Saturday, July 26, 2003
Jack Davis, Britain’s Oldest WWI Veteran Dies at 108
L.A. Times Wednesday July 23rd
He bowed to six monarchs over three centuries, and lived to mourn almost all of the 5 million Britons who fought with him in the war to end all wars, from 1914 to 1918.
In the biography of Tolkien that I’m currently reading, the author goes into great detail on the horrors and grave impossibilities the soldiers of WWI faced. As many as 57,000 British soldiers were slaughtered in a single day. The “strategy” employed is known as attrition or more bluntly, wearing down your enemy’s resistance by killing more of his soldiers than he killed of yours. Perhaps the bloodiest war Britain ever fought, resulting in over 1,000,000 dead British combatants. I imagine the town I live in completely wiped out, dead, vacant, empty.
Mr. Davis’ words are stirring, “They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”
L.A. Times Wednesday July 23rd
He bowed to six monarchs over three centuries, and lived to mourn almost all of the 5 million Britons who fought with him in the war to end all wars, from 1914 to 1918.
In the biography of Tolkien that I’m currently reading, the author goes into great detail on the horrors and grave impossibilities the soldiers of WWI faced. As many as 57,000 British soldiers were slaughtered in a single day. The “strategy” employed is known as attrition or more bluntly, wearing down your enemy’s resistance by killing more of his soldiers than he killed of yours. Perhaps the bloodiest war Britain ever fought, resulting in over 1,000,000 dead British combatants. I imagine the town I live in completely wiped out, dead, vacant, empty.
Mr. Davis’ words are stirring, “They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”
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