We mark the passing of those who have served this country. Contributions from comrades and families are welcome - write to
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(Please see next page for this quarter's obituaries)
Distant Voices remembers others who have gone before. At the start of this Platinum Jubilee year, WINDSOR, HM Albert Frederick Arthur George Windsor, King, Emperor 14 December 1895 - 6 February 1952 is recalled in an article 'The King Is Dead' (the late James Cameron – London Illustrated News – 23rd February 1952)
"When a King dies, we who have to put into words the strange grief and grievous strangeness of the time, then know how ill we have served ourselves over the years. While the King lived, we spoke of him as this, and of that, endowing him with all the remote virtues of an infallible man; such men do not die. But the King died; and we found somehow a different thing: that we loved him. When a King dies, the worn words are empty; there is nothing left to say.
He died quietly and without imposing his passing on the nation, as befitted a gentleman who was as shy and considerate and shrank from the public drama of death. When it came, it came as he deserved, kindly – a good night, a book at the bedside, a little sleep. The least amongst us can ask no more and no better.
But that was the end of privacy. The King was gone, but kingship remained, to become for a while the overwhelming emotion of the land. The man who had been diffident all of his life, who had dutifully permitted publicity about everything except his suffering, now stilled the noise and hushed the argument and silenced the affairs of State, and drew for the moment an inescapable curtain of mourning over the lives of millions who had never seen his face.
What is a King that so many strangers should sorrow at his going? His title endures, work goes on, no crisis is changed, no personal problems eased or worsened, the harassed world outside is deflected in no way from its obsessions. Yet, when King George V1 was known to be dead the sudden shadow fell momentarily across the heart of every man; loyal men and cynics, the rich and the dispossessed, reactionaries and radicals.
What is a King, then, a mortal man, who exacts this tribute from twentieth century people? Constitutional lawyers will tell you what he was. Politicians will tell you what he was unable to be. A vast historic chronicle of precept will tell you that his position was most intricately poised on the peak of Government. It will say that the Monarchy this country devised for itself over the generations is like no other that ever existed, I its ancient root and its modern tolerance; its power without authority; its simple splendour and elaborate simplicity.
Only in a strange country like ours could an apparently indestructible fortress be built on such a slender web of compromise and affection, that no logic could create and no law enforce.
What is a King, therefore, that hundreds of thousands of strangers should wait all night in the bitter cold to file for a moment past his bier? That person cannot be an Office, or a Function; he must be a man. And there lies the simple truth: our people knew him as a good man. They knew him for a man without ostentation, without ambition, doing an intolerable job and doing it well. They know now, moreover, that that the job weas harder than they thought, and the end nearer.
We may not have known as citizens – how could we? – but the ancestral memory of England knows it. The people of England have not always loved their Kings. Among them have been tyrants, conquerors, oppressors, imbeciles, and mediocrities. England has endured them, reviled them, deposed them and, where necessary, executed them Sometimes, only, have they loved them and we think of this as such a time.
We never found it hard to understand a man who loved his family. We do not find it hard, now, to salute a King who, inheriting a generation racked and anxious as no other before, di what he had to do with dignity, patience and courage.
He who had planned great voyages over the quarter of the world that owned him as King, has done his best, and greatest – from Norfolk to London and from London to Windsor".
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Wednesday, 16 February 2022 11:22
"To know your enemy, you must become your enemy" – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
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Remembering those who have served our country.
an attack on our freedoms, our values and the security of Europe".writes Patrick Nopens.
Tyneside Irish and Tyneside Scottish bear the burden of the highest brigade casualties in the British Army during the Great War. Every year on St Andrew's Day and St Patrick's Day they are remembered at the cenotaph in Old Eldon Square in the centre of Newcastle.
In a modern world where military conscription has almost been erased except in obsolete authoritarian regimes, one glaring example has been Russia's one year military service requirement reduced from two years in 2008 for those 18-27 years of age. Like Angola and Afghanistan, the rich and well-connected mostly escape the current selections.