Second World War

Lock-down Level: Scout AMBER-YELLOW Amber-Yellow Activities 10th October 2020 Issue No. 14 Remembrance Day Resources We cannot let Covid 19 stop us from honouring our heroes Britannica Reflections Stories War pics Posters Summary: WW1 Summary: WW2 The Poppy Scout pics Jack Cornwell War poems The Telegraph Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Kimpton Scout District Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Kimpton Scout District ScoutLock-down Amber-Yellow Activities Introduction Lest we forget The social discipline for the control of Covid-19 has It is so important that young people understand what dented normal Scouting considerably and the local passed in the 20th century, to acknowledge the decision requiring the community not to assemble sacrifices, to grasp what the fight was for, and to be for the annual Remembrance Day deals another able to see the seeds of another madness in our blow to our activities and expression. own time. So that Scouts have an opportunity to mark the LDS 14 is a resource pack to be used entirely at the moment, Russell Brooks, DC, has asked Groups leader’s discretion. It is intended to provide material and Sections to include a remembrance reflection for Zoom or face to face meetings. Best of all would within their programmes at an appropriate moment. be to organise a short ceremony, in uniform, and To assist, I have collected together a few topical bring about a sincere contemplation of the lost life items from the internet and other sources to provide and the precious peace we all of us enjoy. thoughts and discussion about the wars and why we keep the memory alive. I want to make clear that the main contributors to the content are the original writers and picture- Phrases like ‘Lest we forget’ have to mean takers available on the internet. Except for the something. As the veterans die there are fewer to reflection on page 3, my pennyworth has been connect us to the struggles while time washes away confined to collation, captions and summary. our collective emotions. No community gathering with its formal solemnities detaches us even further. RV. 11th Nov 1919 Workers and pedestrians in bomb damaged London pay their respects to those killed in the First World War, with a two minute silence, one year after the fighting ceased. The tradition is carried out to this day at 11am on the 11th day of November each year. The first 2-minute silence in London 1919. Press Association archives. p62: Britain at War 2 rv Oct 2020 Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Kimpton Scout District ScoutLock-down Amber-Yellow Activities Reflection A Remembrance Sunday reflection. e speak of remembrance because until not long ago those attending the annual service actually did remember. They recalled the bombs, the killing and lost comrades. Many Wdoing the remembering stood on crutches, or had empty sleeves. They could 'read' the medals on each other's blazers— picking out the campaigns and bravery. Even the young could see the yet-to-be fixed bomb-sites, could meet the veterans and hear their stories. The aftermath of war was in the air and everyone understood that we had lost much blood and treasure, and time had stood still for war. Attending the service didn't need explanation. The impulse for remembrance was automatic and heartfelt. Foreign tyrants had sought to wreck our ways of life and curtail our freedoms but we resisted. We fought, not one but two wars, and each time, though the losses were terrible, we prevailed. A two-minute silence for the fallen felt so right, so deserved, so impossible not to observe. In 1919, the King decreed we will always remember and nations have formally honoured the sacrifices every year since. As decades pass, we now know little of the pain that shaped the last century. We cannot 'feel' the hurt or gauge the loss; cannot know the effort and sacrifice. Yet we must stir ourselves to learn. We owe the fallen our minds to grasp what they did and why. As we reflect, we see that their massive quest in war is still our quest today. We have not been tested as they were tested yet the freedom they won is not granted as a right — it needs the current nation to cherish it and to be its constant guardian. - Know the price our servicemen paid, know the havoc and the fear, know how the world wars changed the course of history. This will teach freedom's value. Know that other peoples were liberated too which shows the wars were not fought selfishly, nor is the lesson lost on us today, that like our forebears, we have responsibility for others. Think on this November day what it would do to our character if we neglected to acknowledge those who gave their lives for the principles of Freedom, Justice and Peace so that we can live as we do. Look on a poppy and see it afresh: at least in your mind's eye, see in its red petals, pictures of heroes crushing tyrants; decode the poppy's meaning and be stirred by its humanity, see flags, see blood, imagine the despair, the tears and the prayers. On this November day, connect, and for two minutes, be part of Remembrance Sunday – and then celebrate your freedom! rv 3 rv Oct 2020 Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Kimpton Scout District ScoutLock-down Amber-Yellow Activities Eyewitness stories 22 April 1915: September 19, 1918, Anthony R Hossack, Lieutenant Colonel John Stewart, of the 9th Battalion, Canada's Queen Victoria Rifles, near the Ypres front Black Watch “...Officers, and staff officers, too, “At zero hour, the artillery stood gazing at the scene, awestruck and bombardment commenced. “To us who had dumbfounded; for in the northerly breeze been waiting anxiously for some minutes, there came a pungent, nauseating smell that tickled the throat and made our eyes it seemed as if some button had been smart. The horses and men were still pressed which discharged every gun on pouring down the road, two or three men the 15 mile front. “The change from on a horse, I saw, while over the fields silence to pandemonium was startling. streamed mobs of infantry, the dusky “They seemed dazed with the volume of warriors of French Africa; away went our fire and too much alarmed by the their rifles, equipment, even their width of the attack to know what to do tunics, that they might run the faster. One man came stumbling through our lines. ...and it was thus, with consummate An officer of ours held him up with ease, that the Highlanders reached, and levelled revolver. dealt with, their various objectives.” “What's the matter, you bloody lot of “During the mopping-up process, a cowards?” says he. The Zouave was complete Turkish battery was discovered, frothing at the mouth, his eyes started the whole of the personnel having been from their sockets, and he fell writhing destroyed by a single shell - horses at the officer's feet…” lying harnessed up, and men at their Part of a report of the first use of poison gas guns, all dead.” www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/ Describing the British attack on enemy trenches in Tabsor, Mesopotamia. Royal Garrison Artillery officer Maurice Laws June 1916 The Somme During the opening bombardment, the Royal Artillery fired over 1.6 million shells. The intensity of the attack was unprecedented. British signaller Harry Wheeler recalled the deafening noise the artillery made. “The firing was going on for weeks beforehand, on and off, and getting heavier. But the bombardment, when that started, it was what I always called the dance of hell. It was Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Shells bursting all the time, you know, guns firing, rather, all the time. It was a dance of hell, right enough. Those poor boys who had to go through it! My God, I shall never get it out of my memory. Yes, the dance of hell”. Cecil Lewis Royal Flying Corps pilot , (On the sight from the air of so many guns in action) “When you had to go right over the lines, you see, you were midway between our guns firing and where the shells were falling. And during that period the intensity of the bombardment was such that it was really like a sort of great broad swathe of dirty-looking cotton wool laid over the ground. And so close were the shell bursts – and so continuous – that it wasn’t just a puff here and a puff there, it was a continuous band. The whole of the ground beneath the darkening evening was just like a veil of sequins which were flashing and flashing and flashing and each one was a gun”. 4 rv Oct 2020 Lock-down Harpenden, Wheathampstead and Kimpton Scout District Scout War pictures: Amber-Yellow Activities The First World War BBC Wright’s first flight occurred only a decade before the war and so aerial warfare was still in its infancy but German gas filled balloons, the Zeppelins, could travel at 85mph and carry 2 tons of bombs. Britain had no defence against them. They were 100 metres long and carried 10,000m3 of hydrogen. When trench warfare became deadlocked, German sent Zeppelins to bomb British cities. Imperial war museum The Germans put technical innovation at the forefront of military thinking to create strategic advantage. For instance, they introduced poison gas and strove to perfect the automatic gun so they could spray bullets in no man’s land. Both major killers in the first world war. The Telegraph Life in trenches: Soldiers spent 8 days in a trench at the front and then 4 days rest in trenches away from the front.

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