aint life strange,its good we dont know,what the future beholds

Like the case,thees two,Father and son of Birdwell
over my back wall at Rockley ave,birdwell live the Father,loved his football,and was a very active busy helpfull man,who lost a leg in WW1...he got on with it,he had a son ,who played in Goal for Birdwell Rovers, they got to the Cup final i think in 1939,before ww2,,but the Goalie,had to go to war...and like his father lost a leg inww2....their names were Horace WALKER,.........

 

please don't take offence

but do yu make some of these up? i'd love a grandad like you full of stories.

have you watched Big Fish yet? you remind me so much of the lead character (he's a great bloke so please don't think i'm taking the mick) (Y)

 

RE: please don't take offence

Thats Ok Jock...im too old and weary to bother,
they are all true,some of them i can prove,but i dont have to do that do i,NO, now your name Jock,i had some good Jock pals during my time in the Army...Dont you bother your self about me...thanks for reply.....
pity i live in Immingham i could tell you some good uns over a sunday din.....Cheers

 

RE: please don't take offence

Some of those stories are quite unbelievable indeed, but I have no reason not to believe them. My grandad was in the war too (in WW2 though) and even though he loved telling stories about everything, he never ever wanted to talk about the war. His brother was a fighter pilot and he was shot down near the border of Russia and Finland - the Russians captured him and no one ever heard of him again...

Hmm, I hope I don't have to tell war stories to my grandchildren...

 

same here

how come ya a BFC Tomi?

 

RE: please don't take offence

Who is going to go to war with Finland? The Eskimo's?

 

russia

or estonia. maybe even sweden.

my guess would be china so they could attack russia on 2 fronts /poo

 

The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

the Barstewards

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

Are you absolutely 100% sure about that?

I know that Stalinist Russia tried to expand into Finland and were given a bloody nose.

 

good point!

i've no excuse, i was born here, but how does someone finnish become a tarn fan?

 

McDog would probably be able to confirm

But the war, and what grandad did in it is very much a no no topic of conversation in Finland.

 

RE: same here

That's a very good question... and even I'm not sure about the answer!
I started following BFC during the promotion season - it was an exciting idea that such a small club could make it to the Premier League. Well, they made it and I was a happy bunny. All my friends were supporting Man United or Arsenal or Liverpool and they all thought I was crazy. (perhaps they were right!)
Late during the Premier League season I joined a BFC mailing list on Internet, where I met some of the people who post here now. The first match that I ever actually saw (on TV) was 7-0 loss against Man United. The Finnish TV lost the rights to show Premier League games the season after Barnsley got relegated, so they started showing Division One matches and for some reason they chose a lot of Barnsley games.
In summer 2000, just two months after the playoff final, BFC came to Finland for a training camp and to play a friendly match against my local team here! I lived in a very small town back then and Barnsley FC were the first (and so far the last) foreign team there... quite a coincidence, huh?!
Less than a year after that I made my first trip to England and Barnsley (the first game I saw at the Oakwell was the Norwich match when we got relegated...!!) Now I've been to Barnsley a few times and I'm already looking forward to the next trip.

 

them seem like fair reasins to me

good work.

theres i fella from botswana i persuaded round to BFC last year after living with him in halls!

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

That's true, but it was the only chance for us to survive the war and take back what the Russians had stolen from us in the Winter War 1939. The Russians declared war on us for no reason and no one except for the Germans offered their help. The Brits even declared war on Finland and technically we're still in war, I think, because no peace treaty was ever signed!! (or that's what I've been told)
It's a bit of a miracle that the Russians never managed to beat us, the Finns were somehow able to hold back an army that was about twenty times bigger than ours! Our leaders signed a secret pact with Adolf Hitler - we were supposed to help the Germans to invade Soviet Union. However, the Finns only took back the areas that we had lost 3 years earlier and Hitler really didn't like that. So, in 1943 we were attacked by the Germans AND the Russians... Still, Finland were the only country allied with the Germans in WW2 that wasn't captured by the Allied troops.

What Josif Stalin did during and before WW2 is the biggest crime in the history of mankind - I can't believe he got away with all that and a lot of people still celebrate him as a hero, which is why I'll hate him, Churchill and Roosevelt (+ the nazi leaders too, obviously) forever.

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

why what did chuchill do to you?
your not a welsh miner are you?

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

Well, Churchill did a good job when he helped beat the Germans, but it's disgusting to see him in photos shaking hands and smiling at the camera with the biggest criminal of WW2 (a.k.a. Josif Stalin)... Also, he did nothing when the Russians attacked to Finland, and later he even turned against the Finns. :S So, thanks to people like him, Finland had to pay "war compensations" for the Russians for 10 years, even though THEY started the war!

 

RE: The Fins were on the Germans side in the war.

I guess Churchill and the Brits were in a difficult situation too, though - they needed all the help to beat the Germans, so they had to ally with the Russians. I just wish that he had had the balls to turn against Stalin at the end of the war (I'm sure that everyone knew what sort of terrible crimes he had done) but who knows what would have happened then... :S

 

Thank you Tomi

That was very informative. I suspect very few of us know a lot about the Winter War. I like to think I know a bit about history, but the only time I have touched on it was reading a Sven Hassel novel which touched on it. The bit about war reparations to the Russians is staggering.

Glad to see BFC can reach out to fans abroad. Keep flying the flag!