True Heroes

We hope the club do not make the mistake of last year and forget Remembrance Sunday.  There surely can be no dispute about honouring men and women who have given their lives to give us liberty, and protect our country from real threats of occupation. 

Whatever one thinks of our country's military actions abroad in the past decade where wars seem to be fought solely to ensure Uncle Sam can keep putting his foot on the gas pedal, a few moments silence to remember those who have fallen for us cannot be too much to ask.

Just this week the story of the WWII Operation Frankton (dramatised in 1955 as The Cockleshell Heroes) featured on television.  What was not commonly known until this programme aired (at least to me) was that  one of the men - Marine Bill Mills, hailed from Kettering. 

Along with most of his comrades he perished during the operation, in his case by firing squad after capture.  Bill and his colleagues performed the kind of heroics we can barely imagine in our modern age, when not being able to use your Blackberry for a couple of days constitutes a crisis, and sportsmen being paid a million quid a month are considered to be heroes.

It was desperately saddening to hear this story on Radio Northampton followed by news that a brave individual had climbed into the aviary at Wicksteed Park and mutilated a couple of parrots.  The sick bastard.  Are we so lacking in decency, and devoid of purpose that our society has fallen so far from the levels set by the example of Bill's generation?  What a world!