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

Entry: British First World War Memorials - A42618071
Author: Art Tenth Sunshade - U138596

Here is an article on WW1 war memrioals. I think I need to add some sub headers and if I've repeated myself because I've stuck two versions of this together I apologise and I'll be able to spot it soon.

Right now I've reread it a couple of times and I've forgotton if I already read it because I read it before or...

reads great to me

Noth€r

I haven't read it fully, as it runs as a long piece, and could do with breaking up into smaller sections, as it is a little overwhelming.

Please let me have a proper read through but, and I may have missed this, nearly all War Memorials were instigated independently and created by each town, village and hamlet, usually by subscription... There was no official record of War Memorials as such, so someone suggested setting one up, and I am pleased to say, after a little ferreting I found:

The United Kingdom National Inventory of War Memorials:

http://www.ukniwm.org.uk/server/show/nav.14

Also, for information:

'In the Cotswold hills, in deep England, there is a pair of villages named Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. In addition to its rather gruesome name, Lower Slaughter possesses a unique distinction. It is the only village in all of England that does not possess a First World War memorial.'

MFM

I was recently browsing a war memorial on the Isle of Wight - tremendous number of dead from WWI mainly from the Isle of Wight Rifles. Next day I wandered across to look at another, this didn't give regiments but again disproprtionate ammount of WWI dead.

Few days later I went to Carisbrooke Castle, and upstairs is a regimantal Museum - a casual glance at their battle honours showed the explanation for the imbalance - Gallipolli.

I like the entry

Hello Art Tenth Sunshade
Great read, thank you for writing it and very timely with the upcoming Remembrance month and newsreaders and politicians already wearing their poppies.

I wrote A34945338 Shot At Dawn which began life as the Fulstow War Memorial (lack of...) and turned into the finished article after its journey through PR and the helpful comments I got, so and well done on your sympathetic piece of writing,

GB

Cracking entry. From a historical/cultural perspective I don't have much to add (except a good quote on the subject that I'll try and dig out for you).

My suggestions:

1: Subheaders! It needs breaking up into easily digestible chunks.

2: Shorter sentences! Look at this beast - "Similarly, its status as a world war meant that the First World War inspired memorials in a number of countries, all of which had many things in common with the memorials of Britain, but also some interesting differences, starting with the significance of the lack of First World War memorials in the Soviet Union but their profusion, and yet similarity of purpose to British memorials, for the Second World War, continuing though to the smaller but equally significant fact that Australian war memorials have much more of a tendency to record the names of all who fought, rather than merely those who died." - Wowsers. That's one massive sentence. They need to be chopped up a bit just so that you don't come across as rambling.

3: GuideML! You've got a few rogue characters creeping in - ‘The Glorious Dead’ for example. Also, your links need putting into hyperlinks.

Once you've done a bit of revision, I'll do a good and proper in-depth proof read for you. And I'll get looking for that quote!

I have to admit that the upcoming Rememberence Day reminded me to pull my finger out with this one. Figured if I didn't do it now, that would be that for another year and I'm already well behine on my 'entry a year' target.

Fiddled a bit. I've added some subheaders. I've put the websites (embeddded) into a special section at the end. I meant to link to other relevant hootoo entries, actually, GB, but my roundtoit is still temporarily missing. I think they'll go in a section marked 'Relevant Gude Entries' though as I can't find a place for yours, for eg, in the main text I think.

Long sentences? Surely not. I'll do some pruning.

Oh, and I can't see anything wrong with the entry in terms of odd characters from my end and that bit you quoted, six-oh-three, looks fine on my computer too. Any ideas what is going on there?

I also see bad caracters (copy) a saluting point in memory of ‘The Glorious Dead’ (the inscription on the side). This(end copy) but dont no why its happening may be you need to make the spesh caracters in the subs links?cant help more

Noth€r.

Nope, still nothing wrong with that copy. But your name has a square after 'Noth' and before 'r' in both the text of the message and the 'posted by' bit of the header. Actually, I think there might be something fundamentally wrong with the interaction between hootoo and my computer at the mo and that square seems to be turning up a lot, and I couldn't see the postings of someone I usually chat with at all for about a week. Still no idea what I can do (if anything) about that though.

Could be a problem with my browser. I'm on Chrome usually, so it might be that.

Although, saying that, I've just checked on IE and it's still there...

It's in the GuideML code - probably got there courtesy of those pesky "smart quotes" from MS Word

I can see them too. Best to take them out and put those bits into italics

I changed The Glorious Dead into italics. Is it ok now? Are there other bits with odd characters in?

... because (sorry) can't see anything in the code either my end.

You still have a number left in there, from Form and Function onwards:


>> the Cross of Sacrifice – a cross with an upturned sword pointing downwards on its face,<<


>>or by providing or improving a local service or facility (projects ranged from a new ‘memorial’ hospital to a ‘memorial’ village hall to a ‘memorial’ park). <<


>> ‘Community’ here could have a number of different meanings. << Instead of italics you could try = 'Community'

>> This, of course, happened mainly when the church based memorial was intended to also be the memorial of the local community – usually the parish – as a whole, <<

>> The name ‘Warrior’ <<

Abby = Abbey

>>‘the land fit for heroes’ <<

>> for ‘the King, Empire and God’, <<

>>Nowhere is the traditional bent more evident than in the way in which the two minutes’ silence<< time meant that commentators had no longer been personally touched by the bereavement the First World War caused.

Today


>> the War Memorials Trust which “…works for the protection and conservation of war memorials within the UK to ensure these monuments remain part of our communities forever. War memorials commemorate our shared past, an important part of our national culture.”<<

>>Connelly, M; The Great War, Memory and Ritual: Commemoration in the City and East London, 1916 – 1939; The Royal Historical Society/ The Boydell Press 2002.<<

Okay.

Have had a go at pruning long sentences.

Have retyped anything which included dashes, single speech marks or double speech marks, which I'm guessing are the symbols which are showing up oddly on your ends.

Have fiddled about in a few other ways.

I'm pretty much done, from my point of view, unless anyone wants to suggest snappier subheadings.

>>figures of soldiers are depicted as standing at ease or in positions of mourning rather than marching or attacking with military purpose.<<

I would add that the soldier is ALWAYS leaning on the stock of the rifle with the barrel resting in the ground to, I believe, signify no more fighting, with head bowed.

Perhaps you could check this?

Well done!

MMF

Got that already: the next sentence is about an upturned gun. I don't really want to say 'always' as some of them aren't. There's at least one which shows soldiers charging, even. And I don't want to say definitively what it represents because the ambiguity of the images was important too.

I missed it! Does help if I put my bins on!!!



And I wasn't aware of a UK War Memorial depicting charging soldiers. I'd thought they were all circumspect. Apologies.

MMF