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

I was out walking with a friend yesterday along the Leeds-Liverpool canal between Skipton and Keighley and we came across a memorial to a Polish RAF crew who crashed and were killed near to the canal in September 1943.

It's a handsome memorial and clearly well-maintained. At least one of the crew who died was Jewish as there were a couple of Star of David motifs as part of it. In quite a touching display there was a small pile of stones and pebbles on top of the memorial (a Jewish tradition to show a grave has been visited) and it was on a particularly beautiful part of the canal. There was a bench where people could sit and quietly reflect which we both did. It was a really appropriate find given it's Remembrance Weekend and I took my poppy off and left it on the memorial - I normally leave my poppy on the nearest war memorial on Remembrance Sunday as a mark of respect but this felt more 'right'.

http://www.towpathtreks.co.uk/photodisplay.asp?ino=1133

I had no idea about this memorial, not the crash it commemorated, but my friend (an Australian by birth which might explain certain things) had no idea of the Polish involvement in WW2 so we talked about that: I have Polish family so I was always brought up with their stories from the war (and how the Poles are pretty much the only nation who view the Treaty of Versailles as a good thing as it led to Polish independence) so it never really occurred to me other people didn't really know of their exploits. For his part, my mate talked about Gallipoli and the New Guines campaign and what an impact they had on the Australian national psyche. People like these are part of our shared history and it's good they've been memorialised and me and my mate can talk about them and share our stories.

As Ivan said yesterday, it's important that we remember them because it'd be dreadful to consider what might happen if we forget.

My mate was also amused/surprised to see how traditional I was around the memorial: he doesn't often see me being quiet and respectful so I had to remind him I was raised Catholic and some parts of that have stuck.

opps that ^^^ is what I get for posting before my morning has worked

that reminds me of the grave of a French pilot that is somewhere on the Lüneburger Heide near to where I used to live (on part of what may still be tank ranges used by the British and German army, therefore not too much easy access)

My dad used to be one of the Range Wardens up there, a link between the local population (especially the farmers' whose land was all over the Heide) and the British Military so he knew all these secret little things and took me round to visit them sometimes.

The grave was beautifully maintained, at least last time I looked in the early 90s) and there were always flowers, or plants or it had been cleaned up so you knew someone was visiting regularly.

I think there are a lot more of these individual memorials than we will ever know about, and again it brings back the human story behind the political shinannegins that War is.

I did a bit of a straw poll in the office today, to see who knew what about who did what in the war.

Nobody other than me knew anything much about what happened in the Baltic States.

One person other than me knew about the Free Polish forces - but then, her surname's Polish so that might be a bit of a no-brainer.

Everyone knew about the Free French. The recent death of Nancy Wake probably reminded a few people.

Everyone was well-informed about Tobruk and El Alamein and Kokoda and the Coral Sea and the repeated bombing of Darwin and the one feeble attack on Sydney. Some even knew about the Brisbane Line - the plan not to defend anything north of Brisbane, so as to defend the south-east corner of the country where (then as now) about 90% of us live.

One person was extremely hazy on the war in Europe but knew a lot about the war in Asia. Her parents are from Hong Kong.

What all of this seems to mean is that everything is local.