Second Battle Of Ypres Quotes

Hitler initially served in the List Regiment engaged in a violent four-day battle near Ypres, in Belgian Flanders, with elite British professional soldiers of the initial elements of the British Expeditionary Force. Hitler thereby served as a combat infantryman in one of the most intense engagements of the opening phase of World War I. The List Regiment was temporarily destroyed as an offensive force by suffering such severe casualty rates (killed, wounded, missing, and captured) that it lost approximately 70 percent of its initial strength of around 3,600 men. A bullet tore off Hitler’s right sleeve in the first day of combat, and in the “batch” of men with which he originally advanced, every one fell dead or wounded, leaving him to survive as if through a miracle. On November 9, 1914, about a week after the ending of the great battle, Hitler was reassigned as a dispatch runner to regimental headquarters. Shortly thereafter, he was awarded the Iron Cross Second Class. On about November 14, 1914, the new regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Philipp Engelhardt, accompanied by Hitler and another dispatch runner, moved forward into terrain of uncertain ownership. Engelhardt hoped to see for himself the regiment’s tactical situation. When Engelhardt came under aimed enemy smallarms fire, Hitler and the unnamed comrade placed their bodies between their commander and the enemy fire, determined to keep him alive. The two enlisted men, who were veterans of the earlier great four-day battle around Ypres, were doubtlessly affected by the death of the regiment’s first commander in that fight and were dedicated to keeping his replacement alive. Engelhardt was suitably impressed and proposed Hitler for the Iron Cross Second Class, which he was awarded on December 2. Hitler’s performance was exemplary, and he began to fit into the world around him and establish the image of a combat soldier tough enough to demand the respect of anyone in right wing, Freikorps-style politics after the war. -- Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny, p. 88

Today, we pause to remember and honour the Canadian men and women who have served our country and fought for freedom around the world. Time may fade, but our memories cannot. We all have a duty to hold the torch high, and to keep its flame alight. Liberty’s cause beats deeply within our hearts, and every generation of Canadians has answered the call to serve. We must remember that, during the First and Second World Wars, Canada and Newfoundland fought side by side. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel, when a generation of Newfoundlanders laid down their lives in defence of the freedom, democracy, and diversity that we enjoy today. From Ypres to Vimy Ridge, Dieppe to Juno Beach – we will not forget. From Korea to the Suez, Cyprus to Kandahar – we will not forget. We remember yesterday’s youth, far from home, who fought for reason and progress. They stood up to tyranny and stood for liberty, and sacrificed their future for the future of so many. We honour Canada’s bravest, who stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies around the world. Every day, they face down the threat of terrorism, and protect the values we cherish most. At 11:00 am, I encourage all Canadians – no matter where you are – to observe the two minutes of silence. When we remember, we must remember war as it was and as it is. Freedom’s terrible price is known but to the few who have fought for it. That is why today we stand sombre and silent, with poppies close to our hearts, and take the time to remember. Lest we forget.

Second Ypres will endure as a monument to the sublime courage of the common man.

Teilhard also had glamour to burn, three kinds of it. At the age of thirty-two he had been the French star of the most sensational archaeological find of all time, the Piltdown man, the so-called missing link in the evolution of ape to man, in a dig near Lewes, England, led by the Englishman Charles Dawson. One year later, when World War I broke out, Teilhard refused the chance to serve as a chaplain in favor of going to the front as a stretcher bearer rescuing the wounded in the midst of combat. He was decorated for bravery in that worst-of-allinfantry-wars’ bloodiest battles: Ypres, Artois, Verdun, Villers-Cotterêts, and the Marne. Meantime, in the lulls between battles he had begun writing the treatise with which he hoped to unify all of science and all of religion, all of matter and all of spirit, heralding God’s plan to turn all the world, from inert rock to humankind, into a single sublime Holy Spirit. “With the evolution of Man,” he wrote, “a new law of Nature has come into force—that of convergence.” Biological evolution had created step one, “expansive convergence.” Now, in the twentieth century, by means of technology, God was creating “compressive convergence.” Thanks to technology, “the hitherto scattered” species Homo sapiens was being united by a single “nervous system for humanity,” a “living membrane,” a single “stupendous thinking machine,” a unified consciousness that would cover the earth like “a thinking skin,” a “noösphere,” to use Teilhard’s favorite neologism. And just what technology was going to bring about this convergence, this noosphere? On this point, in later years, Teilhard was quite specific: radio, television, the telephone, and “those astonishing electronic computers, pulsating with signals at the rate of hundreds of thousands a second.

April 1914