in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service. Between 1942 and 1945 over 6,000 Wrens from across Canada came to what was then Galt for their basic training before going to their wartime assignments.
Excerpt from cambridgepoppyproject.ca:
Jenny Wren Statue - Queen's Square Idea Exchange (Galt)
Team Lead: Danny Ingrouville
Located in front of the Idea Exchange near the Cenotaph, this statue was given to the city of Galt in October 1972 by the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (or Wren's) who completed their basic training in Galt during WWII (1943-45). This was the first statue to commemorate servicewomen in Canada. Our installation around Jenny will feature poppies incorporated in an original work of art by Artist Danny Ingrouville.
Each year on Memorial Day those of us in the United States honor our military men and women who have fallen in service to our country.
"Anzac Day, 25 April, is one of Australia’s most important national occasions. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.
ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The soldiers in those forces quickly became known as Anzacs, and the pride they took in that name endures to this day.
Australians recognise 25 April as a day of national remembrance, which takes two forms. Commemorative services are held across the nation at dawn – the time of the original landing, while later in the day, former servicemen and servicewomen meet to take part in marches through the country’s major cities and in many smaller centres. Commemorative ceremonies are more formal, and are held at war memorials around the country. In these ways, Anzac Day is a time at which Australians reflect on the many different meanings of war.
It is often suggested that the Dawn Service observed on Anzac Day has its origins in a military routine still followed by the Australian Army. The half-light of dawn was one of the times favoured for launching an attack. Soldiers in defensive positions were woken in the dark before dawn, so by the time first light crept across the battlefield they were awake, alert, and manning their weapons; this is still known as the “stand-to”. As dusk is equally favourable for battle, the stand-to was repeated at sunset.
From tiny outback hamlets to the capital cities, the solemn strains of the Last Post will sound as wreaths are laid and heads bowed in contemplation of war time loss."
This small video is just a snippet of the Dawn Service held at Montville, Qld that I felt was quite uniquely Australian.
Kodak T-Max 100, 4" x 5", 80 iso, Normal development in 510 Pyro Developer, 1:100, 7:45 minutes, 24C. Taken August 2022, Ebony SV45TE 4" x 5" Field Camera. Fujinon W 125mm Lens.
This photo shoot was a lot of fun. It was for a local breast cancer charity. We dressed up a dozen ladies as Rosie the Riveter, and posed them with a World War II Spitfire. This was an attempt to replicate an old vintage photograph of a group of servicewomen in WWII posing with a similar aircraft.
1986. Land Rover. C117 PUX. Green. 2500cc. Diesel.
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
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No Group Banners, thanks.
Aberdeen Scotland has many iconic buildings dating back many years with a magnificent documented history archived, this lodge or as some refer to the building as gatehouse at Trinity Cemetery in the heart of the city is my favourite, the sun was bright and shone directly on the cemetery as I drove past on my way to Aberdeen Harbour on Saturday May 29th 2021, I parked my car and spent an hour to capture and archive the views.
I have a dedicated album to this site here on Flickr where I have archived my shots from various visits over the years , please peruse to appreciate this magnificent well maintained Aberdeen Cemetery .
Just north of Aberdeen's city centre lies Aberdeen (Trinity) Cemetery and Broadhill Extension, which contain the graves and memorials of over 270 Commonwealth servicemen and women of the two World Wars and is maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
The port city of Aberdeen played an important role in both world wars. The city was the home of the Gordon Highlanders infantry regiment, while servicemen of the Royal Navy Reserve based out of Aberdeen's port swept the waters of the North Sea for enemy mines. Trinity Cemetery, which dates from the turn of the 19th-20th century, contains the graves and memorials to over 170 First World War and over 100 Second World War service personnel, including two servicewomen.
Known locally as Trinity Cemetery, Aberdeen (Trinity) Cemetery and Broadhill Extension are on either side of Park Road, north of the city centre. Park Road is close to the esplanade and runs past Aberdeen city football ground. The entrances to the cemeteries are on opposite sides of Park Road, south of the football ground.
Trinity cemetery was opened in 1887. It is on a large site located to the north of the city centre, near the beach adjacent to Aberdeen football stadium.
It comprises two sections. The westerly section is the larger of the two with the later 20th century easterly extension (originally a gravel pit) located on the other side of Park Road. Both sections slope upward from this road. The official main entrance is at the west end, where the cemetery lodge can be seen, with access via Errol Street.
The westerly section contains approximately 5600 stones naming a little over 14000 individuals.
The eastery extension is smaller, containing approximately 3300 stones with a little over 7300 named individuals.
The earliest date found recorded in the extension was 1891 though the vast majority of the stones date from the 1940's to the present time.
Trinity is a large 'open' cemetery consisting mainly of grass and gravel walkways. There are few bushes and even fewer trees. It is well maintained but the lack of the aforementioned trees or larger shrubs gives it a somewhat stark appearance.
The advantage of this layout however is that you can see the whole cemetery from practically anywhere within the grounds. A wonderful view can be had from the top of the cemetery, with the whole grounds before you. Beyond this lies a view of the beach and the North Sea.
In 1940 a German aircraft tried to destroy the gasometer in the adjoining gas works (the site is now occupied by an apartment complex). They failed in that quest but evidence of the 'strafing' can still be seen on some of the memorials located to the south-east of the site.
To see how this blasted chunks out of these granite memorials gives you some idea of the power behind these armaments. It must have been terrifying to be caught in such a raid.
There are just a few memorials showing artistic distinction, nearly all of which are in the original cemetery grounds. The easterly extension site is dominated by a large memorial to those who gifted their bodies to medical science. This is located at the top of the easterly section, extreme left.
Sharing the shadow.
This is a statue of JH "Jack" Cock who fought in WWI. He was from Nelson in New Zealand, and survived the Gallipoli landing only to be injured (and invalided home) a few days later. Then he returned to Egypt and went to the Western Front where he was injured again. This time he was not allowed to return to the army, so he joined the airforce, where he was killed in flight. For a long time his name was not commemorated in the main Nelson memorial areas, and in the past few years this has been rectified and he now stands overlooking the returned servicemen and servicewomen graves.
Blythe wanted to visit him this April for ANZAC Day (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps). Blythe's Mum (me!) often walks around the cemetery in Summer and says "hi" to Jack. This particular day, Blythe wanted to give Jack a hug and to thank him for his service and all he did. Blythe's Mum found it hard to photograph Blythe and Jack due to the shadows from the sunlight. In the end, it seemed fitting that Blythe would share the shadows with Jack.
COMMON SECURITY FOR OUR COMMON HUMANITY
"At moments of great peril in the last century, American leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John F. Kennedy managed both to protect the American people and to expand opportunity for the next generation. What is more, they ensured that America, by deed and example, led and lifted the world -- that we stood for and fought for the freedoms sought by billions of people beyond our borders.
As Roosevelt built the most formidable military the world had ever seen, his Four Freedoms gave purpose to our struggle against fascism. Truman championed a bold new architecture to respond to the Soviet threat -- one that paired military strength with the Marshall Plan and helped secure the peace and well-being of nations around the world. As colonialism crumbled and the Soviet Union achieved effective nuclear parity, Kennedy modernized our military doctrine, strengthened our conventional forces, and created the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress. They used our strengths to show people everywhere America at its best.
Today, we are again called to provide visionary leadership. This century's threats are at least as dangerous as and in some ways more complex than those we have confronted in the past. They come from weapons that can kill on a mass scale and from global terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy. They come from weak states that cannot control their territory or provide for their people. And they come from a warming planet that will spur new diseases, spawn more devastating natural disasters, and catalyze deadly conflicts.
To recognize the number and complexity of these threats is not to give way to pessimism. Rather, it is a call to action. These threats demand a new vision of leadership in the twenty-first century -- a vision that draws from the past but is not bound by outdated thinking. The Bush administration responded to the unconventional attacks of 9/11 with conventional thinking of the past, largely viewing problems as state-based and principally amenable to military solutions. It was this tragically misguided view that led us into a war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged. In the wake of Iraq and Abu Ghraib, the world has lost trust in our purposes and our principles.
After thousands of lives lost and billions of dollars spent, many Americans may be tempted to turn inward and cede our leadership in world affairs. But this is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, and the world cannot meet them without America. We can neither retreat from the world nor try to bully it into submission. We must lead the world, by deed and by example.
Such leadership demands that we retrieve a fundamental insight of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy -- one that is truer now than ever before: the security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission of the United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.
The American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. To see American power in terminal decline is to ignore America's great promise and historic purpose in the world. If elected president, I will start renewing that promise and purpose the day I take office.
MOVING BEYOND IRAQ
To renew American leadership in the world, we must first bring the Iraq war to a responsible end and refocus our attention on the broader Middle East. Iraq was a diversion from the fight against the terrorists who struck us on 9/11, and incompetent prosecution of the war by America's civilian leaders compounded the strategic blunder of choosing to wage it in the first place. We have now lost over 3,300 American lives, and thousands more suffer wounds both seen and unseen.
Our servicemen and servicewomen have performed admirably while sacrificing immeasurably. But it is time for our civilian leaders to acknowledge a painful truth: we cannot impose a military solution on a civil war between Sunni and Shiite factions. The best chance we have to leave Iraq a better place is to pressure these warring parties to find a lasting political solution. And the only effective way to apply this pressure is to begin a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces, with the goal of removing all combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008 -- a date consistent with the goal set by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. This redeployment could be temporarily suspended if the Iraqi government meets the security, political, and economic benchmarks to which it has committed. But we must recognize that, in the end, only Iraqi leaders can bring real peace and stability to their country.
At the same time, we must launch a comprehensive regional and international diplomatic initiative to help broker an end to the civil war in Iraq, prevent its spread, and limit the suffering of the Iraqi people. To gain credibility in this effort, we must make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq. We should leave behind only a minimal over-the-horizon military force in the region to protect American personnel and facilities, continue training Iraqi security forces, and root out al Qaeda.
The morass in Iraq has made it immeasurably harder to confront and work through the many other problems in the region -- and it has made many of those problems considerably more dangerous. Changing the dynamic in Iraq will allow us to focus our attention and influence on resolving the festering conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians -- a task that the Bush administration neglected for years.
For more than three decades, Israelis, Palestinians, Arab leaders, and the rest of the world have looked to America to lead the effort to build the road to a lasting peace. In recent years, they have all too often looked in vain. Our starting point must always be a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel, our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. That commitment is all the more important as we contend with growing threats in the region -- a strengthened Iran, a chaotic Iraq, the resurgence of al Qaeda, the reinvigoration of Hamas and Hezbollah. Now more than ever, we must strive to secure a lasting settlement of the conflict with two states living side by side in peace and security. To do so, we must help the Israelis identify and strengthen those partners who are truly committed to peace, while isolating those who seek conflict and instability. Sustained American leadership for peace and security will require patient effort and the personal commitment of the president of the United States. That is a commitment I will make.
Throughout the Middle East, we must harness American power to reinvigorate American diplomacy. Tough-minded diplomacy, backed by the whole range of instruments of American power -- political, economic, and military -- could bring success even when dealing with long-standing adversaries such as Iran and Syria. Our policy of issuing threats and relying on intermediaries to curb Iran's nuclear program, sponsorship of terrorism, and regional aggression is failing. Although we must not rule out using military force, we should not hesitate to talk directly to Iran. Our diplomacy should aim to raise the cost for Iran of continuing its nuclear program by applying tougher sanctions and increasing pressure from its key trading partners. The world must work to stop Iran's uranium-enrichment program and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is far too dangerous to have nuclear weapons in the hands of a radical theocracy. At the same time, we must show Iran -- and especially the Iranian people -- what could be gained from fundamental change: economic engagement, security assurances, and diplomatic relations. Diplomacy combined with pressure could also reorient Syria away from its radical agenda to a more moderate stance -- which could, in turn, help stabilize Iraq, isolate Iran, free Lebanon from Damascus' grip, and better secure Israel.
REVITALIZING THE MILITARY
To renew American leadership in the world, we must immediately begin working to revitalize our military. A strong military is, more than anything, necessary to sustain peace. Unfortunately, the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps, according to our military leaders, are facing a crisis. The Pentagon cannot certify a single army unit within the United States as fully ready to respond in the event of a new crisis or emergency beyond Iraq; 88 percent of the National Guard is not ready to deploy overseas.
We must use this moment both to rebuild our military and to prepare it for the missions of the future. We must retain the capacity to swiftly defeat any conventional threat to our country and our vital interests. But we must also become better prepared to put boots on the ground in order to take on foes that fight asymmetrical and highly adaptive campaigns on a global scale.
We should expand our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the army and 27,000 marines. Bolstering these forces is about more than meeting quotas. We must recruit the very best and invest in their capacity to succeed. That means providing our servicemen and servicewomen with first-rate equipment, armor, incentives, and training -- including in foreign languages and other critical skills. Each major defense program should be reevaluated in light of current needs, gaps in the field, and likely future threat scenarios. Our military will have to rebuild some capabilities and transform others. At the same time, we need to commit sufficient funding to enable the National Guard to regain a state of readiness.
Enhancing our military will not be enough. As commander in chief, I would also use our armed forces wisely. When we send our men and women into harm's way, I will clearly define the mission, seek out the advice of our military commanders, objectively evaluate intelligence, and ensure that our troops have the resources and the support they need. I will not hesitate to use force, unilaterally if necessary, to protect the American people or our vital interests whenever we are attacked or imminently threatened.
We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability -- to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities. But when we do use force in situations other than self-defense, we should make every effort to garner the clear support and participation of others -- as President George H. W. Bush did when we led the effort to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. The consequences of forgetting that lesson in the context of the current conflict in Iraq have been grave.
HALTING THE SPREAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS
To renew American leadership in the world, we must confront the most urgent threat to the security of America and the world -- the spread of nuclear weapons, material, and technology and the risk that a nuclear device will fall into the hands of terrorists. The explosion of one such device would bring catastrophe, dwarfing the devastation of 9/11 and shaking every corner of the globe.
As George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn have warned, our current measures are not sufficient to meet the nuclear threat. The nonproliferation regime is being challenged, and new civilian nuclear programs could spread the means to make nuclear weapons. Al Qaeda has made it a goal to bring a "Hiroshima" to the United States. Terrorists need not build a nuclear weapon from scratch; they need only steal or buy a weapon or the material to assemble one. There is now highly enriched uranium -- some of it poorly secured -- sitting in civilian nuclear facilities in over 40 countries around the world. In the former Soviet Union, there are approximately 15,000-16,000 nuclear weapons and stockpiles of uranium and plutonium capable of making another 40,000 weapons -- all scattered across 11 time zones. People have already been caught trying to smuggle nuclear material to sell on the black market.
As president, I will work with other nations to secure, destroy, and stop the spread of these weapons in order to dramatically reduce the nuclear dangers for our nation and the world. America must lead a global effort to secure all nuclear weapons and material at vulnerable sites within four years -- the most effective way to prevent terrorists from acquiring a bomb.
This will require the active cooperation of Russia. Although we must not shy away from pushing for more democracy and accountability in Russia, we must work with the country in areas of common interest -- above all, in making sure that nuclear weapons and material are secure. We must also work with Russia to update and scale back our dangerously outdated Cold War nuclear postures and de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons. America must not rush to produce a new generation of nuclear warheads. And we should take advantage of recent technological advances to build bipartisan consensus behind ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. All of this can be done while maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent. These steps will ultimately strengthen, not weaken, our security.
As we lock down existing nuclear stockpiles, I will work to negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material. We must also stop the spread of nuclear weapons technology and ensure that countries cannot build -- or come to the brink of building -- a weapons program under the auspices of developing peaceful nuclear power. That is why my administration will immediately provide $50 million to jump-start the creation of an International Atomic Energy Agency-controlled nuclear fuel bank and work to update the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. We must also fully implement the law Senator Richard Lugar and I passed to help the United States and our allies detect and stop the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction throughout the world.
Finally, we must develop a strong international coalition to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and eliminate North Korea's nuclear weapons program. Iran and North Korea could trigger regional arms races, creating dangerous nuclear flashpoints in the Middle East and East Asia. In confronting these threats, I will not take the military option off the table. But our first measure must be sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy -- the kind that the Bush administration has been unable and unwilling to use.
COMBATING GLOBAL TERRORISM
To renew American leadership in the world, we must forge a more effective global response to the terrorism that came to our shores on an unprecedented scale on 9/11. From Bali to London, Baghdad to Algiers, Mumbai to Mombasa to Madrid, terrorists who reject modernity, oppose America, and distort Islam have killed and mutilated tens of thousands of people just this decade. Because this enemy operates globally, it must be confronted globally.
We must refocus our efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the central front in our war against al Qaeda -- so that we are confronting terrorists where their roots run deepest. Success in Afghanistan is still possible, but only if we act quickly, judiciously, and decisively. We should pursue an integrated strategy that reinforces our troops in Afghanistan and works to remove the limitations placed by some NATO allies on their forces. Our strategy must also include sustained diplomacy to isolate the Taliban and more effective development programs that target aid to areas where the Taliban are making inroads.
I will join with our allies in insisting -- not simply requesting -- that Pakistan crack down on the Taliban, pursue Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, and end its relationship with all terrorist groups. At the same time, I will encourage dialogue between Pakistan and India to work toward resolving their dispute over Kashmir and between Afghanistan and Pakistan to resolve their historic differences and develop the Pashtun border region. If Pakistan can look toward the east with greater confidence, it will be less likely to believe that its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban.
Although vigorous action in South Asia and Central Asia should be a starting point, our efforts must be broader. There must be no safe haven for those who plot to kill Americans. To defeat al Qaeda, I will build a twenty-first-century military and twenty-first-century partnerships as strong as the anticommunist alliance that won the Cold War to stay on the offense everywhere from Djibouti to Kandahar.
Here at home, we must strengthen our homeland security and protect the critical infrastructure on which the entire world depends. We can start by spending homeland security dollars on the basis of risk. This means investing more resources to defend mass transit, closing the gaps in our aviation security by screening all cargo on passenger airliners and checking all passengers against a comprehensive watch list, and upgrading port security by ensuring that cargo is screened for radiation.
To succeed, our homeland security and counterterrorism actions must be linked to an intelligence community that deals effectively with the threats we face. Today, we rely largely on the same institutions and practices that were in place before 9/11. We need to revisit intelligence reform, going beyond rearranging boxes on an organizational chart. To keep pace with highly adaptable enemies, we need technologies and practices that enable us to efficiently collect and share information within and across our intelligence agencies. We must invest still more in human intelligence and deploy additional trained operatives and diplomats with specialized knowledge of local cultures and languages. And we should institutionalize the practice of developing competitive assessments of critical threats and strengthen our methodologies of analysis.
Finally, we need a comprehensive strategy to defeat global terrorists -- one that draws on the full range of American power, not just our military might. As a senior U.S. military commander put it, when people have dignity and opportunity, "the chance of extremism being welcomed greatly, if not completely, diminishes." It is for this reason that we need to invest with our allies in strengthening weak states and helping to rebuild failed ones.
In the Islamic world and beyond, combating the terrorists' prophets of fear will require more than lectures on democracy. We need to deepen our knowledge of the circumstances and beliefs that underpin extremism. A crucial debate is occurring within Islam. Some believe in a future of peace, tolerance, development, and democratization. Others embrace a rigid and violent intolerance of personal liberty and the world at large. To empower forces of moderation, America must make every effort to export opportunity -- access to education and health care, trade and investment -- and provide the kind of steady support for political reformers and civil society that enabled our victory in the Cold War. Our beliefs rest on hope; the extremists' rest on fear. That is why we can -- and will -- win this struggle.
REBUILDING OUR PARTNERSHIPS
To renew American leadership in the world, I intend to rebuild the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security. Needed reform of these alliances and institutions will not come by bullying other countries to ratify changes we hatch in isolation. It will come when we convince other governments and peoples that they, too, have a stake in effective partnerships.
Too often we have sent the opposite signal to our international partners. In the case of Europe, we dismissed European reservations about the wisdom and necessity of the Iraq war. In Asia, we belittled South Korean efforts to improve relations with the North. In Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina, we failed to adequately address concerns about immigration and equity and economic growth. In Africa, we have allowed genocide to persist for over four years in Darfur and have not done nearly enough to answer the African Union's call for more support to stop the killing. I will rebuild our ties to our allies in Europe and Asia and strengthen our partnerships throughout the Americas and Africa.
Our alliances require constant cooperation and revision if they are to remain effective and relevant. NATO has made tremendous strides over the last 15 years, transforming itself from a Cold War security structure into a partnership for peace. But today, NATO's challenge in Afghanistan has exposed, as Senator Lugar has put it, "the growing discrepancy between NATO's expanding missions and its lagging capabilities." To close this gap, I will rally our NATO allies to contribute more troops to collective security operations and to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization capabilities.
And as we strengthen NATO, we must build new alliances and partnerships in other vital regions. As China rises and Japan and South Korea assert themselves, I will work to forge a more effective framework in Asia that goes beyond bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc arrangements, such as the six-party talks on North Korea. We need an inclusive infrastructure with the countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity and help confront transnational threats, from terrorist cells in the Philippines to avian flu in Indonesia. I will also encourage China to play a responsible role as a growing power -- to help lead in addressing the common problems of the twenty-first century. We will compete with China in some areas and cooperate in others. Our essential challenge is to build a relationship that broadens cooperation while strengthening our ability to compete.
In addition, we need effective collaboration on pressing global issues among all the major powers -- including such newly emerging ones as Brazil, India, Nigeria, and South Africa. We need to give all of them a stake in upholding the international order. To that end, the United Nations requires far-reaching reform. The UN Secretariat's management practices remain weak. Peacekeeping operations are overextended. The new UN Human Rights Council has passed eight resolutions condemning Israel -- but not a single resolution condemning the genocide in Darfur or human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Yet none of these problems will be solved unless America rededicates itself to the organization and its mission.
Strengthened institutions and invigorated alliances and partnerships are especially crucial if we are to defeat the epochal, man-made threat to the planet: climate change. Without dramatic changes, rising sea levels will flood coastal regions around the world, including much of the eastern seaboard. Warmer temperatures and declining rainfall will reduce crop yields, increasing conflict, famine, disease, and poverty. By 2050, famine could displace more than 250 million people worldwide. That means increased instability in some of the most volatile parts of the world.
As the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, America has the responsibility to lead. While many of our industrial partners are working hard to reduce their emissions, we are increasing ours at a steady clip -- by more than ten percent per decade. As president, I intend to enact a cap-and-trade system that will dramatically reduce our carbon emissions. And I will work to finally free America of its dependence on foreign oil -- by using energy more efficiently in our cars, factories, and homes, relying more on renewable sources of electricity, and harnessing the potential of biofuels.
Getting our own house in order is only a first step. China will soon replace America as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Clean energy development must be a central focus in our relationships with major countries in Europe and Asia. I will invest in efficient and clean technologies at home while using our assistance policies and export promotions to help developing countries leapfrog the carbon-energy-intensive stage of development. We need a global response to climate change that includes binding and enforceable commitments to reducing emissions, especially for those that pollute the most: the United States, China, India, the European Union, and Russia. This challenge is massive, but rising to it will also bring new benefits to America. By 2050, global demand for low-carbon energy could create an annual market worth $500 billion. Meeting that demand would open new frontiers for American entrepreneurs and workers.
BUILDING JUST, SECURE, DEMOCRATIC SOCIETIES
Finally, to renew American leadership in the world, I will strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity. Our global engagement cannot be defined by what we are against; it must be guided by a clear sense of what we stand for. We have a significant stake in ensuring that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow.
People around the world have heard a great deal of late about freedom on the march. Tragically, many have come to associate this with war, torture, and forcibly imposed regime change. To build a better, freer world, we must first behave in ways that reflect the decency and aspirations of the American people. This means ending the practices of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries, of detaining thousands without charge or trial, of maintaining a network of secret prisons to jail people beyond the reach of the law.
Citizens everywhere should be able to choose their leaders in climates free of fear. America must commit to strengthening the pillars of a just society. We can help build accountable institutions that deliver services and opportunity: strong legislatures, independent judiciaries, honest police forces, free presses, vibrant civil societies. In countries wracked by poverty and conflict, citizens long to enjoy freedom from want. And since extremely poor societies and weak states provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism, and conflict, the United States has a direct national security interest in dramatically reducing global poverty and joining with our allies in sharing more of our riches to help those most in need. We need to invest in building capable, democratic states that can establish healthy and educated communities, develop markets, and generate wealth. Such states would also have greater institutional capacities to fight terrorism, halt the spread of deadly weapons, and build health-care infrastructures to prevent, detect, and treat deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and avian flu.
As president, I will double our annual investment in meeting these challenges to $50 billion by 2012 and ensure that those new resources are directed toward worthwhile goals. For the last 20 years, U.S. foreign assistance funding has done little more than keep pace with inflation. It is in our national security interest to do better. But if America is going to help others build more just and secure societies, our trade deals, debt relief, and foreign aid must not come as blank checks. I will couple our support with an insistent call for reform, to combat the corruption that rots societies and governments from within. I will do so not in the spirit of a patron but in the spirit of a partner -- a partner mindful of his own imperfections.
Our rapidly growing international AIDS programs have demonstrated that increased foreign assistance can make a real difference. As part of this new funding, I will capitalize a $2 billion Global Education Fund that will bring the world together in eliminating the global education deficit, much as the 9/11 Commission proposed. We cannot hope to shape a world where opportunity outweighs danger unless we ensure that every child everywhere is taught to build and not to destroy.
There are compelling moral reasons and compelling security reasons for renewed American leadership that recognizes the inherent equality and worth of all people. As President Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural address, "To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." I will show the world that America remains true to its founding values. We lead not only for ourselves but also for the common good.
RESTORING AMERICA'S TRUST
Confronted by Hitler, Roosevelt said that our power would be "directed toward ultimate good as well as against immediate evil. We Americans are not destroyers; we are builders." It is time for a president who can build consensus here at home for an equally ambitious course.
Ultimately, no foreign policy can succeed unless the American people understand it and feel they have a stake in its success -- unless they trust that their government hears their concerns as well. We will not be able to increase foreign aid if we fail to invest in security and opportunity for our own people. We cannot negotiate trade agreements to help spur development in poor countries so long as we provide no meaningful help to working Americans burdened by the dislocations of a global economy. We cannot reduce our dependence on foreign oil or defeat global warming unless Americans are willing to innovate and conserve. We cannot expect Americans to support placing our men and women in harm's way if we cannot show that we will use force wisely and judiciously. But if the next president can restore the American people's trust -- if they know that he or she is acting with their best interests at heart, with prudence and wisdom and some measure of humility -- then I believe the American people will be eager to see America lead again.
I believe they will also agree that it is time for a new generation to tell the next great American story. If we act with boldness and foresight, we will be able to tell our grandchildren that this was the time when we helped forge peace in the Middle East. This was the time we confronted climate change and secured the weapons that could destroy the human race. This was the time we defeated global terrorists and brought opportunity to forgotten corners of the world. And this was the time when we renewed the America that has led generations of weary travelers from all over the world to find opportunity and liberty and hope on our doorstep.
It was not all that long ago that farmers in Venezuela and Indonesia welcomed American doctors to their villages and hung pictures of JFK on their living room walls, when millions, like my father, waited every day for a letter in the mail that would grant them the privilege to come to America to study, work, live, or just be free.
We can be this America again. This is our moment to renew the trust and faith of our people -- and all people -- in an America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more."
I visited Methlick this afternoon Wed 18th July 2018 - Methlick (Gaelic: Maothulach) is a village in the Formartine area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, situated on the River Ythan 11.2 kilometres (7.0 mi) north-west of Ellon Aberdeenshire Scotland, a short drive from my home.
First World War memorial, unveiled in 1921, designed by J S Gibson and W S A Gordon, with sculpture by C S Jagger; the builder was Samuel Salter. The memorial was partially reconfigured in the 1970s.
MATERIALS: Portland stone ashlar, with bronze plaques and sculpture.DESCRIPTION: the memorial takes the form of an exedra, with a semi-circular screen enclosing a sunken area. To the inside of the screen are fixed, slightly curved bronze plaques bearing the names of around 4500 of the dead, with those who served in the army to the north, and those who served in the navy to the south; a panel was reserved for the Royal Air Force, and the names of servicewomen are placed in a central position. In the architrave above the plaques is the inscription, ‘THEIR NAME LIVETH FOR EVERMORE’. There are two round-arched openings, each with a wrought-iron gate. The arch to the north leads to a passage under the railway and into Victoria Park; that to the south leads to an area to the north-west of Guildhall Square. At either end, the screen terminates in a segmental rusticated niche with flanking rusticated piers; within each niche is a bronze-painted urn above a stone seat. Above, set within the broken entablature, is a carved trophy – clustered weapons bristle above a shield flanked by oak and laurel branches, surrounded by scrolled acanthus, the whole topped by a crown. At the centre of the memorial three stone steps surround the cenotaph pier, which has relief carving of wartime scenes on land and at sea to each side, including marching soldiers, and a naval gun crew in action; there is a Greek-key cornice above. The pier is surmounted by a gadrooned sarcophagus urn. A plaque on the cenotaph reads, ‘THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY THE PEOPLE OF PORTSMOUTH IN PROUD AND LOVING MEMORY OF THOSE WHO IN THE GLORIOUS MORNING OF THEIR DAYS FOR ENGLAND’S SAKE LOST ALL BUT ENGLAND’S PRAISE. MAY LIGHT PERPETUAL SHINE UPON THEM.’ The front of the memorial is partially enclosed by a stone balustrade, completing the circle; the balustrade originally extended to the east, curving inwards. Part of the balustrade has been reused to create a screen between the memorial and the north-west part of Guildhall Square. The entrance to the memorial, to the east, is marked by stone pedestals, each holding a seated sculptural figure: to the south is a sailor with a Lewis gun and to the north is a soldier with a Vickers gun. These sculptures were originally set parallel to each other, facing forwards and flanking the entrance when it was further east; in their new position they are slightly angled, opening out the entrance. A plaque on the north plinth notes that the memorial was erected by public subscription; a plaque on the south plinth commemorates its unveiling. A stone tablet on the north plinth was placed in 2003: ‘TO HONOUR ALL THOSE WHO DIED / SERVING THEIR COUNTRY IN / TIMES OF PEACE OR CONFLICT / ‘WE WILL REMEMBER’’.
1943. Mack. OSU 349. Green. 1943. 707cc. Petrol.
Event: Bolsover 40s Fest. October 2022
The Mack NO 7+1⁄2-ton 6x6 truck was a heavy 6x6 cargo truck designed in the 1940s by the American manufacturer Mack Trucks. It was used by the U.S. Army as an artillery tractor for heavy artillery during and after World War II.
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
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No Group Banners, thanks.
Originality, it is said, usually means coming from somewhere else. "Somewhere else" can be many places: another time, another culture, the other gender, despair, madness-- anywhere, except familiar here and everyday now. John Lennon has told of his first magical meeting with Yoko Ono, when he wandered into her one-woman show at the Indica Gallery in London on November 9, 1966, a pivotal date in the ferment remembered as the Nineteen Sixties, and was intrigued, as well as mystified, by what he saw. Invited by Ono to pay five shillings to hammer a nail into a piece of plain wood shown as artwork, Lennon made a counter-offer: "Well, I'll give you an imaginary five shillings and hammer an imaginary nail in." "That's when we really met," Lennon later recalled. "That's when we locked eyes and she got it and I got it, and, as they say in all the interviews we do, the rest is history."
All lovers know the moment when complicity leaps like an electric spark, but in their case, founded on what? Outwardly, the two had nothing in common. Lennon had come from the "genteel poverty" of a dysfunctional working-class family, via art school and sweaty teen-age dance hangouts in Liverpool, England, and Hamburg, Germany, to world fame and an honorable fortune as a rock-and-roll musician, composer, and role model for the first generation of Western youth to remember nothing of World War Two. Ono, seven years his senior, remembered all too well the apocalyptic end of Japan's Pacific War, the hunger and despair that had followed the defeat and enemy occupation which she had seen at first hand. But her own roots were in wealth and privilege: her mother Isoko came from the Yasuda banking family, and her father, Eisuke Ono, himself a banker by profession, descended from a long line of samurai warrior-scholars. Yoko had known little personal experience of deprivation, and had been educated among Japan's business and intellectual elite. Just the same, like had recognized like, at that mythic London meeting.
Why? The explanation lies half-buried under the decades of Japan's new prosperity. By 1966 Lennon, was emerging as one of the gurus of the disillusioned, questing mood called "The Sixties" in the West. Yoko Ono had been there, spiritually, long before. Something very like the mood of the Sixties first took shape in Tokyo in the late 1940's; Japan's confused, hungry years were the "somewhere else" Yoko Ono came from. Even then, and there, it was the amalgam, rather than any of its elements, that was really new. Radical pacifism and politicized feminism had both erupted in spiritually defeated Europe after the First World War, where they had found artistic voices in the instant arts of gesture and performance, made somewhat more durable by photographs, and in the perversely intellectual anti-intellectualism of Dada.
Bereft of social and political protest, however, Dada became just another style, and it was as an avant-garde style that Dada in the 1920's reached Japan, which had suffered next to nothing, and gained much, by the First World War. By the late 1940's, however, after the Second World War, Japan was in a state of despair even deeper and longer-lasting than Europe had known after the first war and by the mid-fifties Japanese art had found a similar expression, this time not as an imported style but with its own emotional authenticity. Japanese ingredients, notably the cerebral anti-intellectualism of Zen Buddhism, flavored a mixture which was original, distinctive, and more than the sum of its parts. Yoko Ono was the prophetess who, with the help of John Lennon, brought the amalgam to a West at long last ready to reconsider its own values. By different paths, Lennon and Western youth had arrived at a need, Ono at its fulfillment. More justifiably than most lovers, John and Yoko knew, in an instant of enlightenment at the Indica Gallery, that they were of one mind.
Ono's Upbringing
Ono's route to the rendezvous was the more devious of the two. She was born in Tokyo on February 18, 1932, the year Japan set up a puppet state in Manchuria, a long step towards the catastrophe of 1945. Two weeks earlier, her father had been transferred to San Francisco with the Yokohama Specie Bank, the financial arm of Japan's expanding empire. His wife and daughter soon followed, and Yoko from infancy heard both English and Japanese, the foundation of her subsequent bilingualism. In the spring of 1937 as Japan began full-scale war in China Yoko, her mother and younger brother Keisuke, born in December 1936, returned to Tokyo, where Yoko was enrolled in the kindergarten of the Peers' School, a Tokyo institution then open only to relatives of the Imperial family or of members of the House of Peers (her maternal grandfather, the banker Zenjiro Yasuda, had been ennobled in 1915). In 1940 Yoko's mother, fearing that all Japanese might be interned if Japan and the United States went to war and that she might not see him for many years, bravely rejoined her husband, by this time stationed in New York, taking her two children. The family sailed from San Francisco for the last time in the spring of 1941. At the time of Pearl Harbor Yoko's father was working in the Hanoi branch of his bank while Yoko was enrolled in a Christian primary school in Tokyo, run by one of the Mitsui family for Japanese children returned from abroad.
Takasumi Mitsui's school gave Yoko a safe and liberal refuge for most of the war. She continued studying in English and was listed as a primary school student well after her twelfth birthday, when most boys and girls her age became liable for war work, often risky. She was still living in Tokyo and being privately tutored in The Bible, Buddhism and the piano when a quarter of the city was burnt out in the great fire raid of March 9, 1945-- an inferno she survived in the Ono family bunker in the affluent
Azabu residential district, far from the incinerated downtown. Only then did her mother move her three children to a small farming village near the still fashionable Karuizawa mountain resort. The choice of refuge proved fortunate, as Yoko and her brother and sister, in the desperate days of the defeat and the collapse of the Japanese economy, were able to help their mother barter family treasures for food. One notable deal yielded sixty kilograms of life-sustaining rice for a German-made sewing machine. At the end of the war the family returned to Tokyo, where Yoko rejoined the re-opened Peers' School in April, 1946.
Founded in Tokyo in 1877, the Peers' School, like its rough equivalents Eton in England and Groton in the United States, has been more noted for social than for academic status. Its campus near the Imperial Palace survived the fire raids more or less intact, and its first post-war intake was like the pre-war ones. When the peerage was abolished in 1947 the school became theoretically open to anyone, including foreign exchange students (a classmate of the present Crown Prince Naruhito was the son of a plumber from Melbourne, Australia) but, like Tokyo itself, the Peers' School has since recovered much of its high-society glitter.
The view from the school windows, however, has changed beyond recognition. When Yoko and her classmates looked outside the school's high walls in the spring of 1946 they saw a city all but returned, as General Curtis E. LeMay Jr., U. S. Army Air Corps, had promised, to the Stone Age. Whole districts were sterile wastelands of twisted iron and blackened stones. People lived in holes clawed in the ground, roofed with stray sheets of metal. On every corner of what had once been shopping streets, famished men and women tried to sell trinkets, clothes, anything for food. Every train from the countryside brought farmers loaded with rice and vegetables for the black market. In makeshift bars in dank cellars, workers formed lines to gulp industrial alcohol. To sharpen the misery, smartly-turned-out, well-fed American soldiers tootled around the ruins in jeeps, driving on the side of the road they were accustomed to, the right-- the rare Japanese vehicle simply got out of the way. In a terminal degradation of Japanese martial values, American servicewomen smiled for souvenir snaps in rickshaws pulled by Japanese men still wearing the tattered remnants of military uniforms, eyes turned down in exhaustion, hunger and shame. Few would have recognized in this desolate scene the seedbed of a great and original flowering of art and cinema-- unless they had seen Berlin in 1919, or Moscow before Stalin.
Japan under occupation was a paradox; democracy imposed by a conqueror under the iron rule of General Douglas MacArthur, "the Macarto," more autocratic than any shogun had been for centuries. The occupation supposedly freed the Japanese press, but two weeks after it began, occupation censorship was imposed, and mention of what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for instance, was blue-pencilled. The predictable result was to turn the atomic bombs into monstrous symbols of evil, beyond all rational discourse, in which shape they haunt Japanese and the rest of us to this day. Some accused Japanese war criminals were arrested and leisurely trials began; but Emperor Hirohito, who (as all but a handful of the Japanese elite believed) had directed Japan's war in person was free to visit the conqueror-- and the resulting photograph, of a stiffly correct Emperor and a showily casual general, was as ambiguous as the occasion. The trials were intended to show the Japanese their war crimes-- but the Soviet judge was from the nation that still held a half-million Japanese as war prisoners, many never to see homes and families again.
Most Tokyo residents, like those of any war-devastated city, were engrossed in the search for food and shelter. Even from an island of privilege like the Peers' School, the world outside no longer made sense. That America's war had been wholly just ("the justest war in history," U.S. propaganda claimed) and therefore Japan's totally unjust was by no means so clear to these puzzled young people as it was to the victors. Yes, there had been crimes and cruelties, on both sides, and who could strike the balance? And how could these crimes have been averted? The best answer seemed to be that war itself was to blame. Pacifism has been, for Japanese, the most enduring legacy of those years: "make love not war," the slogan of the Western sixties, well expresses the mood of Tokyo in 1946, as of starving Berlin in 1918. Right up to the present, PEACE (a brand of cigarette) and LOVE (with an arrow-pierced heart) are English words almost every Japanese knows.
Postwar Pacifism
More than a half-century on, any Japanese politician who suggests that Japan might one day go to war again is sure of an angry reaction. We have proof, from the Peers' School itself, that pacifism impacted with particular force on Yoko Ono's generation. Prince Akihito, now Emperor of Japan, returned there, as she did, in April 1946 from the same mountain refuge, the Karuizawa area, and saw the same fire-ravaged cityscape from its windows. The Crown Prince was tutored in English and world history by an American, Elizabeth Gray Vining, selected by Emperor Hirohito with full knowledge that her Quaker faith enjoins strict pacifism. Thirty-four years later, when Akihito acceded to the throne he swore to uphold the constitution, the first Japanese emperor ever to do so-- and to Japanese this can only mean Article Nine, renouncing war. One of the new Emperor Akihito's first official duties was to plant a tree in Nagasaki, whose mayor, Hitoshi Motoshima had not long before been shot and seriously injured by a right-wing fanatic after urging Japanese to reflect on their role in World War II, for which, said the mayor, Emperor Hirohito "shared responsibility." Meeting the mayor-- it could not have been by chance-- Hirohito's eldest son wished him a speedy recovery. Within the restraints of his office, Yoko's schoolmate could not have made his abiding pacifist views plainer.
Feminist agitation was more prominent in Japan's early post-war years than it has ever been since. Women were given the vote by the largely American-written 1946 constitution, and pressure from the new female members of parliament finally led in 1958 to the abolition of the licensed brothels, into which poor girls had been sold into debt slavery. The law making adultery a crime for wives but not for husbands was repealed in 1947. A few professions, notably teaching, introduced equal pay. However, the feminism that reverberated in the Japan of the post-war years was less ideological than situational, the feminism of hard times. War, especially in Japan, has been a hyper-masculine pursuit, with the homoeroticism found in all military societies.
The utter defeat of 1945 temporarily, perhaps permanently, discredited the warrior ethos. Strong, resourceful women like Yoko Ono's mother, who had kept homes and families afloat through eight years of war saw Japan's surrender as simply another man-made crisis to be somehow survived. Thousands of Japanese women, "pan pan girls," prostituted themselves to American soldiers, often for food for their families. Others hired out as the victors' maids, cooks and nannies. In close to a millennium, only one part of the English-speaking world has known such total defeat. Novelist Margaret Mitchell, in Scarlett O'Hara, imagined a strong woman's response to the shipwreck of Southern male pretensions very like the reaction of many Japanese women in 1945. In Woman is the Nigger of the World by Yoko Ono and John Lennon, we can hear, behind the offensive racial slur, the anger of a privileged girl at what her humbler sisters had once had to do, just for survival.
One of the first arts to revive in Japan was cinema, by which a mass audience could be reached for the price of a seat in a drafty hall. The great director Akira Kurosawa had a script in shape for his enigmatic Rashomon as early as 1947, although he took until 1950 to find finance and finish it. Its theme, the impossibility of arriving at reliable truth about any event by way of the self-serving distortions of witnesses and participants, was a plain parable of Japan's situation. The first voice to speak from within defeated Japan and be heard outside, Rashomon began the process, still incomplete, of explaining the pariah nation to a suspicious world. Kurosawa had added an important aside to the bleak vision of Ryunosuke Akutagawa, who wrote the two stories on which it is partly based and suicided, at thirty-five, in 1927. Kurosawa's addition has the woodcutter, one of the witnesses whose version of the rape of a samurai's wife and the murder of her husband by a bandit cannot be trusted, adopt a baby abandoned by the ruined city gate which gives the film its name. Life, says the film, goes on, the human spirit rebounds, there is always hope. A quarter-century later, John Lennon was to climb a ladder at the Indica Gallery and through a magnifying glass read the one word Yoko One had written on the gallery's ceiling, YES. "At least" Lennon later recalled, "her message was positive."
Kurosawa apart (Rashomon won the gold cup at the 1950 Venice film festival and became an international hit) all that the outside world heard from Japan in the immediate post-war years came through the propaganda megaphone operated by the U.S. occupation. MacArthur's headquarters censored not only what the Japanese media reported in Japan, but what the corps of foreign correspondents stationed in Tokyo could send to their readers. The publication of John Hersey's searing Hiroshima (1946), the century's most influential piece of journalism, was only possible because Hersey wrote it in the offices of the New Yorker, far from the occupation's censors.
The year 1945 in fact marked the sharpest discontinuity between generations in all Japanese history, but few outside Japan could distinguish this reality from the claims of MacArthur's personal publicity machine-- and, as with all such breaks with the past, much continued unchanged, and a reverse current soon set in, guided by the same occupation authority. What many Japanese still remember as the years of post-war democracy all too soon ended. The role in the world assigned to Japan was changing. In 1949 the Soviets broke the U.S. nuclear monopoly, the Chinese Communist Party won its civil war, and the Korean War broke out in June, 1950. Already the occupation had begun its "reverse course." No longer an enemy to be punished and reformed, Japan became a potential ally to be courted for the threatened new world war with communism. Korean war spending, the opening of the huge U.S. market to Japanese products, the revival of Japan's wartime production system with its close ties between banks, bureaucrats and favored industrialists-- the celebrated "Japan Inc."-- got Japan back on the dual road to economic recovery and social counter-revolution.
Good times, however, are not necessarily propitious for the arts. By 1951, when Yoko Ono graduated from the Peers' School, the creative ferment of the postwar years was subsiding, as everyday Japan settled down to take advantage of the "reverse course" and its material payoffs. Feminism stalled, Japan's new pacifism was entangled in the alliance with the nuclear-armed U.S. Early in 1952 Yoko was accepted by the philosophy faculty of her school's associated Peers' University as its first female student of that most cerebral of disciplines, but after two semesters she dropped out. Approaching her twentieth birthday, her most impressionable years behind her, Ono rejoined her family in Scarsdale, New York, where her father was once again a banker. She enrolled in nearby Sarah Lawrence College, then strong in the visual arts (painter Bradley Walker Tomlin had taught abstract expressionism there). This led her to American avant-garde circles, where she experimented with painting, music, film and the various performance arts. By 1962 she was back in Tokyo, exhibiting with some success as a member of the Japanese artistic avant-garde, some of whom called themselves Neo-Dadaists, part of the Dada stylistic revival taking place world-wide.
The original Dada (from French baby-talk "dada," a rocking-horse, a word intended to be meaningless) had arisen first in sidelined, neutral Zurich during the First World War. By 1918 it had spread to Berlin, then to Paris and later to New York. Taking a hint from Marcel Duchamp, who had exhibited a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool as an artwork in 1913, the Dadaists hoped, by exhibiting themeless objects, to condemn the futility of war and to shock the bourgeoisie out of the materialism and complacency the artists believed had exacerbated its horrors. Dada attracted some attention in the European cities plunged into something like the despair of Tokyo in 1945, but by 1924 that war was receding, the bourgeoisie were again complacent, and the Dada movement, bereft of social concern, had retreated into style.
As Japan's America-oriented prosperity grew into the early 1960's, the Japanese neo-Dada movement became similarly fragmented and dispirited. Resistance to the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (ANPO), mostly from students, attracted some of its practitioners; as did opposition to the 1964 Olympics, seen by most Japanese as a milestone in Japan's revival; anti-materialism inspired such notable art as Genpei Akasegawa's Great Japan Zero-Yen Note, mocking the preoccupation of most of his compatriots. But the creative despair of the late 1940's was long gone. Via two failed marriages and a parting from her only daughter, Kyoko, claimed by her American ex-husband Anthony Cox, Yoko again left Japan eventually to find her way to a small London gallery specializing in the avant-garde, then beginning to find the wider audience it always does in times of social upheaval. It took the aristocratic Ono some time to discover what the untutored, instinctual Lennon really had to offer her-- the wide world, as an audience for her art.
Lennon's Trajectory
How had John Lennon reached his side of the mysteriously fated rendezvous at the Indica Gallery in 1966? Born in 1940, his adolescence, the 'fifties, was a time of self-satisfaction in the English-speaking world, of growing affluence, of endless war movies presenting the victors as supermen (but not yet as superwomen-- just as war had deflated the male values of Japanese, it inflated those of the Western winners, whose women were ejected from the jobs they had held while the men were away fighting, and theoretically went back to being full-time housewives and mothers).
Prosperity not known since the 1920's did little for adult women, but a great deal economically for adolescents, now called "teenagers," who commanded real wages and competitively bigger parental allowances in economies finally freed of unemployment. Teenage purchasing power made a new market for records, and the performers correspondingly rich-- none richer than the Fab Four from England, the Beatles.
The Beatles owed their huge success to a creative tension between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who wrote most of their songs-- Paul the syrupy and tuneful, John the tart realist. Advised by their astute manager, Brian Epstein, to present a wholesome image unthreatening to British parents, the Beatles were made Members of the Order of the British Empire (a medal usually given to civil servants like postmasters) in 1965, and they duly acquired wholesome girl friends and/or wives to suit. With a blonde English wife, Cynthia, and an infant son, Julian, Lennon later described feeling "trapped" in "a happily married state of boredom." Money had never been his main motivation-- rather, as wordsmith and intellectual of the partnership, he sought self-expression, meaning expressing the feelings of his contemporaries, the normal rebellion of any generation against the one before it, delayed for Lennon and those who thought like him by the huge (and not unjustified) self-satisfaction of their elders who had won the war, the peace and in their own minds, the game of life itself.
Aimless, shapeless discontent among young people who felt themselves overshadowed and marginalized by the war generation had already inspired James Dean's Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Alan Ginsberg's Howl (1956), John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956), and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957). These one-offs by unknown outsiders, meaningless to mainstream adults, could be ignored-- whereas the Beatles were the Western establishment's own lovable young rascals, with teenage followers in just about every English-speaking home. All that remained to complete the radicalization of youth in the later 'sixties was a new war, a spectacular crisis calling for immediate public action.
I happened to be in Vietnam, covering the first big search-and-destroy operations by American regular troops, in the very same month that Yoko met John. War was again a front-page, news-dominating story. After an on-again, off-again courtship, Lennon left his wife and their posh stockbroker-belt country mansion and set up house with Yoko in a London flat. In 1968 they released Unfinished Music #1: Two Virgins, a collage of electronic sound recorded on their first night together, with a self-shot nude photograph of the couple on the cover. They married in March 1969, promising to stage many "happenings." The wedding was the first, followed by "Bed Peace" in an Amsterdam hotel, then the huge billboard in Times Square, New York: "WAR IS OVER-- if you want it." The two Lennons had become the emblematic leaders of a universal cultural revolution. Long matured, the preoccupations of Yoko Ono's vivid Tokyo adolescence had meshed with John Lennon's energies, and given his showy, empty life a sense of purpose, and her art a world audience. Like the o's in Yoko Ono, another train of political and artistic wheels had at last come full circle.
MURRAY SAYLE, an Australian writer long resident in Japan, contributed this account of the intellectual origins of Yoko Ono, in slightly different form, to the catalogue of the multimedia retrospective "YES YOKO ONO," which opened at the Japan Society Gallery, New York, on October 16, 2000. The exhibition, curated by Alexandra Munroe, director of the gallery, in consultation with Jon Hendricks, curator of the Yoko Ono archive, is scheduled to tour the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston; the List Center for Visual Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and may travel to Asia.
Russian servicewomen march during the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia on May 09, 2018. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)
1986. Land Rover. C117 PUX. Green. 2500cc. Diesel.
Event: Bolsover 40s Fest. October 2022
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
--
No Group Banners, thanks.
1975. Land Rover. KWU 605N. Green. 3860cc. Diesel.
Event: Bolsover 40s Fest. October 2022
Album: 1940s Weekends. 2012-2022
[4K] Bolsover 1940s Fest. Oct 2022
YouTube: youtu.be/CDLEI30RcRA
--
No Group Banners, thanks.
The white marble headstones stretch in solemn symmetry across the rolling hills of Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., creating a powerful visual rhythm that embodies the weight of national memory. This deeply moving scene captures the eternal stillness of America’s most hallowed ground—a final resting place for over 400,000 military service members, veterans, and their families.
Located directly across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery spans over 600 acres of meticulously maintained land. Its history dates back to the Civil War, when it was established on the estate of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, repurposed by the U.S. government as a symbol of reconciliation and remembrance. Today, it remains a solemn landscape where grief, honor, and patriotism intersect.
In the images above, long shadows from bare winter trees fall gently across the manicured grass, adding texture and emotional resonance. Each headstone bears the name, rank, and dates of a life dedicated to service—many marked by quiet heroism, some by profound sacrifice. The view evokes both individual stories and the collective scale of history.
Notably visible in one image is a fresh gravesite—a poignant reminder that Arlington is not just a memorial to the past but an ongoing tribute to those who continue to serve and protect the ideals of democracy. Spring is just beginning to awaken around the cemetery, with buds forming on trees, suggesting renewal and resilience amidst reverent silence.
Arlington is the final resting place of some of the most prominent figures in American history, including President John F. Kennedy and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. But it is also a democratizing space—every stone stands the same height, aligned in perfect military order, reinforcing the idea that in death, rank dissolves and every service matters equally.
The quiet dignity of this place leaves an indelible impression. Visitors often speak in hushed tones, pausing not only to pay respects but to reflect on the enormity of what these stones represent: courage, duty, and the unbreakable bond between the military and the nation it defends.
Russian servicewomen march during the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russia on May 09, 2018. (Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters)
Re-post from last year.
Members of my family who served in either WW1 or WW2.
Anzac Day, 25 April, is one of Australia’s most important national occasions. It marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.
This day has become more and more important to Australians as the years go by and attendances to the commemorative services held around the nation increases yearly. School children have become very involved and each year they march with their parents and grandparents, often wearing the medals that belonged to family members.
My granddaughters marched in an Anzac parade this morning, in their school uniform.
Russian servicewomen march during the Victory Day parade at Red Square in Moscow, Russia on May 09, 2018. (Photo by Maxim Shipenkov/Reuters)
Servicewomen of the Army Air Corps are pictured on parade at Middle Wallop airfield in Hampshire.
The Army Air Corps (AAC) operates alongside the other Combat Arms of the Infantry and Royal Armoured Corps. Combat Arms are those forces that use fire and manoeuvre to engage with the enemy with direct fire systems. The forces providing fire support and operational assistance to the Combat Arms are called Combat Support Forces.
-------------------------------------------------------
© Crown Copyright 2013
Photographer: Peter Davies
Image 45156340.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk
Use of this image is subject to the terms and conditions of the MoD News Licence at www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/fotoweb/20121001_Crown_copyrigh...
For latest news visit www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence
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One of the coolest things to do in DC is to catch the sunrise from where Lincoln sits overlooking the reflecting pool and Washington Monument. On the backdrop of a quickly changing colorful sky, and before the tourists take over, there's a tiny sliver of time when locals jog up to wink at, blow kisses to, point to, make peace signs at and yell out "you da man" to Lincoln. #dailyritual
It was during this time I came across several service-men and -women taking a group photo. Just wanted to recognize those that serve, that have served and remember those that have fallen. Thank you!
Happy Memorial Day!
Thank you for serving our country !
Picture taken at
Arcadia Park
405 S Santa Anita Ave
Arcadia, CA 91006
Found this cool, patriotic mural on an old building in Downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Thank you to all the servicemen and servicewomen who fight for my freedom each and every day!!
Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D5200 and combined with Photomatix to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.
"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11
Finally, I thought it appropriate to share this... After over a year of increasingly dividing Americans, it's pretty demanding of politics to expect unity to be restored on November 9th. The truth of the matter is, that's gonna take some time, especially considering this particularly vicious election cycle. So here's something to help foster that along: today is Veteran's Day. No matter which party you're a member of – and even though it's late in the day when I'm posting this – we can, and moreover should, all take a moment to thank our military men and women, both active duty and retired, for their service. I think you'll agree that their sacrifices are of more importance to recognize than griping about the election.
This picture is of the flag in front of Landers Buick GMC along Goodman Road in Southaven. More photos are uploading tomorrow.
(c) 2016 Retail Retell
These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)
I visited this memorial today after the service had taken place , captured a few shots to archive on this 100 year anniversary.
100 years have passed, many lost their lives so that we can live ours today, I post some of the photos I have taken of monuments, war graves etc that I have captured on my visits to various areas across Scotland, I post to honour these heroes.
They may no longer be with us - the last of their number, Harry Patch, died in 2009, aged 111 - but we will remember them.
Around the country thousands of people will pay tribute on Sunday to those who died on foreign soil or at sea for their country, and those at home who endured the anguish and hardship of global war.
On the 100th anniversary of the Armistice events will take place in every corner of the British Isles to commemorate the sacrifice of a generation during the First World War, which only came to an end at 11am on November 11, 1918, after an almost incalculable loss of life.
The numbers still have the power to shock.
Between 1914 and 1918, 886,345 UK troops were killed. Another 228,569 troops from the wider British Empire were killed, more than 74,000 of them from India.
Each one was a son, father, husband or brother who willingly or not, whether with courage or almost paralysed by fear, died in a conflict whose causes and conclusion were beyond their control.
In addition there were 6.32 million civilians killed when total war visited their communities, 109,000 of them in the UK , 300,000 in France and 426,000 in Germany.
The acts of remembrance being organised to commemorate this loss will be as varied as they will be moving.
They range from the formal state occasion of the National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph, where Prime Minister Theresa May and the Prince of Wales will lay wreaths, and a special service at Westminster Abbey being attended by the Queen and other senior members of the Royal family, to the Yorkshire town of Otley, where posters will be hung on more than 100 doors to remember the man who lived there but never returned from the front line.
In addition each house in the town will also display a knitted poppy, with another 16,000 installed along the railings outside of All Saints Parish Church.
The familiar chimes of Big Ben will mark the centenary of the Armistice, despite the clock tower being covered in scaffolding for conservation works.
The 13.7 tonne bell, which hangs in the Elizabeth Tower in Westminster, will sound 11 times at 11am today for the traditional two minutes of remembrance.
It will strike a further 11 times at 12.30 with bells ringing across the UK and worldwide as part of a nationwide programme of events to mark the end of the war.
Many of today’s commemorative events have been communal efforts, drawing in whole families to remember the dead.
In the West Midlands town of Walsall almost 100 houses in one street have been covered with 24,000 red poppies and the black silhouette statues of soldiers, symbolising the men from the area who were killed.
Geoff Talbot, 74, one of those who decorated his home, said: "Lots of people have put a lot of effort to do this. In those days Aldridge was only a village, but a lot of local young men left and never came back. It is an absolutely nice way to do a tribute for them."
A huge wall of 2,500 poppies also festoons the Bell Inn in nearby Willenhall, after locals painstakingly knitted the individual flowers by hand over a 24-month period.
The day will not be without the kind of ironic humour one imagines would have been appreciated by the Tommies whose death in their thousands across the Western Front remain embedded in popular memory.
Thwaites brewery, in Lancashire, is honouring one of WWI's Victoria Cross winners by naming the Shire horse that deliver its beer around Blackburn after him.
The two-year-old gelding is being named ‘Drummer’ in honour of the East Lancashire Regiment's first WWI Victoria Cross winner, Drummer John Bent, aged 23.
Bent was commended after saving a soldier from no-man's land and leading his platoon into action under fire after their officers and NCO's were all killed on 1st November 1914, near Le Gheer, Belgium.
Drummer Bent’s was the 24th of a total of 628 VCs awarded during WWI. As well as recalling his heroism, the name 'Drummer' also commemorates the role of thousands of horses in the Great War.
White van driver Christopher Curtis, 32, from Oldham, who served for 11 years as a Sapper in the Royal Engineers, has sketched the silhouette of a soldier standing over a field of poppies with the words "Lest We Forget" in the dirt on the back of his van.
In Bolton, criminals sentenced to unpaid work orders by magistrates were deployed to decorate lamp posts, the town hall and other landmarks in the Lancashire town with 500 giant poppies.
The factory in Aylesford, Kent, that makes poppies has worked around the clock for the first time to meet the unprecedented demand for the symbol of Remembrance Day, producing more than 1,500 a day for the past two and a half weeks
In a measure of the continuity of the tradition of remembrance a box of poppies believed to be from one of the early Poppy Appeals has been discovered in an old suitcase in Cardiff..
Bernie Axtell, 77, found them while searching for paperwork in his home. They are believed to date from before the Second World War and will be brought to the Cenotaph by Royal British Legion representatives today.
Mr Axtell was handed the box of poppies by his friend Vic Luckhurst about 30 years ago, while working for the Legion in Street, Somerset.
“I said to Vic that I would find something special to do with them,” he said. “Thirty years is a very long time to wait, but now they are doing something extraordinary."
In Portsmouth a 24-hour guard of honour was being held at the city’s Cenotaph, with 200 people, including schoolchildren, veterans and serving members of the armed forces, working in 15-minute slots to stand by the monument until 10am today.
Meanwhile silhouettes of soldiers from the First World War have been projected onto famous landmarks around the country by the There But Not There project to raise money for mental health charities. There include Marble Arch, Tate Modern, HMS Belfast, the Angel of the North, the Tyne Bridge, Titanic Belfast and Edinburgh Castle.
In Ilfracombe, Devon, it was the bodies of people that made their mark yesterday, recreating a famous photograph from 100 years ago by spelling out the word ‘peace’ on nearby Capstone Hill to remember those who died so that we might preserve it.
Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington Virginia. Final resting place for approximately 400,000 American servicemen and servicewomen.
I visited this memorial today after the service had taken place , captured a few shots to archive on this 100 year anniversary.
100 years have passed, many lost their lives so that we can live ours today, I post some of the photos I have taken of monuments, war graves etc that I have captured on my visits to various areas across Scotland, I post to honour these heroes.
They may no longer be with us - the last of their number, Harry Patch, died in 2009, aged 111 - but we will remember them.
Around the country thousands of people will pay tribute on Sunday to those who died on foreign soil or at sea for their country, and those at home who endured the anguish and hardship of global war.
On the 100th anniversary of the Armistice events will take place in every corner of the British Isles to commemorate the sacrifice of a generation during the First World War, which only came to an end at 11am on November 11, 1918, after an almost incalculable loss of life.
The numbers still have the power to shock.
Between 1914 and 1918, 886,345 UK troops were killed. Another 228,569 troops from the wider British Empire were killed, more than 74,000 of them from India.
Each one was a son, father, husband or brother who willingly or not, whether with courage or almost paralysed by fear, died in a conflict whose causes and conclusion were beyond their control.
In addition there were 6.32 million civilians killed when total war visited their communities, 109,000 of them in the UK , 300,000 in France and 426,000 in Germany.
The acts of remembrance being organised to commemorate this loss will be as varied as they will be moving.
They range from the formal state occasion of the National Service of Remembrance at the Cenotaph, where Prime Minister Theresa May and the Prince of Wales will lay wreaths, and a special service at Westminster Abbey being attended by the Queen and other senior members of the Royal family, to the Yorkshire town of Otley, where posters will be hung on more than 100 doors to remember the man who lived there but never returned from the front line.
In addition each house in the town will also display a knitted poppy, with another 16,000 installed along the railings outside of All Saints Parish Church.
The familiar chimes of Big Ben will mark the centenary of the Armistice, despite the clock tower being covered in scaffolding for conservation works.
The 13.7 tonne bell, which hangs in the Elizabeth Tower in Westminster, will sound 11 times at 11am today for the traditional two minutes of remembrance.
It will strike a further 11 times at 12.30 with bells ringing across the UK and worldwide as part of a nationwide programme of events to mark the end of the war.
Many of today’s commemorative events have been communal efforts, drawing in whole families to remember the dead.
In the West Midlands town of Walsall almost 100 houses in one street have been covered with 24,000 red poppies and the black silhouette statues of soldiers, symbolising the men from the area who were killed.
Geoff Talbot, 74, one of those who decorated his home, said: "Lots of people have put a lot of effort to do this. In those days Aldridge was only a village, but a lot of local young men left and never came back. It is an absolutely nice way to do a tribute for them."
A huge wall of 2,500 poppies also festoons the Bell Inn in nearby Willenhall, after locals painstakingly knitted the individual flowers by hand over a 24-month period.
The day will not be without the kind of ironic humour one imagines would have been appreciated by the Tommies whose death in their thousands across the Western Front remain embedded in popular memory.
Thwaites brewery, in Lancashire, is honouring one of WWI's Victoria Cross winners by naming the Shire horse that deliver its beer around Blackburn after him.
The two-year-old gelding is being named ‘Drummer’ in honour of the East Lancashire Regiment's first WWI Victoria Cross winner, Drummer John Bent, aged 23.
Bent was commended after saving a soldier from no-man's land and leading his platoon into action under fire after their officers and NCO's were all killed on 1st November 1914, near Le Gheer, Belgium.
Drummer Bent’s was the 24th of a total of 628 VCs awarded during WWI. As well as recalling his heroism, the name 'Drummer' also commemorates the role of thousands of horses in the Great War.
White van driver Christopher Curtis, 32, from Oldham, who served for 11 years as a Sapper in the Royal Engineers, has sketched the silhouette of a soldier standing over a field of poppies with the words "Lest We Forget" in the dirt on the back of his van.
In Bolton, criminals sentenced to unpaid work orders by magistrates were deployed to decorate lamp posts, the town hall and other landmarks in the Lancashire town with 500 giant poppies.
The factory in Aylesford, Kent, that makes poppies has worked around the clock for the first time to meet the unprecedented demand for the symbol of Remembrance Day, producing more than 1,500 a day for the past two and a half weeks
In a measure of the continuity of the tradition of remembrance a box of poppies believed to be from one of the early Poppy Appeals has been discovered in an old suitcase in Cardiff..
Bernie Axtell, 77, found them while searching for paperwork in his home. They are believed to date from before the Second World War and will be brought to the Cenotaph by Royal British Legion representatives today.
Mr Axtell was handed the box of poppies by his friend Vic Luckhurst about 30 years ago, while working for the Legion in Street, Somerset.
“I said to Vic that I would find something special to do with them,” he said. “Thirty years is a very long time to wait, but now they are doing something extraordinary."
In Portsmouth a 24-hour guard of honour was being held at the city’s Cenotaph, with 200 people, including schoolchildren, veterans and serving members of the armed forces, working in 15-minute slots to stand by the monument until 10am today.
Meanwhile silhouettes of soldiers from the First World War have been projected onto famous landmarks around the country by the There But Not There project to raise money for mental health charities. There include Marble Arch, Tate Modern, HMS Belfast, the Angel of the North, the Tyne Bridge, Titanic Belfast and Edinburgh Castle.
In Ilfracombe, Devon, it was the bodies of people that made their mark yesterday, recreating a famous photograph from 100 years ago by spelling out the word ‘peace’ on nearby Capstone Hill to remember those who died so that we might preserve it.
Written on reverse:
THEY MARCH FOR FOUR COUNTRIES
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - KEEPING PERFECT TIME THESE FOUR 'LADY SOLDIERS' MARCH SMARTLY DOWN THE BOARDWALK AT ATLANTIC CITY.
ALTHOUGH THEIR UNIFORMS ARE SIMILAR, THEY REPRESENT FOUR DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.
L - R: Warrant Officer Elizabeth Rapley of Australia, a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service of Great Britain, Corporal Elizabeth Miller, U.S. Women's Army Corps, Corporal Marguerite Duff of the Canadian Women's Army Corps and Private Evelyn Rabut of the Women's Division of the French Air Force.
(found on ebay)