The letter reads:
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.
An excerpt from For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914.
It’s now commonly read at Memorial Services, particularly on Remembrance Day, November 11th when the UK remembers all those who have lost their life in conflict.
It’s estimated that around 10 million military personal lost their lives during World War One, along with 8 million civilians. The loss of life is tragically huge on both sides. It is hard to comprehend just how many people died. My Great-Great Uncle Albert Giles was one of them. He lies in a military graveyard in Northern France.
Every November 11th, at 11am we hold a 2 minute silence to remember the fallen. For me this has always meant the fallen on both sides of the war and every war since. Millions of men on both sides died, they all deserve to be remembered.
During World War One all army uniforms were dull khaki coloured. The bright red dress uniforms used by the British Army during the Victorian era had finally been replaced by the official Service Dress in 1902. Camouflage had become more important than tradition, though the change in uniform colour wasn’t popular initially. The United States Army first adopted khaki during the Spanish-American war of 1898, troops complained about the colour until the 1950s when it was replaced with a cooler grey-green which is still in use today.
The word is yet another example of the English language borrowing words, khaki is Urdu for dusty. It was first used by Sir Harry Lumsden to clothe a Corps of Guides in Peshawar. He wanted his men to blend in to the landscape so bought up metres of cloth in the local market, and ordered it be rubbed with mud from the local river. As time went on mud was replaced with any dye stuff that could be obtained; coffee, tea, and curry powders. The colour spread through the Indian Army, and to the rest of the British Army, and eventually to the armies of other nations. By 1898 when the colour was used for American Army uniforms the colour would have been dyed using synthetic aniline dyes, probably chrome based.
This sounds like it could be quite a plain dull colour again but she often adds a flash of another colour in with them too so it might not be quite as you would expect and from the spoilers thread she has added in a streak of red to echo the poppies that grow on the battlefields of WWI. She has also revealed that there is a lot of Shetland Wool in this months fibre. Sounds very intriguing.
I don't know what it is this year, probably to do with my age, but I keep getting very tearful when I see the Veterans on parade and saluting the memorials. There was a UK video on Facebook of a very old Veteran Paratrooper in a wheelchair who could barely stand but he wanted to salute the memorial and there were two younger Veteran Paratroopers, maybe in their 40's, who were also there so they helped him up and flanked him so that if he started to fall they were on either side of him to catch him. When the old man saluted it was the look of pride on his face that just got me right in the heart strings and even writing this now, just thinking of that video has tears running down my face. I'm a hopeless mess!
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