From: Norman Bassett, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
My uncle was involved as a Lieutenant in the Great War
and told me that after the war it was suggested that a
statue of a giant rat should be erected in Whitehall
instead of the Cenotaph, since that was how so many
soldiers ended up - blown to pieces and the pieces
eaten by rats. It was suggested that the idea might
not be popular because of the proximity of the Prime
Minister's residence and an association that might be
formed in the public's mind between the two.
Also it's statistically probable that the remains of
the "unknown soldier" under the Cenotaph are of a
Frenchman - and we are now at the stage where a DNA
test might show the probabilities of that.
It seems strange to me that all the intoning of
fragments of poetry goes on annually at this time
where effort would be a lot more usefully spent
exhuming the intact and identifiable remains of the
hundreds of thousands of men who drowned in the mud at
Passchendaele and giving them a long-overdue and
thought-provoking burial. The creation of a shiny new
graveyard with ten thousand bodies in it every year
for a few decades might achieve rather a lot more than
the present arrangements.
Any comments from anyone?
Regards
Norman Bassett
drakenfels.org
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________________________________
T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16
Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
