Very well done Mr. Dance and to the United Kingdom. The British really know how to commemorate an event. They do remember, unlike many other countries. May God bless those who fell in the Great War especially those thousands who were lost one hundred years ago on the Somme, may their souls rest in the loving arms of the almighty for all eternity. Bob Oles, US Marine Corps
@@edbadyt I hope the fallen of WW1 are commemorated for a few more generations yet, and don't disappear into obscurity like those who fought in the Napoleonic wars.
This is magic. My Great Uncle Thomas Kedian from Ballyhaunis co. Mayo died at the Somme 16 July 1916. His body was unrecovered ; his name is on the Thieval Memorial. His Great grand daughter from Solihull Francesca Jordan visited it last year. RIP.
"Do you ever stop and ask, 'is it all going to happen again?'" This particular line kills me every time. Because yes, it did. I can't imagine having come through such a horrific time, only to pass through the next years and watch as another war crept slowly closer and closer. I think they knew there'd be another, sooner rather than later. I can't imagine looking at my children, or grandchildren, and knowing they would one day understand why I never spoke of war.
Well done for getting this video up. My great-grandfather died yards from this memorial on this day a century ago. I lit a candle for him and his friends at 0600 this morning. I have used this clip in my personal commemoration to him. I cried when I watched this poem read live, rewound it and cried again. Cheers.
Yacht Monty Thanks for telling us, who still know and remember, that wars happened and should never be forgotten. Thanks and bless your family who, because of every life that were brutally taken, we all sit nice and pretty..... I always think of the young ones, who still lived at home, who never saw a thing die, who had to fight other people's wars, ones who live on the street addicted to everything. That one really bothers me to NO END!!! You serve, and that's the thanks you get?! Anyways, from a Canadian in Vancouver B.C.
I keep coming back to your post on this video - the image of the candle to commemorate him and his friends is so poignant and beautifully written. Thanks for sharing a powerful evocative and heart breaking story
Bless you Charles Dance a brilliant stirring and memorable memorial to the brave British Soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice at the Battle Of The Somme in 1916!😢😔👍🙏💂🔫🇬🇧
Two of my great uncles are listed here, as sorrowful as that is, it pales before a third who was wounded by machine gun bullets across the groin. He survided the war and returned home. A mining town in North Derbyhshire (shirebrook) one morning in or around 1921, his mother looked out of the front window, to see the silouet of a body hanging from a nearby tree. It was one of her sons. In his words, he was "No longer a man"... he died never having known the pleasures of the flesh or the posibility of being a father! The Army were, for their time, uncharactistically understanding. They gave him a military funeral and declared on his headstone that he had "Died of wounds recieved". Whenever my great aunt (His sister) told this story, it always moved me to tears!
A stark difference with 21st century America, where we discarded 29,000 men injured in IED blasts, because they have no external scars. PDO they call it, a personality disorder discharge. But the real psychopath is us, U.S., all of us, for permitting this.
This is quite possibly the most moving commemoration I've ever seen. A wonderful, in-the-moment performance from Mr Dance, which left me an emotional wreck. I can't even begin to imagine what horrors our WW1 soldiers went through. 💔
The worst thing, the most tragic, awful aspect of the Battle of the Somme, as with all WW1 battles, is that the millions who died so horribly in the mud did so for no purpose whatsoever.
I may not have know you Great uncle, Reginald Francis Addison. But I will never forget. It matters not where your body lays but where you name lives on for evermore.
I'm moving and magnificent commemoration, the reading was spectacular and the words just hit my heart. I just wish compassion would have been shown to the over 300 British soldiers that the British themselves murdered as deserters. Some of them were nothing more than children. Absolutely shameful.
I was not there, I cannot remember, I cannot understand. But I have served, I have been to our wars and: I affirm: By the green of the spring, that I will NEVER forget.
Wonderful. I have been to Thiepval to pay my respects. My Great Grandfather is buried at Grove Town Cemetery (a casualty clearing station) having been mortally wounded on the Guillemont to Ginchy Road. It's quite hard to take in the losses on both sides in that area. Beautiful Memorials and well kept cemeteries. Thank you to all those that keep it that way;
Been to the Somme and payed my respects very sad and emotional place but also think that everyone should go at some point in time and see what the men, women and children sacrificed for the people of today and future generations.LEST WE FORGET
Sadly in respect to the First World War I think they were sacrificed over political and royal arguments rather than for our futures. It wasn't a war to defend our way of life or to prevent an invasion or defeat an evil ideology buy started for the most stupid of reasons. That's why,.for me at least, I find it more sad and more horrific than WW 2. It was an old fashioned nationalist/tribal European war fought with modern technology of machine guns and heavy artillery.
I do not remember. I am but 60 years of age, born in 1962. When I was a lad, the men came out at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month They helped them gather 'round the cenotaph with their medals And we saw the old men, teary eyed, remembering their comrades The fallen, the dead, and we were moved. I can only imagine but cannot remember
Damn that Stupid War and Damn those that manufactured it. Tears well up just listening to this. The Best of us died on those muddy bloody fields along with all that was good in our country.
got two great uncles on theTHIEPVAL MEMORIAL one M.I.A one K.I.A my great grandfather was the only surivor out of 3 brothers - those who fought kept their heads down after independence or became veteran class in the new Irish army or Gardai
May I ask you if your Uncle you said was KIA, was his body recovered and given a grave there or repatriated? My Gt Uncle was KIA yet his body was not repatriated or to my knowledge ever found. I was told no body = no grave/headstone. The ones that were later found had their names filled in on the monument and given a grave.
@@Thirdfish he was buried over in France, I'm thinking a lot of unfortunates are probably still unidentified or buried under some unknowing farmer's land, one Belgian history book I read a few years back mentioned one farmer who had to be temp evacuated after he was drilling a new well and came across an ex-German arms dump left over from WW1
Because the war to end all wars - didn't! May they all be remembered, those robbed of life, living ones too. The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
In 1914, the Public Schools Officers' Training Corps annual camp was held at Tidworth Pennings, near Salisbury Plain. Lord Kitchener was to review the cadets, but the imminence of the war kept him elsewhere, and Smith-Dorrien was sent instead. He surprised the two-or-three thousand cadets by declaring (in the words of Donald Christopher Smith, a Bermudian cadet who was present) "that war should be avoided at almost any cost, that war would solve nothing, that the whole of Europe and more besides would be reduced to ruin, and that the loss of life would be so large that whole populations would be decimated. In our ignorance I, and many of us, felt almost ashamed of a British General who uttered such depressing and unpatriotic sentiments, but during the next four years, those of us who survived the holocaust - probably not more than one-quarter of us - learned how right the General's prognosis was and how courageous he had been to utter it.
This has always been my favourite poem of Sassoon's and, despite what others have said, this is an overacted travesty of that brilliant poem. I forced myself to listen to the whole thing and will never come back.
Sasson's whole poem is an utter rejection of war and its stupidities and folly. This by a man who served in a combat regiment and nicknamed "Mad Jack" by his men for his gallantry. Read the whole poem and be prepared to be torn apart and enraged by it.
@@woody1380 Unfortunately I wish that were true The bulk of the people I work with haven’t a-clue about this or the continuation in 1939 And even worse they appear not to care
Don’t be so simplistic ! Have you not thought that nobody is trying to stop this tragedy in 2022 just as the majority tried to stop it back then 😢 It seems to me You haven’t learnt anything.
Very well done Mr. Dance and to the United Kingdom. The British really know how to commemorate an event. They do remember, unlike many other countries. May God bless those who fell in the Great War especially those thousands who were lost one hundred years ago on the Somme, may their souls rest in the loving arms of the almighty for all eternity. Bob Oles, US Marine Corps
