This video was made by some of the people from my hometown of Middleton, and of the Langley Estate where I live. Extremely moving, it contains images and spoken poetry, composed by the residents especially, referring to local people who fought in the war, and some of the families left behind. It is the real lives, the real stories, that really brings it all home.
Please watch.
City Jackdaw 
There’s a ‘Middleton’ beside my own town! Perhaps being omnipresent is another feature of your resume? 😉 haha.
I am deeply fond of WW1 poetry… it was the topic of our literature course last year and at the end I realised I’d learnt a great deal more about the war and it’s accompanying horrors through its literature compared to actually having studied it at GCSE.
Never was poetry quite so raw and honest…
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Yes I am omnipresent. I have many God-like qualities, but I try to be humble about it. Don’t think it’s working 🙂
Anthem For Doomed Youth and all those others. Wilfred Owen was killed in the final week of the war. All the deaths were tragic, but when you think of those who almost made it. There was even men killed after the war had finished-before news had reached everywhere.
I was headstone hunting the other day-a cheerful hobby of mine 🙂 I have a gt grandfather who is buried in Thessaloniki in Greece. I went there on the 90th anniversary of his death, and hope to return for the 100th in 2017. Another gt grandfather died at home after being gassed at the front. I searched a Manchester cemetery for his resting place, discovering he (and other family members interred with him) had no headstone. I’m going to see if he should qualify for one with the Commonwealth War Graves commission.
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Oh Andy! That was so beautiful. Brought tears to my eyes. Do you know if the actual poets who penned those words were the ones who spoke them on the video? I’m glad they acknowledged the women who worked behind the scenes. So many losses.
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I think they are-it was a community based project involving a wide ranging group of locals, guided by a known poet. I was impressed with how professional it is-and yes it’s extremely moving.
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