"We band of brothers"

Major Richard "Dick" Winters - the original American Paratrooper who with his Easy Company comrades was featured in the superb book and film "Band of Brothers" died recently.

He lived to a ripe old age of 92 despite the awful combat experiences he had gone through in his youth.  He had however been ill for several years with Parkinston Disease.

Not only did they survive being parachuted into France on D Day and the Battle of the Bulge but he and his comrades also took part in the liberation of a German concentration Camp.  After which he said to himself "Now I know why I am here".

Richard had originally enlisted in the Army as a private and after the War turned down the offer to be a regular soldier to return to civilian life.

I posted this in 2009.  Hat-tip Harry's Place

"And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother" Henry V

BNP "honours" Japan criminals who murdered Brit POW'S

Driving back home to the Smoke (London) from Auld Reekie (Edinburgh) today I was incensed to listen to a news report on Radio 4 "PM" about a senior full time official of the BNP (British Nazi Party) Adam Walker, who is attending a meeting of fascists in Tokyo organised by an extreme right wing nationalist party who deny that Japan committed atrocities during the Second World War.

They are all also even going to visit  "Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine in the capital that honours Japan's war dead, including 14 class-A war criminals".

I listened to this mumbling apologist for the mass murder, torture and starvation of British and Commonwealth 2nd World War prisoners (and the murder and rape of countless millions of other victims of Japanese racist aggression) as he tried to defend the indefensible. 

By coincidence on Thursday I visited the three military museums in Edinburgh Castle and can vividly remember the many harrowing accounts and pictures of Japanese executions and deliberate cruelty to Scottish Prisoners of War. 

Putting aside mere common decency and humanity for the moment - how on earth can anyone who claim to support our armed forces and be a patriotic Brit possibly support the BNP after this latest crass exposure of its deep rooted Nazi cultism?

Hat-tip to Paul for YouTube video.

(Check out my next post for details of a later Radio 4 programme I heard this afternoon that I did not shout abuse at).