I’ve just listened to the first recording and will listen to the others later. Decent quality and quite understandable. What a life he lived. He’s about 8 years older than my grandfather but came from a wealthy family whereas we were very poor. Cripps lost his parents very young and dealing with emotional hardship would have been inured in him. My GrandDad left school at 12 to work in the S Wales coal mines and never saw active service but worked to power the war effort. How those two men from very different backgrounds and millions like them suffered and toiled to save their country. Contrast that with today’s 20 year olds millions of whom are too sick with mental illness to sit behind a desk or push a sweeping brush down a street. What chance in a war today?
I recall an old friend of my grandparents recalling how growing up, she saw her first aeroplane. We forget that by the start of WW1 this was incredibly new technology. Quite how people were brave enough to try it, let alone try to kill others while using it, is impossible to fathom. Maybe a primeval instinct to use whatever we can get our hands on to challenge ourselves and then fight for whatever. The nearest second hand connection was my granfather’s older brother who was only 18 and commissioned into the Royal Naval Air Service which then became part of the RFC and then the RAF. He was an observer and bomb aimer on a Handley Page bomber on one of the first air raids over industrial targets in the Ruhr at the end of 1917. Open cockpit, bad weather, no parachute, energy guns trying to kill you. No complaints about the day ahead!
I'm half way through "The Old Front Line" (John Masefield) a harrowing account of the Somme and the conditions therein, written shortly after the battle. Thoroughly recommended.
Every time I listen to them and read two letters home to his uncle, as his parents died young, my emotions are raised as my thoughts are always that was then and this is now and the contrast is almost too much to bear.
Thanks for posting the Cripps tapes. Hard to listen to/hear clearly but very interesting report from a world long gone. The last vid however came over as youtube american slop. Even the opening phrases were wrong and rubbish. I stopped after a minute or so. Why can't they do this properly?
I’ve just listened to the first recording and will listen to the others later. Decent quality and quite understandable. What a life he lived. He’s about 8 years older than my grandfather but came from a wealthy family whereas we were very poor. Cripps lost his parents very young and dealing with emotional hardship would have been inured in him. My GrandDad left school at 12 to work in the S Wales coal mines and never saw active service but worked to power the war effort. How those two men from very different backgrounds and millions like them suffered and toiled to save their country. Contrast that with today’s 20 year olds millions of whom are too sick with mental illness to sit behind a desk or push a sweeping brush down a street. What chance in a war today?
I recall an old friend of my grandparents recalling how growing up, she saw her first aeroplane. We forget that by the start of WW1 this was incredibly new technology. Quite how people were brave enough to try it, let alone try to kill others while using it, is impossible to fathom. Maybe a primeval instinct to use whatever we can get our hands on to challenge ourselves and then fight for whatever. The nearest second hand connection was my granfather’s older brother who was only 18 and commissioned into the Royal Naval Air Service which then became part of the RFC and then the RAF. He was an observer and bomb aimer on a Handley Page bomber on one of the first air raids over industrial targets in the Ruhr at the end of 1917. Open cockpit, bad weather, no parachute, energy guns trying to kill you. No complaints about the day ahead!
Thanks Pete. I must have a listen.
I'm half way through "The Old Front Line" (John Masefield) a harrowing account of the Somme and the conditions therein, written shortly after the battle. Thoroughly recommended.
Thanks for the recommendation, I've just bought a secondhand copy
Thank you Pete that is much improved.
Every time I listen to them and read two letters home to his uncle, as his parents died young, my emotions are raised as my thoughts are always that was then and this is now and the contrast is almost too much to bear.
Thankyou for posting this. I will definitely listen. I was in Arras cemetery last month to pay my respects to my step great uncle at the RFC memorial.
Killed at 19 in 1916. Hit in the head,landed but died on the ground. His gunner survived.
He was buried beside the plane,so his actual grave has been lost.
Incredible
Thanks for posting the Cripps tapes. Hard to listen to/hear clearly but very interesting report from a world long gone. The last vid however came over as youtube american slop. Even the opening phrases were wrong and rubbish. I stopped after a minute or so. Why can't they do this properly?