User:RobNS/Sandbox

Testing, my sandbox

Association football in North West England

Association football is the most popular sport in North West England, like most of the UK, in terms of both participants and spectators. North West England has many, if not most of England's leading football clubs. Of all the teams in the Premier League and Football League 23% come from the North West. The next nearest region is Greater London with 10 teams (11%). The North West also has 8 teams in the Premier League, more than any other region. Greater London is the next nearest with 5 despite having a far greater population.

Teams in the North West have won 53 out of 109 English football League titles (49%), more than any other region.

Clubs
The table below lists all London clubs in the top eight tiers of the English football league system: from the top division (the Premier League), down to Step 4 of the National League System. League status is correct for the 2009-10 season. Stadiums and capacity are of December 16, 2009.

Wembley Stadium
Wembley Stadium, in north-west London, is the national football stadium, and is traditionally the home of the FA Cup Final as well as England's home internationals. The old stadium was closed in 2000 in order to be demolished and completely rebuilt, and reopened in 2007; during the closure Cardiff's Millennium Stadium was the venue for cup finals, while England played at various venues around the country. Wembley was one of the venues for the 1966 FIFA World Cup and the 1996 European Football Championship, and hosted the final of both tournaments. It also was the venue for the European Cup final in 1968, 1978 and 1992.

Other stadiums
Most clubs in London have their own stadium, although some clubs share between them, and some clubs may temporarily take up a tenancy at another's ground due to their own ground being redeveloped. The largest operational football stadium in London apart from Wembley is Arsenal's Emirates Stadium, with a capacity of 60,355. Other large stadiums include Chelsea's Stamford Bridge (42,055), Tottenham's White Hart Lane (36,240) and West Ham United's Boleyn Ground (35,647). There are 10 clubs in London with stadiums larger than 10,000.

Administration
London is the location of the headquarters of the Football Association, in Soho Square (formerly Lancaster Gate), while the Premier League's offices are located in Gloucester Place near Marble Arch. The Football League maintains its headquarters in Preston, although its commercial offices are based in Gloucester Place as well.

Testing (please ignore)
 Rob NS 

User box creator with template

 * Userbox Creator with template - designed to easily generate Userboxes and has builtin template.

Stalingrad Madonna
The book, called "Stalingrad Madonna" by Martin Kruse, was based on the letters, which were written by another prisoner, officer and doctor Kurt Reuber. In December of 1942, on Christmas eve, he drew Madonna with a child on a Soviet map and hung the drawing in a bunker. It was written on the drawing: "Light, life, love, Christmas in a boiler, Fortress Stalingrad, 1942." Why did the German officer make that drawing at that period of the war? As it is known, the state of German troops left much to be desired by that time. Hitler's commands convinced Friedrich Paulus, the Commander of the 6th Army, not to capitulate, but to confide in the combatant value of German soldiers. Kurt Reuber: "But what was the combatant value of the 6th Army like until the beginning of 1943? Soldiers had only 25 cartridges a day for one person. Their daily ration was a piece of horse-flesh and 100 grams of bread." The newspaper Roter Stern wrote in 1943 that a German soldier died every seven seconds - either of hunger, exhaustion or cold.

The author of the book believes that Kurt Reuber was a Catholic priest, and it was his painting, which depicted Madonna with a child, that assisted in the capitulation of Paulus's army. That was a long-awaited event even for Germans themselves. Kurt Reuber died in the prisoner-of-war camp in Yelabuga on January of 1944. His Stalingrad Madonna drawing was recognized as an icon in 1990 in Great Britain. "Reconciliation and Forgiveness, Light and Life" - these are the words that are written on another variant of the drawing, which was made in 1943 on Christmas eve, in Yelabuga.

The book "Stalingrad Madonna" was published in Germany. A copy of the book arrived in Yelabuga as a gift for Tatiana Nechayeva, who worked as a chief doctor at the prisoners camp during 1943-1948. Baroness Olhausen wrote: "For compassion and kindness towards all German prisoners of war on behalf of all mothers and women of the world, to a kind woman Tatiana." The baroness called Tatiana the Stalingrad Madonna.

Tatiana Nechayeva graduated from the Kazan Medical Institute in 1941. She was a captain of the medical service. In 1952 she founded the anti-TB hospital in Yelabuga, where she worked until 1990. Tatiana is rewarded with the Red Flag Order and other medals, including a decoration "For the Victory Over Germany." Tatiana Nechayeva died in 1999.

She recollected: "Prisoners of war were brought to the camp in a horrible condition. They were dirty, exhausted, lousy, sick, they did not look like humans. It was hard to imagine that all those people felt conquerors just a few days ago." Doctors had to separate sick German soldiers from healthy ones, to wash and feed them, to cut their hair and give clean clothing to them. That was a very hard work to do, taking into consideration the fact that the camp experienced a strong lack of personnel. Doctors had to work 24 hours a day. In the beginning, German prisoners were rather cautious: they thought that they would be killed in the camp, so they did not want to go to a bathroom, sick officers did not allow doctors to make injections to them, they did not take drugs either. "Slowly but surely, but they changed their attitude to us. Doctors did not perceive them as prisoners of war, they perceived them as people, who needed help. In spite of the fact that we all suffered from the war, from Germans, we did not lose the feeling of humanity, we found strength in us to overcome the hostility against those, who caused so much trouble and grief to us," Tatiana remembered.

Prisoners chopped and prepared firewood to heat the camp in winter, they cleaned their rooms and cooked meals for the whole camp. "I do not remember, how much it cost for the USSR to maintain each prisoner. I can just say that prisoner's meals were a lot better in comparison with ours during the war. There was a committee at the camp, Liberated Germany, which was headed by anti-fascist Reichstag deputies Walter Ulbricht, Wilhelm Pik, and other German communists," Tatiana Nechayeva said.

"I am proud of living in Yelabuga," former prisoner of war German Rentsch said. Almost all prisoners were sent to their homeland in 1945-1946.