The Editor
This is Our Flag
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Written by Green Arrow
This article was first published on the original Home of the Green Arrow back in February 2007 and I repost it now as a response to a commenter who seems to think that we Welsh do not give a rat's arse about England......
Take a good look at this flag. This is OUR Flag. The flag of the indigenous people of the United Kingdom. Beneath its colours, our ancestors have fought and died for it in its current form since the Union of Ireland and Great Britain in 1801.
That union along with the Union of Scotland in 1603 and the Wales Acts of 1535-1542 brought about one of the Greatest alliances in the world. The United Kingdom. Look at it again. Your Countrymen have died for this flag.
On the 6th of June 1944, my father – a proud Welshman, along with his regiment, ran up Sword Beach in Normandy. They were off the Beach in an hour and traveled inland towards Caen. There my father was to earn his Oak Leaf for being Mentioned in Despatches whilst also running into a burst of machine gun fire from the heavy resistance they encountered.
For my father the war was over and up until his recent demise he would never talk about the war unless really pushed after a few beers in the British Legion.
One summer when I was in my late teens, dressed in shirtsleeves, I asked my father about the origins of the tattoo on his left forearm. By now it was faded but still clearly a Union Jack.
“Why?”, I asked, “would a Welshman have an English Flag tattooed on his arm”?
There I received an history lesson..
“Its not an English Flag, its OUR flag, first I am Welsh, then I am British and this is the flag of the British – the flag of a United Britain...without each other, the English, the Scots, Irish and Welsh are nothing. Together we are great”.
And that was my history lesson for the day finished with.
Now when I see the tactics the scum politicians make to divide the United Kingdom and the encouragement they give to organisations such as the wasteful Welsh Assembly and the almost continual insults aimed at the English then I wonder if my Fathers run up that beach was worth it. Well of course it was. It stiffens my resolve to fight for what is right.
So remember, it does not matter whether you are Scots, Irish, Welsh or English – you are still British. Do not let the enemy divide us. It is Our Flag – let’s keep it always looking this way.
Come on ENGLAND.
