h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've watched and enjoyed both the Service of Rememberence from the Albert Hall and the Cenotaph ceromony for probably over 40 years. Being ex Merchant Navy, memories of the many thousands of merchant seafarers who perished were close. I sailed with men who had sailed in the convoys and being from Merseyside most families had connections with the sea.

This year, for the first time, I detected a background hint of what I can only describe as propoganda for the unpopular wars we are now engaged in. Nobody is a bigger supporter of our service personnel than me, but I think I detected the dead hand of spinning politicos.

I should probably take this convo to the Forum, but I enjoy sharing emotions with Salonistas.

Tippity toe, shhhh, here nice little o come to daddy, gotcha. Now of you go little a, slip in before anybody spots the gap.

During WWII, my dad was a baker stationed in a few places in Europe. An army has to eat, after all.

We have a photo of my paternal grandfather, taken at the age of nineteen just before he went off to Wipers* in WWI.
He was lucky enough to be one who came home, albeit seriously wounded. He went on to train as a doctor, married and raised a family.
He wasn't sent abroad for WWII but did his bit in the Home Guard and used to tell a hilarious story about the night the German Invasion of the North East of Scotland was expected. He and another chap, who later became Emeritus Prof of Anatomy, sat all night defending a bridge over some wee burn with one gun and about six bullets between them.

*Ypres

Morning all.

*raises a glass* Very cross with my employer for not marking 11 o'clock - they usually sound the alarm system to mark the start and end of a silence but for some reason didn't do it yesterday and a lot of people didn't notice the time.

My maternal grandad wouldn't talk about the war at all. I know he spent some time in Africa but never said much else about it. I also know he never collected his medals.

My paternal grandfather is something of a mystery - nan never let on who he was and there is nobody left who might be able to cast any light except a doolally great aunt who seems to delight in torturing my dad with tiny snippets of information that don't tell him enough to discover the truth. We know he was a foreign military person of some sort who was stationed in the UK at the end of the war.

My father served in the Merchant Marines during World War II. He lied about his age, and joined in 1944, when he was just 16 years old.

I don't know much about his time in the war, other than he served in the Pacific and the North Atlantic. He just told his children the funny stories. I guess it was his way of dealing with hardship and trauma.

Regarding text speak, I've discovered that if you register for a free account at icanhascheezburger.com, you can vote for which images will appear on the main page, before they get there. When I'm bored at work, I log in, and vote thumbs down on any captioned picture that uses "lolspeak." I'm actively trying to take the lol out of lolcats.

Greetings from the 34st floor in Mexico City somewhere

Not much military history in our family either, in the uniformed variety at least.

My Father helped distributing illegal newspapers in Copenhagen during the German occupation with very little drama except for one evening when he was stopped by a patrol. Luckily he'd seen them 20 seconds or so before they saw him, so the bunch of newspapers had gone over a hedge into a garden. They still seemed to sense that there was something amiss but he got off with a kick over one shin. As he said - "and you don't complain about that when the other two guys in the patrol point weapons at you".

My Uncle got off his merchant ship in London, got trained by the British military and was parachuted into Denmark - straight into a lake, actually. Talk about arriving with a splash Apart from that he never spoke much about it.

The rememberance (?) in Denmark is related to the occupation. On April 9, flags are on half mast to mark the occupation and May 4, the eve of the official liberation on the 5th, people still put candles in the windows to mark the end of the curfew period. Though fewer and fewer mark it these days, I think.

Go me. I am a technobabe today

Managed to move old pc upstairs and install wireless doodah - successfully. All without the aid of a son.

Now we can both be online simultaneously. We need never speak again

Being a country under occupation must have been terrible.
Being bombed can't have been easy either. When we remember those who fought, we should also remember their families and the various privations they lived through.
It's disappointing that the war to end all wars didn't

Irv, I'm in two minds about the lolspeak; sometimes it's so convoluted as to make little immediate sense. icanhazcheezburger is one of my favourite sites. Unfortunately, the rest of my family just don't get it.

Go Teuchter!

>>Now we can both be online simultaneously. We need never speak again

You could MSN each other!

This is fascinating, to hear how our predecessors served!

My dad navigated B-24 Liberators as part of the 8th Army Air Corps, flew 30 missions (one of which was as cover for the D-Day invasion), and received the Air Medal, a Purple Heart and the Distinguished Flying Cross in WW II. Then he flew Tac Recon as part of the Blackbirds (night missions) in Korea, on B-25s. He saved everything, including copies of all his orders.

His father was a cook at camp Pendleton, and WW I ended before he could be shipped overseas.

His uncle was a Marine Corporal and served 3 years in the Philippines. I have his journal and some intriguing photos.

And ~their~ uncle served in the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War... which is as far back as I know.

I didn't mark the silence yesterday - I was in a tutorial with The Most Annoying Lecturer Ever (tm), one of the few people in the world whom I actively dislike, and she either didn't know, didn't care, or assumed we wouldn't notice or care that the silence should have happened.
I really dislike that woman. Nobody who reads out slides whilst underlining the words with a laser pointer is fit to teach people who can already read.

*sips *

MSNing each other is possible, yes. I have Facebook-chatted to one of my housemates before, but it felt very weird very quickly knowing that I could, if I really wanted, just shout through the hole in my ceiling that connects to the attic study, where her computer is.

I like the idea of lolcats sans lols - most of the captions would be just as funny in English!

I apologise for the dreadful punctuation. Phooey. Please excuse me on the grounds of Titanic-related nervousness.

" I'm actively trying to take the lol out of lolcats."
You are truly a landshark now, Irv...

My family is far too full of military history to list it here without boring all of you to tears. So I won't. But honoring the military - those who lost their lives and the ones who thankfully survived as well as those who serve in peace time - is important to me.

WA, the salon is the perfect place for serious discussions. Unlike the Forum, we don't insult one another here for expressing an opinion.

My husband is union, and so had the day off, and so hung the flag out in the morning and took it down at dusk. I'm non-union, so I went to work, missed the parade, etc.

*sips *

HN