by Englishman 53 Replies latest jw friends
Hey Stephanus - where did you study history?
unclebruce whose grandfather fought at both El Alemain (first turning point in the war against Germany) and Kokoda (first turning point in the war against Japan)
PS: We can discuss the 'Brisbane line', Curtin's victory over Churchill, Monty's over Romell and McArthurs over the Japs rugged up with port and cigars next month. ;)
Jelly,
I'm pretty sure that any US made Honda's or other Japanese cars find their way into every part of Europe except the UK and Malta. This is due to the need for right-hand drive vehicles in these places.
History tell us that the USA overtook the UK in terms of manufacturing back in 1895. Consequently, it surprises me as to how little we actually see of American exports.
In my home I have 2 items of USA manufacture, a remarkable little Hi-Fi from Bose and a crowbar made by Estwing. Other than the odd 767 flying over mixed in with the Airbus's and the Sky Movie channels there is little else to see.
Englishman.
..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.
hey larc,
I swear, 'mercuns. It's "ya'll" not Ya'all". Betcha learned that up yonder in yankeeland, didn't ya? Btw, I've sorely missed your postings. Glad to have you back.
Hey English
You're right, we are insulated and isolated - big place we have here. Some of us have been known to stay in the state we're born in and never leave. A lot of us in reality.
Btw, nobody mentioned the polite word "bugger" yet. In usa, few people know what it actually means - and if somebody says it funny (as Little John in the Robin Hood movie) everybody laughs and doesn't have a clue.
Bet if they knew what it really meant, those men wouldn't have laughed so much. Probably would have squirmed tighter and lower in their seats.....
The IRA are indiscriminately killing men, women and children and now they have killed two Australians. Margaret Thatcher
The Americans, who are the most efficient people on earth, have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on a conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are actually saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication. Somerset Maugham
oh, yeah, baby!
waiting
I got a kick out of this comment of yours, Prisca. You
said:
Americans act like everyone knows and share their language,
their customs, their attitudes. Well, the rest of the world
wouldn't have, if it wasn't for the infiltration of the American
way of life on the rest of the world.
I'm thinking that if you Brits could've handled the Germans
in WW2, you could've kept your little island all to yourself.
Thanks to the "infiltration" of American GIs, you guys don't
live it Deutschland and heil your political leaders! Oh well...
peace,
todd
hey todd,
Prisca's Australian.
Doesn't sound any better though, does it?
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours. William R. Inge
waiting
Todd,
"I'm thinking that if you Brits could've handled the Germans
in WW2, you could've kept your little island all to yourself.
Thanks to the "infiltration" of American GIs, you guys don't
live it Deutschland and heil your political leaders! Oh well..."
Well Todd, even if you were posting in jest, maybe you should know that my dad flew over Germany in Lancasters 43 times to defend this little island, when the odds of returning were 9 - 1 each time. Of course, we were also fighting on our own for 3 years when everywhere else in Europe had been conquered.
I don't think we did too badly.
Englishman
..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.
Dear Englishman (and others),
I was about to post something pretty angry as a reply to your proud display of the Lancaster bomber. Let me explain a little something here before I get to the angry part.
My grandfather number one (father's side): half Jewish, accused of being part of a sabotage network against the Nazi regime. Deported in 1940 together with his severly ill father, spent years in at least three concentrations camps, died in 1943 (supposedly of typhus). His father died just three months after the deportation. His wife was arrested and interrogated frequently during the war years, but survived the war thanks to being a blond, blue eyed "Arian", I guess. She emigrated to Sweden and died in 1960 of severe pneumonia.
My grandfather number 2 (mother's side): navigator on Wehrmacht transport plane. Shot down in his Junkers over Russia around the the time of the Stalingrad fiasco. Survived the crash with minor injuries, died in POW camp years later. His wife was killed during one of the many, many night bomb raids in this war in 1944, together with two of her younger sisters, aged 12 and 14 at the time. The entire town(with the exception of seven houses) was wiped out in the course of one year by British and US bombers.
So, dear Englishman, I have a problem here. Unlike you, I can't quite say that "we" lost or won the war, or how "we" did. Some of my ancestors were on the side of the victims, some were one the side of the perpetrators(sp?). Unfortunately, I could never ask them about it: I have never seen any of my grandparents.
It's not my war. It's not your war. I don't think any one of us has reason to be proud or be ashamed of what our fathers and grandfathers did.
But it makes me sick, really sick, sometimes very angry, when people who never participated in all this madness boast about how "they" saved the world, and how "they" fought and crap (excuse my language) like that, dwelling in war-stories glory. It doesn't make me nearly as sick as those old and young assholes (no excuses here, the word fits) who still yearn for the days of the "Reich". But it does make me sick enough.
Your glorious Lancaster bomber may well have been the one which dropped the phosphorus bomb on the block where my grandmother lived together with her two sisters. Or maybe not. Either way, I find this proud display of a war plane offensive, for reasons which should be a little clearer now, I hope.
I don't think we did too badly.
Who's "we", Englishman?
I suggest to stop the war stories crap. Leave it to the old folks, who actually had to be part of this horrible insanity. Please. There's enough madness going on _today_.
f.
Fodeja,
I can't fault what you say. The plane has gone.
Englishman.
..... fanaticism masquerading beneath a cloak of reasoned logic.
hello fodeja,
I'm sorry for your real-life tragedies. By far, most of us here don't know what you're talking about. That makes it no less real to you - we just didn't have to live your sorrow.
I think it was Gedanken or Methusala over at H20 who spoke about being a German child after the war. The starvation, etc., and the victorious soldiers giving the children their own food to help out. Made the person who was accusing him of *usa bashing* back off. All he was saying was that war is full of death and sometimes un-necessary wholesale killing. I agree with him.
Unless others speak up - those of us who never experienced these things just don't realize how close we are to people who lived the tragedies.
Thank you.
waiting
hey Englishman and Fodeja,
You're both a class act. Politeness during a very touchy subject.
waiting
