[ArchieAus]

It ain't me , it ain't me , I'm no senators son .

'Fortunate Son' wasn't really inspired by any one event. Julie Nixon was dating David Eisenhower. You'd hear about the son of this senator or that congressman who was given a deferment from the military or a choice position in the military. They seemed priviledged and whether they liked it or not, these people were symbolic in the sense that they weren't being touched by what their parents were doing. They weren't being affected like the rest of us.

Or 100 years ago " I attacked along the Chermin de Dame in April 1917 . The 37th Zouraves by my side " now there is just a cold sterile field where once a year my name is read out and the speaker cries out " died for France " ... Mort pour ... on my stone is the words Innconu ... I am unknown . I lived , lost , but never loved . Well , maybe for a moment by the Pont Alexander on the Seine , where for a moment my sweet Louise .. pulse nigh to pulse and breath to breath .... but at midnight in some flaming town , I have a rendezvous with death . ......or perhaps I was with the 9th Devons on July 1st 1916 ...writing before action ... help me to be a man oh lord , help me to die o lord ... knowing that the artillery bombardment at not silenced the machine gun by the Crucafix ... hang that sign ...the Devons held this trench ...the Devons hold it still ... cut down in a failed attack ......ahhhh Friday night , I love it 😝

[emgreen]

Arch from Oz is trippin'! Most people don't know that Australians fought in both Vietnam & WW I. The battle of Gallipoli in WW I was a bloodbath for troops from Oz. The movie "Gallipoli" is a classic, IMO. It stars a young Mel Gibson, ladies.

Now what does your post have to do with being a senior?

[ArchieAus]

Absolutely nothing Emmy 😀 , I just felt the tide rising in me and needed to vocalise . You know your history Sir . I once was offered a job as a Sh#t kicker at the imperial war museum in London ( the museum was a lunatic asylum once called Bedlam ) when I spent all night drinking with the assistant curator in Perrone on one of my visits to the battlefields ... it would have been my dream ..my history was self taught , from passion ...but then I sobered up and said I must go back to the centre of the earth to bore and fire rock , coz there I know I can give my sweet Louise the life she deserves , it was the right desicion ...just a bummer you don't get to live two lives just to see how the other would turn out 😀

[Skeezyks]

[ArchieAus]

Thanks Skee 👍 The Thiepval memorial , such an imposing place . Theipval village was an objective on July 1st 1916 , but took several months to actually secure and only once it had been outflanked . Might have it wrong but think the triple tambour defensive position was located their ? Crazy arrangement with like a turntable full of machine guns on it . The Somme battle was supposed to be a equal attack by both the British and the French straddling the river Somme . It was scaled back to a largely commonwealth battle as the French had been attacked at Verdun on Feb 21st and were in a struggle of huge proportions . Even though the French were scaled back they were the ones that that made the only real advances on the first day . Their tactics of moving forward as skirmishes and having the movable 75mm quick firing cannon helped them get forward . The British on their left flank moved forward with them at Mametz , but all among the line up to Serre the British were repulsed . The area had been relatively quiet for a long time and the German forces had dug deep dugouts in the chalk . They mainly withstanded the days long artillery barrage which was supposed to wipe them out . The British had deployed their Pals Battalions ...men who had joined as friends and workmates and been promised they could fight together . The General staff believing that the first objectives would be a walkover had them walk forward carrying 60 lbs of gear to consolidate the gains . July 1st 1916 ...larks could be heard singing as the bombardment lifted at 7.30am , whistles were blown as the British forces moved forward .... the race to the parapet had begun . German sentrys sounded the alarm and men half crazed from the trauma of the bombardment raced to their positions .The Germans won the race . On the first day the British sustained 60000 casualties ( 59470 I think is the exact figure ) of which 19240 were killed . The 36th Ulster division did break through and fought their way to the Hohenzollern Reboubt , but were left in the air and desimated and the survivors retired by nightfall .. it is said of the Pals Battalion that it took two years to train them and 10 minutes to kill them .. curtains were drawn in whole streets as the news of the casualties were released in British towns and it was realised the mistake of letting groups of men fight together . On the first day a young man called McFadzean ? Won the first Victoria Cross of the battle before it began . He was arming grenades in a trench and the box fell and two pins came out of grenades . With no time to save his mates he through himself on the box and took the full force of the blast . The Australians were not there for the first day ...they were fighting a diversionary battle at Fromelles in the north to draw German forces away . The named the place From Hell . They arrived on the Somme in August and fought at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm sustaining 23000 casualties in 6 weeks before being withdrawn and the Canadians took over their lines finally clearing Pozieres . The battle raged on till November a series of British attacks and equally determined German counter attacks . The British had 419000 casualties , the French 200000 , the Germans ? Records were lost or not kept , some say 650000 . I have crawled many miles of the killing fields , listening to the men whisper to me .

[ArchieAus]

I know it doesn't matter , but just wanted to correct myself . It was the Schwaben reboubt not the Hohenzollern redoubt . The Hohenzollern was located much further north and the scene of a 1915 battle called Loos .
There's a beautiful cemetery just behind that red imposing structure of the Thiepval memorial . Something like 72000 names of the missing on the memorial ? I'm getting rusty , haven't studied this battle for about 10 years . One interesting fact you may not know is that the Somme battle was the first time a tank was used . They unleashed a couple on Sept 15th at a place called Flers- Courcelette . That date is easy for me to remember as it's the same date as Battle of Britain day ..all be it 24 years later .