Sunday WW1 Remembered..

 

 Gassed by John Singer Sergeant
© IWM (Art.IWM ART 1460)

I recently visited this poignant WW1 Exhibition at IWM North 

Iconic paintings from WW1 are on display including two of my favourites. I first saw The Menin Road when I visited the Imperial War Museum on a school trip to London in the 1970s. This iconic painting left a memorable impression and is still an evocative reminder of the devastation left behind by the fighting on the Western Front.

The Menin Road by Paul Nash (1919)

Nash was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to paint a battlefield scene for the proposed national Hall of Remembrance (which was never built!) The painting is considered one of the most iconic images of the First World War and is held by the Imperial War Museum (wikipedia)

© Digital Images

Gassed by John Singer Sergeant (1918)

© Digital Images

Gassed is a very large oil painting completed in March 1919 by John Singer Sargent. It depicts the aftermath of a mustard gas attack during the First World War, with a line of wounded soldiers walking towards a dressing station. Sargent was commissioned by the British War Memorials Committee to document the war and visited the Western Front in July 1918 spending time with the Guards Division near Arras, and then with the American Expeditionary Forces near Ypres (wikipedia)

If you are in the North West this exhibition is well worth a visit

There are lots of WW1 ephemera,exhibitions and installations which explore the effect of the First World War, including a poignant reminder of the preparations for the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

Until 24 February 2019

~****~

Armistice Day 2016...

At "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918 the guns grew silent on the Western Front. The Armistice of Compiègne was signed between the Allies and Germany and went into effect at 11am, Paris time, on the 11th November 1918 .

On the 8th May 1919 a letter appeared in the London Evening News written by Australian journalist, Edward George Honey, who proposed that a respectful silence should be observed for those who had given their lives in the First World War. This article was brought to the attention of King George V and on the 7th November the king declared that...

"All locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead."

Since 1919, on the second Sunday of November, otherwise known as Remembrance Sunday a two minute silence has been observed at 11am at war memorials, cenotaphs, religious services and shopping centres throughout the country.

Armistice Day 2016

Lest We Forget

In Our Family - We Remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919
Buried Wigan Cemetery

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium

Remembrance 2012...

Lest We Forget




We lay a wreath of poppies
To remember those who died
A Garland of red ribbon
To show the tears we cried
For lost ones and for loved ones
For those who gave their all
In battles and in trenches
In graveyards large and small.


We lay a wreath of poppies
To remember those who died
A cluster of red petals
For those we left behind
A laurel of remembrance
A sorry vale of tears
For generations lost and gone
We remember through the years.

© J. A. Barton

In Our Family - We Remember

Private John Hopkins

The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment

Died 24 January 1919

Driver Frederick Arkwright

Royal Army Service Corps

Died 1 February 1945

Buried Schoonselhof Cemetery 
Antwerp, Belgium