Bob's Board: Arnold Tabbs - Viewing Profile - Bob's Board

Shropshire Spireite, on 24 April 2025 - 09:19 PM, said:

Aye. Let's all show some decency by not making a "bantz" issue out of what is actually a tragic case.

DOUGLAS JARDINE, on 09 November 2024 - 10:50 AM, said:

My grandad lost his left eye due to a shrapnel wound at the Battle of the Somme and I don't think he did so in order that James McClean should be forced to wear a poppy if he doesn't want to. In 1934 grandad was killed in an accident when he was hit by a car on his blind side, so his death was a direct consequence of the First World War, which he was conscripted into because he had the terrible luck to have been born in 1893. Goodbye to his job on the farm; hello to carnage in the French mud.

Just like at the Charge of the Light Brigade...

Their's not to wonder why
Their's but to do, and die.

When he died, his widow - pregnant with her third child - was left with no income, since not only her husband's wage was lost but his ?1 a week war disability pension was stopped as well. 13 year old Uncle Arthur had to leave school and get a job in order to pay the rent, but only till 1939 when he too was called up to fight in the Second World War, which wouldn't have happened but for the economic sanctions imposed on Germany in 1918, which created the chaotic conditions that Hitler and the Nazis were able to exploit. After that the family had to live on charity till the Welfare State was created in 1948. That's how to treat your heroes!

Like grandad, Arthur survived the war, but the TB he contracted in the Navy, and the many X rays he had afterwards, might have contributed to the oesophageal cancer that killed him when he was in his early sixties.

I don't wear a poppy either. If you do, that's your business entirely and nothing to do with me.

To be honest, I don't mind who wins. I just wanted to see what would happen if Bob's Board users confronted the dilemma of which of the two teams were disliked the most.

The result is clear.