quote:

Originally posted by Rocketeer:
Not to put a downer on the Celebratory Weekend..but, yeah... the Battle of the Somme...

some history for the silent toast to the Fallen:

On Dominion day 1916, Canadians awoke to headlines that told of a million shells being fired at the German positions on the Somme River in Picardy. On Monday, July 3, their papers reported that British field Marshall Dougals Haig's " big push " had already netted almost 9,000 POW's and freed 11 French villages. For more than a week, the headlines continued to tell of great victories and even Haig's ' jubilation '.

Then came the reality, beginning with the news that the British had lost, then retaken Trones Woods. On July 13, word came that the Newfoundland regiment had been all but wiped out. Of 810 men and officers, 660 [ including every officer ] had been killed or wounded during a failed attack on Beaumont Hamel. In total, during the first day of the Somme, the British army lost 58,000 men and gained almost none of the objectives. By the time the Canadians captured Desire Trench, in mid-November, the Allies had suffered more than 650,000 casualties, 24,029 of them Canadians - and in some places they still had not reached their objectives for the first day of the Somme

It is difficult to imagine in this day and age that a whole generation of young men could be wiped out in a matter of minutes and a hundred of so small communities could lose nearly their whole male population in one go...