Re: Patrick Mestdag des Flandres
Publié : sam. oct. 15, 2005 1:45 pm
Bonjour ,
Professionnellement je m’occupe de l’export
De matériel médical cardiologique ,
Je passe pas mal de mon temps dans des avions et hôtels
au point que cela me gonfle parfois car cela fait
déjà 30 ans que j’exerce ce boulot ,
ce sont les déplacements
qui pèsent pas le travail .
J’ai la chance de pouvoir travailler
De puis de chez moi les 3 dernières années (on Travaille plus)
Cela me donne 53 ans , je suis marié heureux et
j’ai deux filles qui sont hors de la maison,
je suis devenu papy il y a tout juste un mois.
Je n’ai pas de foto’s de mon Harem en voici une autre . hé hé hé
-----------------------------------------------------------
Grand père maternelle faisait parti du 2 de ligne un régiment belge
Qui a durement combattu a l’Yser
Des mon plus jeune age mes 2 grands pères m’emmenaient
Qq fois sur leurs anciens champs de batailles ,
L’autre gp est parti après les combats de 14 a l’yser
combattre le boche au Congo bataille de Tabora etc
la a l’yser ils m’ont raconté des horreurs ,
que je vis en images par après le dimanche avec les visites familiales
en feuilletant les gros tomes de l’illustration .
J’avais 8 -10 ans
Et je leur posais mes premières questions.
On en as pas parlé beaucoup par après, de cette grande guerre
Car la vie s’ouvrait a moi,
Mon Grand père maternelle engagé volontaire et qui a subit toute la guerre a l’yser
Ou il a prit une tasse de gaz a la fin de la guerre, a tenu une correspondance assez importante durant les 3 dernières années de la guerre avec une marraine anglaise , elle
Lui envoyait à part des nombreuses lettres des chaussettes , des tricots du tabac etc ..
Maman me raconte, que a sa retraite, il a passé de nombreux mois à la cave a détruire toute cette correspondance qui ce trouvait dans des grands paniers d’osiers.
Cela ne regarde personne avait t’il dit , maintenant je trouve cela très dommage .
ce n’est que les dernières années
Que des questions plus adultes ce posent, et j’ai bien qq
Idées pourquoi cette destruction de sa correspondance.
Ils avaient 18 ans, quand ils ce sont engagés volontaire
Et quand le boche envahissait notre pays, juste terminé le bac
Et dans un enthousiasme, qui par après a du être dur a avaler .
Coupé derrière les lignes de ses proches en pays envahi ,
Personne a qui écrire ou partager les douleurs , je me doute bien
Que de lire ces lettres après, étant vieillard , ont du paraître
Naif simple ou même honteux .
@+
Patrick
je ne retrouve pas ma presentation en francais
La voici en anglais je la traduirait a fure et a mesure ,
Well for those of you, who know the Asterix Comics , I can start with the line
“I fell in it when I was small “(in the cauldron with the magic potion ).
My two Grandfathers fouth the great war entirely , and both survived it , both started at the Yser , with the battles of october 1914 ,
and one of my grandfathers went to the Congo to continue to fight jerry there as of 1915 . participated in the battle of Tabora
The one that stayed at the Yser was gassed , but he lived with this handicap to a respectful age of 84.
He corresponded with a war aunt (I wish I had this correspondence but it is lost )
Several times a year they both went together to their pilgrimage trips to the old battlefields
and they took me along as a young boy I was 8
( my parents were happy so they had the day free )
I remembered them talking ,discussing, arguing, together pointing out positions were jerry was , meanwhile explaining me this and that, there ..there was a machine gun , here it was dangerous to pass etc and telling me horrible stories which shook me as a young boy .
On the Sunday Visits, to keep me quite, I was allowed , to browse the two big volumes of l’Illustation
(on the condition that I took the huge pages nicely by the corners )
I still do as I have inherited the books . And I was seeing the first sometimes horrible images of what war really was , and I asked whilst browsing,why this ,why that how, come etc….
I have good memories of my grandfathers
In my early twenties I visited on my own the area , and then the interest had to make place for life . Six years ago my best friend Hubert ( sadly died 3 years ago)
offered me for my birthday the interpretation of the great war by Tardi (trench War)
and wrote in it “to revive your interest”
Gee !!! did he revived it ….. I started to read the classics ,first French ,then English the first day on the Somme , collected pictures, discovered there was lots and lots on the internet ,
This was the booster …and that there was much more I had to know ,see, that I could impossibly read all there was written , went to the library and stilled my reading hunger there , once that finished I started buying books on e-bay , I visited the whole front line , many places more than once , mastered Gothic German reading , translated portions of German regimental histories to French for an organization , discovered forums , internet friends became persons with whom I visit battlefields , and keep a correspondence, collected the missing medals of my grandfather ,as I had rcvd recently from mum an old colonial envelope , full of certificates , but there were only a few of the medals still in the family.
I like to see this interest as a quest in understanding mans stupidity ,
and unfortunately come to the conclusion that man does not learn from the past ,
he makes the same mistakes (C’est l’homme qui se répète pas l’histoire -Voltaire )
look at today’s scary equivalent points , many same situations , hope the theory of repetition is false,
only 9 years to go towards 2014 !
I like to see this interest as a way to comprehend and not forget the suffering they endured. To remember them to not forget them .
To try to comprehend the mechanism that lead countries into war
I understand better where I stand in time today ,knowing were I come from, what they had to give so that I can live the way I live now.
I like to say to myself that these young boys gave their lives to form a united Europe
( although they did not know it at the time )
L’amitié Franco - Allemand
Is written on the wall at Verdun signed Kohl – Mitterand .
Yes Americans the old Europe has hopefully understood it by know.
When you ask Germans- French – Brittons – Italians -Russians -Austrians ( I travel a lot) about their ancestors in the great war , they do not consider this interest so strange anymore, they discover they too almost forgot , and go discovering what their granddad did, and many came back ( with stories) thanking me for pointing that out to them .
Thanks for reading to the end
@+
Patrick
Professionnellement je m’occupe de l’export
De matériel médical cardiologique ,
Je passe pas mal de mon temps dans des avions et hôtels
au point que cela me gonfle parfois car cela fait
déjà 30 ans que j’exerce ce boulot ,
ce sont les déplacements
qui pèsent pas le travail .
J’ai la chance de pouvoir travailler
De puis de chez moi les 3 dernières années (on Travaille plus)
Cela me donne 53 ans , je suis marié heureux et
j’ai deux filles qui sont hors de la maison,
je suis devenu papy il y a tout juste un mois.
Je n’ai pas de foto’s de mon Harem en voici une autre . hé hé hé
-----------------------------------------------------------
Grand père maternelle faisait parti du 2 de ligne un régiment belge
Qui a durement combattu a l’Yser
Des mon plus jeune age mes 2 grands pères m’emmenaient
Qq fois sur leurs anciens champs de batailles ,
L’autre gp est parti après les combats de 14 a l’yser
combattre le boche au Congo bataille de Tabora etc
la a l’yser ils m’ont raconté des horreurs ,
que je vis en images par après le dimanche avec les visites familiales
en feuilletant les gros tomes de l’illustration .
J’avais 8 -10 ans
Et je leur posais mes premières questions.
On en as pas parlé beaucoup par après, de cette grande guerre
Car la vie s’ouvrait a moi,
Mon Grand père maternelle engagé volontaire et qui a subit toute la guerre a l’yser
Ou il a prit une tasse de gaz a la fin de la guerre, a tenu une correspondance assez importante durant les 3 dernières années de la guerre avec une marraine anglaise , elle
Lui envoyait à part des nombreuses lettres des chaussettes , des tricots du tabac etc ..
Maman me raconte, que a sa retraite, il a passé de nombreux mois à la cave a détruire toute cette correspondance qui ce trouvait dans des grands paniers d’osiers.
Cela ne regarde personne avait t’il dit , maintenant je trouve cela très dommage .
ce n’est que les dernières années
Que des questions plus adultes ce posent, et j’ai bien qq
Idées pourquoi cette destruction de sa correspondance.
Ils avaient 18 ans, quand ils ce sont engagés volontaire
Et quand le boche envahissait notre pays, juste terminé le bac
Et dans un enthousiasme, qui par après a du être dur a avaler .
Coupé derrière les lignes de ses proches en pays envahi ,
Personne a qui écrire ou partager les douleurs , je me doute bien
Que de lire ces lettres après, étant vieillard , ont du paraître
Naif simple ou même honteux .
@+
Patrick
je ne retrouve pas ma presentation en francais
La voici en anglais je la traduirait a fure et a mesure ,
Well for those of you, who know the Asterix Comics , I can start with the line
“I fell in it when I was small “(in the cauldron with the magic potion ).
My two Grandfathers fouth the great war entirely , and both survived it , both started at the Yser , with the battles of october 1914 ,
and one of my grandfathers went to the Congo to continue to fight jerry there as of 1915 . participated in the battle of Tabora
The one that stayed at the Yser was gassed , but he lived with this handicap to a respectful age of 84.
He corresponded with a war aunt (I wish I had this correspondence but it is lost )
Several times a year they both went together to their pilgrimage trips to the old battlefields
and they took me along as a young boy I was 8
( my parents were happy so they had the day free )
I remembered them talking ,discussing, arguing, together pointing out positions were jerry was , meanwhile explaining me this and that, there ..there was a machine gun , here it was dangerous to pass etc and telling me horrible stories which shook me as a young boy .
On the Sunday Visits, to keep me quite, I was allowed , to browse the two big volumes of l’Illustation
(on the condition that I took the huge pages nicely by the corners )
I still do as I have inherited the books . And I was seeing the first sometimes horrible images of what war really was , and I asked whilst browsing,why this ,why that how, come etc….
I have good memories of my grandfathers
In my early twenties I visited on my own the area , and then the interest had to make place for life . Six years ago my best friend Hubert ( sadly died 3 years ago)
offered me for my birthday the interpretation of the great war by Tardi (trench War)
and wrote in it “to revive your interest”
Gee !!! did he revived it ….. I started to read the classics ,first French ,then English the first day on the Somme , collected pictures, discovered there was lots and lots on the internet ,
This was the booster …and that there was much more I had to know ,see, that I could impossibly read all there was written , went to the library and stilled my reading hunger there , once that finished I started buying books on e-bay , I visited the whole front line , many places more than once , mastered Gothic German reading , translated portions of German regimental histories to French for an organization , discovered forums , internet friends became persons with whom I visit battlefields , and keep a correspondence, collected the missing medals of my grandfather ,as I had rcvd recently from mum an old colonial envelope , full of certificates , but there were only a few of the medals still in the family.
I like to see this interest as a quest in understanding mans stupidity ,
and unfortunately come to the conclusion that man does not learn from the past ,
he makes the same mistakes (C’est l’homme qui se répète pas l’histoire -Voltaire )
look at today’s scary equivalent points , many same situations , hope the theory of repetition is false,
only 9 years to go towards 2014 !
I like to see this interest as a way to comprehend and not forget the suffering they endured. To remember them to not forget them .
To try to comprehend the mechanism that lead countries into war
I understand better where I stand in time today ,knowing were I come from, what they had to give so that I can live the way I live now.
I like to say to myself that these young boys gave their lives to form a united Europe
( although they did not know it at the time )
L’amitié Franco - Allemand
Is written on the wall at Verdun signed Kohl – Mitterand .
Yes Americans the old Europe has hopefully understood it by know.
When you ask Germans- French – Brittons – Italians -Russians -Austrians ( I travel a lot) about their ancestors in the great war , they do not consider this interest so strange anymore, they discover they too almost forgot , and go discovering what their granddad did, and many came back ( with stories) thanking me for pointing that out to them .
Thanks for reading to the end
@+
Patrick