Heroes all of them
BBC News - Audio slideshow: Portraits of the fallen

 

58,195...... fifty eight thousand one hundred and ninety five

The VietNam Veterans' Memorial Wall Page Photo Gallery

I've been.. and I stood there...and I stood there....

Shaun

 

What about all the other nations, I know it sounds ungrateful but there was over 50 nations involved in Iraq in the end and some 42 in Afghanistan at the moment, a lot of them have suffered losses.

All the same, it is a great gesture.

 

So did I-you don't forget that one.

Les

 

And lets never forget the 72,000 names at Thiepval, 35,000 at Tyne Cot, 54,000 at the Menin gate, Ypres, another 35,000 at Arras..........and others, all of whom have no known grave, they are just "missing".

 

While in Borneo last year, one of the local guides took my wife and I to see a memorial site created in memory of the Austrialian and British soldiers who died in the Sandakan - Ranau death march. Of 2434 POWs who were forced on this journey only six Australians who escaped survived.

The memorial garden has the names, rank and regiment of each soldier who died on the journey. Just one of the pics I took.



More details here if you are interested - can recommend Lynette Silver's book conspiracy of silence, which details the history around the march.

The Sandakan Track - Sandakan-Ranau Death March (1942 - 1945)

 

There are a lot of good books published locally and via the various Regimental Associations written by the men who endured these things - well worth checking out.

Whenever I think things are crap, I remind myself that my Grandfather (a pre-war volunteer in a TA Battalion of the Royal Norfolks [and hence a fellow professional soldier imo, not a conscript!]) was captured by the Japanese in early Feb 1942 whilst involved in the defence of Singapore. He spent the remainder of the war as a "guest" of the Emperor suffering daily beatings, forced work, near starvation, malaria, dysentery... Compared to that, everything kinda pales into insignificance.

It would do many people a lot of good to think about what these men endured - maybe it would stop the whining and the belief that they should have everything given to them on a plate.

 

Prasius

We were made to read this at school....... by our english teacher who was a WW II vet (Col Lund)

The Knights of Bushido: A Short History of Japanese War Crimes: Amazon.co.uk: L. Russell, Lord Russell of Liverpool, Norman Stone: Books

Shocking !!

Shaun