The Second World War

"My grandfather just recently passed away and what always hits me is how different the British were back then. He hates what has become of England today but I'm happy he got to vote leave; just wish he got to see England free again. The work ethic, intelligence, manliness is the polar opposite of Britain today. He was a gentleman and always honest ... Britain is a really messed up place now ... British values and culture has all but gone" [viewer's comment at source].
 

"My great great uncle fought in both world wars and turned down promotion to stand and fight with his fellow men. Something that has been lost amongst these so-called men these days" [viewer's comment at source].
 

"In his memoirs of the war years, Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, wrote:  'It was just after the fall of France, an event which at the time it happened seemed something unbelievable as to be almost surely unreal, and if not unreal then quite immeasurably catastrophic. Dorothy and I had spent a lovely summer evening walking over the Wolds, and on our way home sat in the sun for half an hour at a point looking across the plain of York. All the landscape of the nearer foreground was familiar - its sights, its sounds, its smells; hardly a field that did not call up some half-forgotten bit of association; the red-roofed village and nearby hamlets, gathered as it were for company round the old grey stone church, where men and women like ourselves, now long dead and gone, had once knelt in worship and prayer. Here in Yorkshire was a true fragment of the undying England, like the White Cliffs of Dover, or any other part of our land that Englishmen have loved. Then the question came, is it possible that the Prussian jackboot will force its way into this countryside to tread and trample over it at will? The very thought seemed an insult and an outrage; much as if anyone were to be condemned to watch his mother, wife or daughter being raped'." [Lord Halifax, Foreign Secretary, 1940, quoted by one viewer at source].

"A personal letter written from a soldier to his mother, describing how his entire platoon narrowly escaped being wiped out as it faced the Germans in Luxembourg:  'One of my best friends, Tom, with his whole platoon were pinned down by mortar and artillery fire. They were given the order to move but they couldn't because the enemy had full view of them from a hill and were zeroing their fire on them accurately. Tom is the most conscientious Christian boy I have ever met in the services. He knew something had to be done to save the fifty men. He crawled from his foxhole and looked things over. Seeing the hopelessness of the situation, he lay down behind a tree and prayed earnestly for God to help him. This is true mother... after he prayed a mist or fog rolled down between the two hills, and the whole platoon got out of their foxholes and escaped. They reorganised in a little town behind the lines where there was a church building. They all went in and knelt down to pray and thank the Lord, and then they asked Tom to take the service. This is true mother, and it just shows how much prayer can mean. If that was not an answer to prayer I don't know what is'." [Joel, a young soldier in Patton's Third Army, quoted at source].

Poor Fools...