Be Excellent To Each Other

Another fantastic obituary from the Telegraph.



Read the whole thing:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituar ... illin.html

He may have been unarmed, save for the dagger, but playing the bagpipes counts as psychological warfare!

What a guy.

Aye they did a bit on the radio about him, there was an interview where he said he probably didn't get shot because the Germans thought he was insane!

Amazingly brave though. And lucky.

My Grandfather was a piper in WWII. He had a pistol, if I remember correctly, but basically all he did was go out onto the battlefield before anyone else (except for other pipers, obv) with a fucking scottish flag tied to a pole on his back, and play the bagpipes to raise moral.

Astoundingly, most of them survived

That is just brilliant..

Wow. It's excellent that you know his stories. Do you know where he piped?

For holiday this year I'm going with my yank friend to where his grandfather fought. Part of me regrets not finding out what my grandparents did in the war before it was too late.

I recently stumbled across some photos of my grandfather that were taken during the war that I hadn't seen before. I always remember him as a very somber, sensible man, but the photos are of him and a bunch of mates posing in front of a burnt out german plane and all grinning like loons. It's odd to think of him as a young man mucking about.

Awesome piper story!

Re: A-level results, I did like the tweet from Rhodri Marsden:

"Today's news: Thousands of smooth-skinned, nubile teenage girls celebrate exam results - achievements of boys 'not known'"

I always thought it was a shame that my mum's Uncle Sid died before I was born, as I'd have loved to have heard some of his stories. He was the First Officer of the HMS Norfolk during WWII, though third in command apparently as the ship carried an Admiral. I only really know one of his stories, which was whilst they were trying to hunt down the Bismarck. Apparently they'd been sailing for some time in a dense fog, when suddenly the weather improved and the fog started to clear. As it cleared, they suddenly noticed a massive German warship in front of them, the Bismarck. So quick as a flash, the crew had to get the smoke screen going and get the ship turned round. They'd finally found what they'd been hunting for, and as soon as they did, they had to run away from it!

My brother was also doing some genealogy recently on my Dad's family, which even he knows little about. We discovered he has an Uncle that died during the Battle of the Somme, and is buried in France. We hoping to pay the grave a visit at some point, we're fairly sure we'll be the first members of the poor guy's family that ever will have when do.

Mimi - let us know how they get on.

My grandad wouldn't talk about the war.

My Grandad was (and still is) a bit of a nutter. He was an engineer in the war had what sounded like an amazing time driving around france fixing army vehicles. I should probably find out more details.

A lot of people wouldn't and you can hardly blame them.

My mum's uncle, who I mentioned above, was apparently some overgrown boy scout all his life though, so he'd happily tell his stories. Apparently he lied about his age in order to join the Navy as a rating during the First World War at 14 years old, and had worked his way up to Commander by the time the Second World War kicked off. My grandad, his brother, considered him to be some kind of mental.

This is brilliant. New thread on grandads

Hmm, no. I'm got a feeling he's told me, but I don't remember. My brother might.

He (my grandfather, not my brother) remained quite good friends with his fellow pipers (they weren't in a squad together, each regiment (maybe, not sure of the details) had a couple, but as you can imagine they got on because they were all insane in the same way), and most of them came home from the war and stayed in touch. I met some of them on the rare occasions they met - many of them came to my grandfathers 60th, although I wasn't very old at the time.

As they got older still, they all attended each others funerals and walked behind the coffin, playing a funeral march called "The Battle Is Over". When my grandfather died there was only one left, and he was in a wheelchair and very, very ill, but he got up and walked behind the coffin, playing his bagpipes as best he could. I remember the pall-bearers went slowly so he could keep up.

My brother and I got talking to his son (or maybe son-in-law) who had driven him, and it turned out that they not only lived quite nearby (about fifteen miles up the road) but the son-in-law knew my uncle really well. We spent some time talking to the piper himself (who's name escapes me - this was a fair while ago), although he had to leave soon after the funeral as he was, understandably, knackered.

So me and my brother decided there's no fucking way that he was going to miss out at his funeral, and spent the next three months learning to play this fucking song on the bagpipes. Those motherfucker's are hard to play, and neither he nor I had any real musical talent (I played the drums, but that didn't help at all).

But anyway, we learned this fucking song (and Three Blind Mice), and when we heard from my uncle that the old man had died we turned up at the funeral in full dress (kilts are shockingly expensive things to hire, by the way) and played the pipes behind his coffin.

It remains, and I suspect will always be, the most (trying to think of the right word) generous thing I've ever done.

I have heard (or read) that before from you Grim... and I still feel like giving you a standing ovation for it.

That's brilliant Grim...

I suspect I have told you whilst drunk. It's a good "I have never" subject

That's a brilliant thing you and your brother did, Grim....

An amazing tale Grim..., hats off to you and your bro mate, big time.

Talking of last wishes at funerals, I've asked my kids and missus to throw a big fireworks party at my house when I go; fire the last and biggest rocket for me, over the house and fields that I have loved.

Well Played Grim....


I used to love my grandads stories... bless his soul.

You can get rockets that have your ashes in now - fancy that?

That is the epitome of Being Excellent Grim...

Whilst neither of my grandparents ever had any stories quite as nuts as the bagpiping ones, Grandfather Len was in Egypt and Libya and would tell stories about cockroach infestations that still give me the willies ( walking into a kitchen, turning the lights on and realising that every surface was covered in the buggers. He tried to avoid eating anything that he hadn't seen come out of the can after that ) and tales about lugging about about barrels of aero fuel in 50 degree heat when they had things like "Warning : Flash point 47 degrees" written on them. He also had built up such huge upper body strength by driving around the big lorries, with no power steering or anything, over sandy, barely there roads that when he got back to blighty none of his shirts would fit.

Grandfather James was on board a armed trawler, basically a fishing boat, doing all the little jobs that the Navy wouldn't waste a real warship on. They were apparently issued with boarding cutlasses, presumably just in case they sighted the Tirpitz and wanted to capture it rather than sink it. They once thought they had spotted a U-Boat, so they go out the WWI Vickers gun, set it up and opened fire. However, no one was paying attention during the training, so they didn't know how to set it to auto and ended up firing single shots at it, about one every 30 seconds. They claimed after it they had damaged it and scared it away,

'awesome' I think is the right word.

*flashback to the last time this was mentioned*

Shudders.

Really? Awesome.

Thinking about my yank friend, when I was over at his place last autumn one day he pulled out a large crate which was full of his grandfather's war loot. We're talking large Nazi flags, Italian pistols, books and stamp collections that had been picked up and sent back. My friend says that it's only been in recent years that his grandfather has started to talk about his experiences, however.

(He also said that his granddad was told, prior to boarding the troop ship, not to mention the American Civil War to any southerners he might meet)

What a way to go - an explosion that sets off car alarms for 2 miles in each direction, spreading your remains to the wind with you ending up spread over dozens of square miles.

And your name spelt out in the sky, of course.

My grandad drove a duck ( ) mostly, some other vehicles. My nan's brother was the tallest pilot in the war.

Most stories I know are about my grandad being one of the most requested hairdresser's models in France and the black market for corned beef, how his friend couldn't read and write so my grandad had to write and read his love letters for him and how another friend of his only ever wrote in mirrored writing. Oh, and condensed milk sandwiches.

The most precious thing though is that my grandad signed up to the army because he came home from work one day to find his wife in bed with his best friend. He decide to leave and signed up before war broke out.

During the war he became friends with some chap called Eddie, who was married to my great aunt. He asked my aunt if any of her sisters had time to write to this lovely but lonely chap, and Louisa asked her youngest sister, my nan, then just 18 if she'd like to write to him. My grandad was 29 but they wrote to each other throughout the war, sent photographs and without meeting fell in love and agreed to marry when he got back home, which they did. My grandad loved my nan so preciously up until his death at 99 last year.

Both truly wonderful people.

PS, talking of Nan, she has used her DS every day except for two (one long hospital visit and one trip to Sheffield, and it was to late when she got home) She's in hospital at the moment after her fall, but someone takes the DS into her every second day when they visit. She likes that Kawashima praises her drawing - I haven't told her that he has no intelligence to judge her artistic skills.

..?

'Removed by Request'

My Nana died 4 years ago, and prior to that had Alzheimer's. Her only memories were from her youth, so she'd describe how she'd had a hard day, counting out the rivits in the aircraft factory. The rivits had to be kept hot so they had thick leather gloves, but the heat came through anyway, and the air was hot and full of smoke. This was all true but had happened like 60 years previously..

I need to speak to my parents and see what my Grandads did during the war. I know my Mums uncle died onboard a warship when it was hit and he was down in the bowels of the engine room. I always glance up at his name on the memorial in our local park.

I figured that's what you meant. I don't remember mentioning it then.

[edit]So I did! And he was called Dhugal. And then some cunt came along decreeing that he had (Snip! - Ed)

Mine neither.
I know he worked in radar and the like, mind, not a soldier.

I don't know what my grandads did in the wars but my dad was in the Royal Marines. He never talked about any action he was involved in, but he told us a few stories about life at sea and in some of the ports they visited.

He was also a ship's butcher. They visited some remote island in the tropics and were given a suckling pig by the local chief. They fed the thing up for a while and a lot of the crew began to think of it as a pet rather than a prospective meal. When the time came to kill it, for some strange reason they decided to stun it with a sledge hammer before killing it. One guy held it still and the other walloped it on the bonce. It kicked the guy holding it half way across the deck before losing consciousness. My dad said a lot of the crew abused them severely for slaughtering it, but none of them refused the fresh pork at dinner time.

My mum was in the WRAF, serving as ground crew, mostly on Avro Ansons which were used for recon and pilot training. She said the back end had a tendency to wander when taxi-ing in a stiff breeze, so they'd get one of the girls to sit on the fuselage just in front of the tail plane until they got to the end of the run way, but on more than one occasion the pilot forgot they were there and took off with them still astride it.

Hahahahaha!

Hi5 Grim...

o/

\o

I think my great granddad was in the home guard, but I don't have any stories. He didn't go to war.

My uncle was a paratrooper and served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands. He won't talk about it, and I don't blame him. The only thing I really know is that he was moved out of his squad to command another truck shortly before the first, containing all of his mates, was blown up by a roadside bomb. Not nice.

My great uncle was supposedly in the SAS. He used to disappear for long periods of time and wasn't allowed to say why. I've never met him.

My Nan's boyfriend was in the SBS. Britain fucked him over properly. An 'incident' during the war left him wounded and with total amnesia. He was medically retired out and left to his own devices. He found out at the age of 60 that he had two grown-up kids, who'd been told he was killed.

Bloody hell, that's awful.

I've heard that before too, but either way Grim... gets so much good karma for such a good thing that he could punch a baby and come out smelling of roses.

I have punched a baby!

But you don't smell of roses.

He does smell of horse shit though, and that's pretty close.

Which is odd when you consider that he talks bullshit.

/fingers banhammer