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I have had my poppy attached to my chest for the past two weeks.

You really should just pin it to your shirt/coat.

Far less painful mate.

Necroagogo wrote:It's quite amusing to see lots of bewlidered tourists (I work in a big museum) trying to figure out what's going on as all the staff stop and observe the two minutes.

Had this this morning. At 11am exactly I was getting off a District line tube at Embankment station. As i got to the top of the gates, everyone on both sides of the ticket barriers had paused, looking across the barriers at each other. Confused tourists got off other trains and got even more confused when they reached the top of the stairs to find a silent crowd just staring at the barriers.

Then the announcement came, and the crowd surged through...

I think about all the stories my grandma told me about living in German occupied Italy, and all the times my dad has told me he can't discuss his missions in Yugoslavia.

Well, being Canadian, I observed Remembrance Day yesterday while attending the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto. We had one of our honoured WWII vets as part of the show's cerimony, so it was great that afterwards I was able to thank him for his service to our great country. Sadly I don't see nearly enough of us young 'uns taking the time to go upto our vets and offer thanks for all they've done to help make our countires the great places they are.

Yesterday, I spent the silence thinking back on my great grandpa, Calvin Boyce, who was an Infantryman in WWI. He fought at Ypres, the Somme, Passchendaele & at Vimy Ridge.
He got his 'ticket home' in late 1917 or early 1918. My great grandpa had seen one of his fellow soldiers get hit by enemy fire and go down in no man's land. When the shelling let up, he ran out to get to his wounded comrade and managed to pull him into cover before the shelling started up again. They spent most of the night in a muddy hole stuck out in no man's land, and when the shelling stopped again, my great grandpa was able to drag himself and his fellow back to the British/Canadian lines, taking a bullet in the knee from an enemy sharpshooter in the process. I know he got a comendation for bravery, but we don't know who has his medals now...
Sadly I never really knew him, I was only 2 years old when he passed away But my mum helps me keep his memory alive and she's told me alot of his stories from the war - typically about much of a bugger those damn gas masks were and how much he utterly loathed them! But he's always say you'd keep them close because if you threw it away, you'd basically be throwing your life away.

I also thought of my Grandpa Ed Boyce, who was a dispatcher in WWII. He never really talked to any of us about what he did, always told me it was far too painful to think back about what he'd had to do and the friends he'd lost. This year is also our first Remembrance Day without him, as he passed away last year on Dec 3rd.



Thank-you again to all of our soldiers, past and present, who help to keep our countries and our world, a safer place.