Harry Patch

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Harry Patch

Postby floweredpig » Sat Jul 25, 2009 6:06 pm

Finally the last of a suffering generation have gone,men who gave life,limbs and endured memories that must have been worse than we can every imagine.And yet today reports of a soldier killed in Afghanistan,you would think after what they endured in Ypres,The Somme and all the other visions of hell of that war that we would have learnt something For by my glee might many men have laughed , And of my weeping something had been left , Which must die now.I mean the untold The pity of war,the pity war distilled. Wilfred Owen 1915
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Lone Groover » Sun Jul 26, 2009 5:53 am

RIP Harry.

This bit of news reminded me of a great album I no longer have.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gentle-Bailey-Robb-Johnson-Coomi/dp/B000024WVG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1248587470&sr=1-4

The basic idea is that the men who fought in the wars where husbands fathers uncles brothers etc etc.

Anyone who sees it should buy it. Lovely.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby macdonald » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:24 am

The Scots-born Eric Bogle wrote at least two great WW1 songs. The Pogues interpretaqtion of "And the Band Played Waltzing Mtilda" is particularly good.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby onyirtodd » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:56 am

Fine songwriter Judy Small wrote this about the generations of Australian women who watched their menfolk march off to war on the promise that 'this'll be the last time' :(

Chorus
The first time it was fathers,
The last time it was sons
And in between your husbands
Marched away with drums and guns.
And you never thought to question.
You just went on with your lives.
Cause all they taught you who to be,
Was mothers, daughters, wives.

You can only just remember
The tears your mother shed
As they sat and read their papers
Through the lists and lists of dead.
And the gold frames held the photograghs
That mothers kissed each night.
And the door frames held the shocked
And silent strangers from the fight.

It was twenty-one years later,
With children of your own.
The trumpets sounded once again,
And the soldier boys were gone.
And you drove their trucks and made their guns
And tended to their wounds.
And at night you kissed their photographs
And prayed for safe returns.

And after it was over
You had to learn again
To be just wives and mothers,
When you'd done the work of men.
So you worked to help the needy
And you never trod on toes.
And the photos on the pianos
Struck a happy family pose.

Then your daughters grew to women
And your little boys to men.
And you prayed that you were dreaming
When the call came up again.
But you proudly smiled and held your tears
As they bravely waved goodbye.
And the photos on the mantel pieces
Always made you cry.

And now you're getting older
And in time the photos fade.
And in widowhood you sit back
And reflect on the parade.
Of the passing of your memories
As your daughters change their lives.
Seeing more to our existence
Than just mothers, daughters, wives.

And you believed them!
238 to 127. All in all a good afternoon's work
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby banjo » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:10 pm

onny,i swear i was thinking of that song and the great judy small before i read your post.the anzacs gave the aussie songwriters enough material to las a lifetime.most people will know of eric bogle for the green fields of france and for the band played waltzing matilda but the gift of years is a favourite of mine.only four weeks to go before i go to see him in concert again.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Icecube » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:25 pm

Yes I hope to catch one of EB's concerts this year too and having spent many Anzac Days doonunder I particularly relate to and the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. That said he is not a one song performer by any means.

I read Richard Van Emden's biography of Harry Patch, what a story, not just the war and Paschendale - which really was a short but massive part of his life - but his life in Edwardian England before it and the mid war years after it.
I'd reccomend it to anybody. R.I.P. Harry.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Vinegar Tom » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:24 pm

You probably won't argue with the old guy's verdict on the events he lived through:

""War," he said, "is organised murder, and nothing else." "
Glasgow ya bas!
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby onyirtodd » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:37 pm

Vinegar Tom wrote:You probably won't argue with the old guy's verdict on the events he lived through:

""War," he said, "is organised murder, and nothing else." "


He, and a good many others, survived. Couldn't have been that well organised, could it?
238 to 127. All in all a good afternoon's work
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Dave » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:45 pm

It's a great way of controlling population, or should I say - was

Now mysterious viruses break out without explanation, then spread uncontrolled.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Lucky Poet » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:49 pm

And with that Onny wins the HG Wilfully Obtuse Post of the Week competition.

R.I.P. Mr Patch.
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby onyirtodd » Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:19 pm

Lucky Poet wrote:And with that Onny wins the HG Wilfully Obtuse Post of the Week competition.

R.I.P. Mr Patch.


I've made my feelings re Harry Patch well known elsewhere.

Sleep in peace my soldier laddie, Sleep in peace, now the battle's o'er
238 to 127. All in all a good afternoon's work
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby quietcount » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:09 pm

It is a sad day that the last of the hero's from the first war are gone. R.I.P. Harry Patch.

No one will ever be able to comprehend the horrors these men went through with no help for the suffering for years afterwards. These men deservd the respect and admiration from a nation. But were left to rot in care homes and nursing homes. Forgoten for 364 days a year. With the younger generation resenting the one day a year they were rememberd.
I just wish i could have done more for my own grandfather who lie'd about his age to fight in the first war and then fought in the second war as well.
How many of our soldiers still lie in the corner of some foreign feild. Forgoten in unmarked graves buried by shells.

R.I.P. Harry Patch
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby big jim » Thu Jul 30, 2009 3:53 pm

R.I.P harry patch :(
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Re: Harry Patch

Postby Springburn Boy » Mon Aug 31, 2009 7:36 pm

I wrote this song earlier this year. What got me to pen it was Rememberance Sunday in George Square last year. The very small amount of people who were there to remember the fallen was embaressing. I'd always had the picture in my head of all the Jocks being cheered away to war from the very same packed Square in the 1914 - 18 "Great War"
WAR
Standing here watching
All the soldiers go marching by
14 looking 16
Going off to die
Waving flags and banners
Up in to the sky
A million reasons later
We’re still wondering why
Chorus
Where have you gone?
You waved them off to war
Where have you gone?
On a cold sunny Sunday morn’
Face down in a muddy hole
Cold and all alone
And no matter how hard you cry
There is no way home
Take the Kings shilling son
Conned into a khaki shroud
Nameless bullets over head
Screaming Mother out aloud
Chorus
Where have you gone?
You waved them off to war
Where have you gone?
On a cold sunny Sunday morn’
Every Mothers Angel, Every Fathers son
On each side of the nightmare
Quaking with a gun
Now, in every city,
Town and Village square
They remember those who’ve fallen
But “here” . . . there’s no one there.
Chorus
Where have you gone?
You waved them off to war
Where have you gone?
On a cold sunny Sunday morn’
Where ye gaun wi' that Jobbie?
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