Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Mission Monitor Board Every 10 Years Forum Diplomatic mission to Belgium

IMPORTANT DIPLOMATIC MISSION TO BELGIUM

(Unashamedly nicking the idea from Cobalt Kid)

Message to New LMBP leader.

I beg leave to report that I and my attaché (Gigglebot Girl) will be attending an important Diplomatic conference in Belgium over the coming weekend. The space cruiser will be leaving at first light on Friday and I shall return to present my report on Monday.

A bus load of us from the re enactment group are off for a weekend jolly Whilst in Belgium we shall be staying at Talbot House near Ypres. This building was made famous during the First World War as a pace for troops of all ranks to rest and recover between time in the trenches. It now acts as a boarding house/hostel with a number of exhibitions telling the stories of the house, its gardens and theatre and the soldiers who stayed there. Many of whom left Talbot House to go to the trenches and never returned.

During the weekend we will be attending the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate. From October 1914 British and Commonwealth troops began to march through the Meenenpoorte gateway from the city of Ypres onto The Menin Road and into the battlefields of the Ypres Salient. For the next four years of the Great War soldiers from practically every British and Commonwealth regiment passed through this gateway. Many thousands of soldiers in the British Army lost their lives fighting in the Ypres Salient. The remains of over 90,000 of them have never been found or identified. They are, therefore, buried somewhere in the Ypres Salient with no known grave. The site of the Meenenpoorte, known to the British Army as The Menin Gate, was considered to be a fitting location to place a memorial to the missing British and Commonwealth soldiers. This memorial contains the names of 54,896 officers and men from all the British and Commonwealth forces who fell in the Ypres Salient before 16 August 1917. Since 1929, every night of the week buglers from the local volunteer fire brigade have gathered at the gate (except for the time the town was occupied by the Germans in the Second World War) as the traffic is halted to sound the last post in memory of all the soldiers who fell in the Great War.

We also intend to visit the site of some of the battles and tour some surviving trench systems and if time allows visit the largest British and Commonwealth cemetery at Tyne Cot, where some 12,000 graves mark the last resting place of a generation.

Less this sound too much like a sad pilgrimage I can of course confirm that there will be time for the much more normal LMBP activities of eating and drinking and I shall be delighted to get this opportunity to sample some of the finest beer in the world at night after the diplomatic duties are done.

I’ll check in from work for the rest of today, (but there is the small matter of the England game tonight at 17.00 to get to the pub to see ) and will see all you fine folk on Monday.

In today's modern Galaxy there is, of course, very little still held to be unspeakable. Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and, in extreme cases, shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech is seen as evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed, and totally unf[bleep!]ked-up personality. So, for instance, when in a recent national speech, the financial minister of the Royal World Estate of Qualvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another, and the fact that no one had made any food for awhile and the king seemed to have died, and that most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy had now arrived at what he called, "One whole juju-flop situation," everyone was so pleased he felt able to come out and say it, that they quite failed to notice that their five-thousand-year-old civilisation had just collapsed overnight. But though even words like "juju-flop," "swut," and "turlingdrome" are now perfectly acceptable in common usage, there is one word that is still beyond the pale. The concept it embodies is so revolting that the publication or broadcast of the word is utterly forbidden in all parts of the galaxy except one - where they don't know what it means. That word is "Belgium" and it is only ever used by loose-tongued people in situations of dire provocation.

Sorry Boot. I guess using the words England, World Cup and Belgium in the same post was just too much for an intelligent sensitive bloke to take.

"...intelligent sensitive bloke" Reboot?

Have a great trip Far!

Going to Belgium? Isn't that a euphemism for...

(uh, never mind.)

Have a good trip! (if it is a trip, and not a, [you know what], that is)

You & Gigi can be the Legion World Trade Delegation. In the performance of your duties, you must sample the many fine products of Belgian food and drink and assess which might be suitable for import.

Have fun Faraway! And I hope Gigglebot Girl has some nice shops in which to spend your money.

Hope you have a good time dude!

enjoy the trip Faraway

To the new LMBP leader and Founders council.

An Interim report back from the diplomatic mission to Belgium undertaken during the last weekend.

I am afraid to report that the Space shuttle carrying us to the meetings came under heavy space piracy attacks which were only beaten off by the sterling work of the captain and his mechanic. (The mini bus broke down) We arrived in Diplomatic HQ much later than expected and only had time to attend the welcoming reception for food and a quick drink.

The next day we left our captain and mechanic attempting to repair the craft and taking my guard with me moved on to the duties of the day, including paying our respects to the dead and touring some of the surviving military fortifications. After returning to base again we were offered the hospitality of the town and a number of libations were offered in honour of multi cultural relationships.

The last day of the embassy dawned as bright as the others. Repairs being completed we were able to fulfil one of the tasks appointed and paid our respects to a fallen comrade

Then it was back to shuttle and we returned to home, safe and unmolested.




Well it is Monday, I am shattered as we didn’t get home until 1.40 am and although I am at work I am not firing on all cylinders as it were. I will write a bit more about the break if you don’t mind, but only after I have had a chance to digest everything. The trip was a very strange event mixing the silly, with the annoying (the breakdown) to the sad and quiet contemplative. Visiting the battlefield around Ypres and seeing the War Graves and listening to the guide, one feels sombre, reflective and awed. The numbers of the dead, the ages of them and the numbers of those who are simply shown as “A Soilder of the Great War. Known unto God” made me feel very small, very unimportant and gave me a sense of the debt, still felt every day by the Belgium people, I owed to these ancestors.

I think I need to write this down to get it clear in my own head and I’ll post some bits and bobs over the next few days, with pictures if you don’t mind.

I for one can't wait to hear it

That sounds like a great trip Darden, and I relate to the sense of history you feel when you visit a place like that, especially one so powerful (and a bit sad).

It also sounds like you and Gigi had a great time, and when the equation (Faraway Lad + Libations) is computed, we all the answer to be something too silly for simple mathematics. "Faraway and Gigglebot in Belgium" actually seems like a great title to a NC-17 LMB tag team thread, come to think of it