The Ring Of Remembrance

Tirpitz The Pig.
In the spring of 1915, after months of harrying enemy cargo ships, the German cruiser Dresden was badly in need of repair.
Her captain, Fritz Emil von Ludecke decided to shelter in the neutral waters along the coast of southern Chile.
Since its launch in 1908, the Dresden had spent most of its time in these foreign waters and when the Mexican revolution broke out in 1913 the ship was tasked with protecting German nationals.

A year later the Dresden transported the deposed dictator Vitoriano Huerta to Jamaica where the British granted him asylum.
With the outbreak of war the South Atlantic became the Dresden’s theatre of operations.
At the battle of Coronel it helped to inflict a heavy defeat on the British and the ships HMS Good Hope and HMS Monmouth were both sunk with a huge loss of lives.
HMS Glasgow alone had made its escape and from then on there was a burning desire on the part of the Glasgow’s captain John Luce to wreak revenge.

The chance came a month later when the British encountered the German fleet at what became known as the battle of the Falkland Islands.
The German cruiser Leipzig was holed and of its crew, only 18 survived, but the Dresden again escaped.
Now cornered at Cumberland Bay, Kapitan Ludecke assumed his ship was safe but on 14 March 1915, disregarding Chile’s neutrality, the British opened fire.
The Dresden badly damaged, von Ludecke signalled his wish to surrender while at the same time making plans to abandon ship and scuttle the Dresden.

Safely ashore, the crew watched their vessel slowly sink below the water line.
Across the bay echoed the cheers from two British cruisers, HMS Glasgow and HMS Kent.
About an hour after the sinking, an exhausted survivor was spotted in the water, making his way towards the Glasgow.
One of the crew dived into the sea to offer assistance but was greeted with such resistance that a second sailor had to come to the rescue.

The prisoner of war was duly landed and studied with some disbelief by the men on board, for shivering, shaking and grunting, presumably in German, was a young pig.
Their unusual captive had been in the hold of the Dresden destined for meat.
Somehow he had managed to avoid a watery grave and was now a surprising British trophy, being adopted as the Glasgow’s mascot and named Tirpitz after Alfred von Tirpitz, the Grand Admiral and Commander of the German navy.

The Glasgow remained at sea for another year with Tirpitz roaming free on board.
When the ship returned to England however, there was a problem.
Regulations to prevent the spread of swine fever meant that Tirpitz was not allowed to land.
Eventually, because he had not been in contact with any other pigs, a special Order in Council was raised to allow him to come ashore.
Tirpitz went into quarantine before being transferred to Whale Island, the gunnery school near Portsmouth.

By now Tirpitz’s exploits were becoming known to the public with snippets of information beginning to appear in the press.
He managed to hang on until 1919 but then unhappily he went the way of most pigs, to the butchers.
His celebrity status was not quite forgotten however for while his torso may have ended up as sausages, his head was removed, stuffed and mounted on a wooden shield.
Should you wish to pay your respects to Tirpitz you can visit him at the Imperial War Museum, London.
( Janet Toms )

Israeli Wedding Party Celebrates The Deaths Of An 18-Month-Old Palestinian Child And His Parents.
A video of Israeli Orthodox Jewish wedding-goers celebrating the killing of a Palestinian toddler prompted strong condemnation.
The footage depicts Israeli youth dancing with guns and knives during a wedding party in Jerusalem.
A masked youth is seen raising a firebomb, while another young man repeatedly stabs a photo of Ali Dawabsheh, an 18-month-old Palestinian toddler who was killed in an arson attack carried out by Israeli settlers in July 2015.

The arson attack took place when illegal settlers torched the Dawabsheh family home in the illegally-occupied West Bank village of Duma and killed Ali and his parents, Saad and Reham.
The couple’s four-year-old son, who was severely burned, is the only survivor of the attack.
At certain points in the film, military-grade rifles and pistols are passed from person-to-person, including to children.
TV Channel 10’s report says the weapons were issued to the settlers by the Israeli army.
( Patrick Strickland, 24.12.2015 )  ..  aljazeera.com

A Level Of High-Handed Censorship.
Prince Charles’ advisors are forcing media organisations who want to interview him to sign strict 15-page contracts giving them total editorial command of every question asked and reply given.
Which is a level of high-handed censorship not demanded by North Korea dictators, or even Morrissey.
And it surely misses the only question any interviewer would care to ask: Why would a wet waste of space, who has lived his life surrounded by teams of flunkeys, as far away from reality as a human being could be, who has never done a proper job and whose words have as much impact as a trump in a hurricane, be worthy of interviewing in the first place?
( Brian Reade, 05.12.2015 )

The Ring Of Remembrance.
The Nord-Pas-de-Calais is home to an impressive and moving memorial to the 600,000 soldiers who were killed in this part of France during the First World War.
It was inaugurated by President Hollande in a solemn ceremony on November 11, 2014.
The message from its creators is one of brotherhood: “The Ring of Remembrance is not a celebration of victory but a symbol of the shared suffering of all the soldiers who fought there.”

Set just below France’s National Cemetery, Notre-Dame de Lorette, it was designed by architect Philippe Prost in the shape of a vast elliptical 374 yard ring.
The names of the fallen from over 40 countries worldwide are inscribed in white letters on 500 gold-coloured steel panels.
They are there in alphabetical order without note of nationality, religion or rank.
Allies and enemies together, equal in death.

The preparation of the five and a half acre site was not without its problems.
As at least three of the deadly battles of Artois had been fought there and across the surrounding area, between October 1914 and October 1915, the land had to be cleared of mines and shells.
Then, as was only to be expected in such a place of slaughter, the remains of six French soldiers and one German were discovered.

For historian Yves Le Maner, closely involved with the project, this extraordinary monument expresses “the epitome of mass death, but also the memory of so many individuals who existed and whose talent and intelligence were lost to humanity.”
( Patricia Stoughton, November 2015 )

Israel Accused Of Torturing Children.
An Israeli human rights organisation has accused the Israeli government of torturing children after it emerged some were kept in outdoor cages during winter.
The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) published a report which claimed children suspected of minor crimes were subjected to “public caging”, threats and acts of sexual violence and military trials without representation.
( Palestine Chronicle, 19.01.2016 )  ..  palestinechronicle.com

Russian POWs Given Rough Treatment By The Germans.
I left school aged 14 in 1936 to join my father in the building trade as an apprentice bricklayer.
My other love, in addition to bricklaying, was music and I started clarinet lessons aged 13.
In January 1942 I was called up and drafted into the Somerset Light Infantry.
During several months of training I successfully auditioned to become a member of the band of the 7th Battalion Somerset Light Infantry and played in many concerts in the towns we were sent to for training.

My battalion was shipped from Newhaven to Normandy about 10 days after D-Day.
My own period of active service lasted only about a week.
On 30 June, I was taken prisoner, having lost contact with my unit.
The three Germans who captured me were an SS regiment and I realised that I was in a tight corner – it was common knowledge that the SS often shot prisoners and these chaps were clearly not pleased to be lumbered with one English private.

They had a heated discussion about what to do with me and I realised I must make personal contact with them.
I picked up two of their names – the loudest was Helmut and another was Otto – I used my few words of German to explain that as soldiers we were all in the same boat and called them by their first names.
Luckily for me it worked, the tension fell and I was soon passed on to other non-SS servicemen.

A few days later I was put on a train with hundreds of other prisoners of many nationalities for shipment to Germany.
However, we didn’t get very far before the train was attacked by a squadron of American Typhoon fighter planes firing 20mm cannon shells.
I was seated between two young GIs who were both killed instantly when the shells tore into our compartment.

Miraculously, I was completely untouched but around 30 allied POWs were killed and many more seriously wounded.
The death toll would have been higher had it not been for the courage of three Americans who climbed onto the roof of the train and waved their shirts at the planes and prevented a second attack.
We remained in the train overnight and next morning I awoke to find I was partly paralysed and could hardly speak.

I was taken to a hospital in Chalons where a German doctor told me that he had seen many similar cases among German troops.
I believe I was suffering from what is now called Combat Stress Reaction.
My symptoms slowly improved over the next month and eventually I was considered fit enough to continue my train journey to Stalag IV-B the huge POW camp near Muhlberg about 30 miles from Dresden.
My stay in Stalag IV-B was short.

I was transferred to Stalag IV-A and then to a work camp associated with IV-A.
In each of the camps there were more Russians than any other nationality and they were given particularly rough treatment by the Germans.
Most of them were in rags, half-starved, often with serious wounds and illnesses and many died each day.

We were liberated by a detachment of General Patton’s US Third Army about two weeks before the war ended.
The Third Army took us by truck to Belgium from where we were flown home.
I was in poor health and spent three months in Northfield Hospital in Birmingham before demob and return to my bricklaying job.
( Douglas G. Rowden, February 2016 )

The Creation Of A Jewish State, A New Country Called Israel.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration transferred rule of the middle-eastern region known as Palestine to the British Empire as a temporary national home for Jewish people.
Between 1917 and 1948, Palestine was inhabited by Jewish immigrants who supported the idea of Zionism (the right of the Jewish people to return to the Holy Land) and Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who had occupied the land for many centuries.

Tension began to form between the Arab Palestinians and the Jewish immigrants as both groups tried to take claim over the same portions of religiously-significant land.
In 1948, the Balfour Declaration was scheduled to expire and Great Britain would no longer rule Palestine.
The question over what to do with the tumultuous country was turned over to the United Nations who would eventually decide to create the new country of Israel, specifically as a promised homeland for Jewish people.

U.S. President Harry Truman was the first world leader to officially recognise Israel as a legitimate Jewish state on May 14, 1948, only eleven minutes after its creation.
His decision came after much discussion and advice from the White House staff who had differing viewpoints.

Some advisors felt that creating a Jewish state was the only proper response to the holocaust and would benefit American interests.
Others took the opposite view, concerned about that the creation of a Jewish state would create more conflict in an already tumultuous region.
( National Archives )  ..  trumanlibrary.gov

Was This Propaganda To Scare The People?
Did anyone else find it funny how Robocop-style police carried out anti-terror attack exercises in London, with chilling pictures of mock corpses and warnings that injured people will be left to die presented to the media, the day before MPs were urged to vote for war to keep our streets safe.

How similar that was to February 2003, when Tony Blair sent 450 armed troops and tanks to parade around Heathrow Airport, days before a million people were set to take part in a ‘Not In My Name’ march, after an “unspecified al Qaeda threat” that never materialised.
And to think we’ve always felt morally superior to the Nazis for having a propaganda machine that warped their people’s minds.
( Brian Reade, 05.12.2015 )