British members

Who ever lives closest to Towton please ride over and tell the rest of us how it feels and appears. Thank you.

GSTQ Greysilver

Towton is just a small nondescript rural village a few miles outside the city of York in North Yorkshire where old Brubaker and myself live. There's signs saying the Battle of Towton was fought there and a stone cross and that's about it.

The battle itself during the Wars of the Roses in 1461 was supposed to have been the 'bloodiest battle fought on English soil', and two hundred years later the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644 during the English Civil War was fought in the area too.

There's nothing special to see and it doesn't evoke thoughts of the senseless slaughter of thousands of young men like the World War 1 Cemeteries, and Memorials in Northern France do.

A few days ago Mrs M and myself visited the Memorial Site at the burned out village of Oradour-sur-Glane near Limoges, where in June 1944 a detachment of Waffen SS troops murdered over 600 villagers of all ages before looting and burning the village.

That's Yorkshire men for you, always fighting somebody. i bet they charged them for using the fields as well.  

I know what you mean Mildrew. I grew up in Manassas Virginia, where the first battle of the American Civil War took place. The battlefields are preserved as tourist locations and don't really evoke great battles in any way.

There are actually pictures from the time of local civilians gathering on the hillside to have picnics and "watch" the battle take place, if you can imagine such a spectacle.

When I was a youngster we used to go sledding down that hillside when it was covered in snow, without even thinking of all the bloodshed that took place there.

Sorry to threadcrap but Mildrews post made me think of it. If anyone wanted to ride in the eastern US, civil war battlefields might make for some entertaining day trips.

Oradour-sur-Glane:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13pwg5_the-world-at-war-ep-1-a-new-germany-1933-1939_shortfilms

Just wander through northern France and Belgium and see the war cemeteries. They are everywhere. Not just the graves, but the memorials to the thousands who's bodies were never found/identified. Theipval and the Menin Gate for example.

That is why Remembrance is important. Not specifically to remember the dead, but to remind ourselves of the atrocities that man is prepared to inflict upon his fellows in the name of some high ideal or quest for power.

DuggleBogey wrote:

I know what you mean Mildrew. I grew up in Manassas Virginia, where the first battle of the American Civil War took place. The battlefields are preserved as tourist locations and don't really evoke great battles in any way.

There are actually pictures from the time of local civilians gathering on the hillside to have picnics and "watch" the battle take place, if you can imagine such a spectacle.

When I was a youngster we used to go sledding down that hillside when it was covered in snow, without even thinking of all the bloodshed that took place there.

Sorry to threadcrap but Mildrews post made me think of it. If anyone wanted to ride in the eastern US, civil war battlefields might make for some entertaining day trips.

FWIW. That's Meldrew

I have a wonderful wife that tolerates my penchant for battlefields and cemetery's. About 10 years ago we went to France rode tgv from Paris to Lille and from Lille drove the Western Front of 1016 - 1918 to Vosges mountains. The British Somme and Canadian Vimy were two of the best stops. Beaumont Hamel (77,000 missing) being deeply moving. We saw Vedun and the American Sectors.
Thank for the report from Towton, it is on my bucket list

As is Oradour-sur-Glane    .