Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG: Vote for the most heroic moment in our history If you vote on the above link then tell us what you voted for and why? The poll ends Thursday 7th Aug at midnight. After that time, we could continue it here. The options given (if the poll is pulled) are: The 1807 Slave Trade Act King Alfred's wars against the Danes Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth Period The decision to got to war in 1939 The Battle of Britain The Napoleonic Wars The Armada Personally, I think that is a very arbitory list, so if anyone wants to choose another, please do so.
I voted for the Battle of Britain as I feel that if they had lost the battle there was a good chance that Britain may have fallen.
Around about the time the whistles blew in WW1 or any time the nose gunner called 'Enemy Coast Ahead'
1) July 1st, 1916. Not so much the first men over the top; they had been told the artillery barrage would obliterate the opposition, but the second and third waves who saw what happened to the first wave. 2) Not so much the decision to go to war in 1939, or even the BofB as such, but the decsion to stay in the war in 1940, after the French had surrendered, and there was no guarantee the Americans and Russians would join us. Common sense would have been to make peace with the Germans - it would have been a pact with the devil of course, but it must have been very tempting. 3) Agreeing to host the Olympics when we are already broke.
I've thought of an even better, and more positive heroic moment, and it started exactly 90 years ago today, 8th August 1918. This was the breakout from Amiens that finally finished WW1. Some say that this was the British Army's finest hour, and the last hundred days of WW1 was its most successful campaign. In WW2 we were merely on the winning side; we would have been nowhere without the USA and the Soviet Union. But it was Britain (and of course the ANZACs, Canadians, Indians and Africans) that won WW1. The French Army did very little after Verdun in 1916; much of it was virtually in a state of mutiny. The Russians were out. The Italians had been badly mauled by the Austrians. The American mobilisation was painfully slow; Pershing refused to put his troops under Foch's command, and the first major US operation had been at Belleau Wood only the previous month, which they won but at terrible cost because they had not learned from the British experience on the Somme and Passchendaele. I'm not saying the Americans played no part in the final offensive, but it would have been 1919 before they could have fielded a numerically overwhelming Army. But Haig had learned from experience. The August 1918 offensive was designed to be far more conservative with the lives of his men than before. The ground operation was fully integrated with the Artillery, the Tanks, and with Air Power - not just for observation but for ground-strafing and bombing, foreshadowing all later wars. The Germans, weakened by their failed Kaiserschlacht offensive in the Spring, crumbled and never again regained the upper hand.
I think it was when the little boats went to rescue the soldiers at Dunkirk !! ..... so many regular ordinary men .... mostly fishermen .... willingly putting themselves in a dreadful dangerous position ! And for a personal one ... my Granddad came home from the Boer War ... went to WW1 .... his wife died while he was in the trenches .... and he came home ... and he was expected to carry on as if nothing had happened !! now that's a hero in my eyes !!
Whilst I think that we will live to regret the decision to host the Olympics - aren't we still one of the richest nations in the world? If we want to continue to uphold the ideal of sportsmanship and personal achievement, isn't it encumbent upon us to bear the cost of this rather than the poorer nations?
We are one of the richest, but with very little money. And seeing as we have to top what China have just done, God help us.
I personally applaud every person who did what they did to defend this country in whatever role that was, in whatever conflict. I would also include with the abolitionists, early chartists, trade unionists, feminists and anyone who stood up against the establishment for what they knew to be right and fair. On a national level I contrast the declaration of war (honourable and heroic) to the debacle in the middle east brought about by a series of dishonourable acts and culminating with Mr Blair's most infamous.
