Channel Islands Great War Study Group
CHANNEL ISLANDS GREAT WAR STUDY GROUP Le Défilé de la Victoire – 14 Juillet 1919 JOURNAL 27 AUGUST 2009 Please note that Copyright for any articles contained in this Journal rests with the Authors as shown. Please contact them directly if you wish to use their material. 1 Hello All It will not have escaped the notice of many of us that the month of July, 2009, with the deaths of three old gentlemen, saw human bonds being broken with the Great War. This is not a place for obituaries, collectively the UK’s national press has done that task more adequately (and internationally, I suspect likewise for New Zealand, the USA and the other protagonists of that War), but it is in a way sad that they have died. Harry Patch and Henry Allingham could recount events from the battles at Jutland and Passchendaele, and their recollections have, in recent years, served to educate youngsters about the horrors of war, and yet? With age, memory can play tricks, and the facts of the past can be modified to suit the beliefs of the present. For example, Harry Patch is noted as having become a pacifist, and to exemplify that, he stated that he had wounded, rather than killed, a German who was charging Harry’s machine gun crew with rifle and bayonet, by Harry firing his Colt revolver. I wonder? My personal experience in the latter years of my military career, having a Browning pistol as my issued weapon, was that the only way I could have accurately hit a barn door was by throwing the pistol at it! Given the mud and the filth, the clamour and the noise, the fear, a well aimed shot designed solely to ‘wing’ an enemy does seem remarkable.
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