An Anniversary
In August of this year, we will reach the centenary of the beginning of World War I.
Americans won't have the same level of involvement in the Remembrances because we didn't join in until April of 1917, but it's salutary to remember this war. It was begun in idealism. It shattered the class system. Without World War I, there might still be a British Queen ruling India. Hitler would never have risen to power. Americans might not have indulged in such severe isolationism. Women might still be fighting for the right to vote.
There are stories. The Angel of Mons was fiction that people came to believe happened. The Christmas Truce with its football games between the opposing sides in no-man's land really happened. The world became much smaller in people's minds. Aerial bombings happened. The guns in France could be heard in London. Edith Cavell treated people on both sides from her hospital in Brussels and was shot by the Germans as an enemy for helping French, English, and other soldiers to escape from Belgium.
I want someone to put out a Kindle edition of Nelson's History of the War. I have a complete copy in storage, but I want to read it again. It's British propaganda, written before anyone knew which side would "win" (remember, it ended in an Armistice, not a surrender); it's stories are documented within about six months of their occurrence. It runs over twenty volumes. And it's invaluable as a tool to see the old order's death being explained to the "common folk" who will benefit, but are afraid of losing the certainty of "knowing one's place."
Read Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth for more about the upper middle class and the women who chose to work in the hospitals. Read any of Lyn MacDonald's books about the war. Read the poetry and the autobiographies and All Quiet on the Western Front to remember that the experiences of the soldier were not that different on the other side of no-man's land.
Belgium formed me in many ways. In February of 1979, while I was in history class, we heard an explosion at school. A farmer in a field near us had been harrowing a field and connected with live WWI ordnance. He didn't survive. Every commun had its own memorial, often with the same surname recurring. In Place Sainte-Catherine, there's a memorial to the carrier pigeons who gave their lives serving.
The idealism was real. The hope that this bloody, in both senses of the word, conflict might be the world's last was genuine.
So. Watch Human Nature and Family of Blood from Martha's season of Doctor Who. Watch Lawrence of Arabia and really grasp that this is a very small part of a world turning upside down. Watch Blackadder Goes Forth.
Comprehend.
This post is brought to you by Michael Gove who wants British school children to be taught about World War I in "the right way" while ignoring that the idealists who survived the war, including Rudyard Kipling, were no longer idealists when it ended.
Americans won't have the same level of involvement in the Remembrances because we didn't join in until April of 1917, but it's salutary to remember this war. It was begun in idealism. It shattered the class system. Without World War I, there might still be a British Queen ruling India. Hitler would never have risen to power. Americans might not have indulged in such severe isolationism. Women might still be fighting for the right to vote.
There are stories. The Angel of Mons was fiction that people came to believe happened. The Christmas Truce with its football games between the opposing sides in no-man's land really happened. The world became much smaller in people's minds. Aerial bombings happened. The guns in France could be heard in London. Edith Cavell treated people on both sides from her hospital in Brussels and was shot by the Germans as an enemy for helping French, English, and other soldiers to escape from Belgium.
I want someone to put out a Kindle edition of Nelson's History of the War. I have a complete copy in storage, but I want to read it again. It's British propaganda, written before anyone knew which side would "win" (remember, it ended in an Armistice, not a surrender); it's stories are documented within about six months of their occurrence. It runs over twenty volumes. And it's invaluable as a tool to see the old order's death being explained to the "common folk" who will benefit, but are afraid of losing the certainty of "knowing one's place."
Read Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth for more about the upper middle class and the women who chose to work in the hospitals. Read any of Lyn MacDonald's books about the war. Read the poetry and the autobiographies and All Quiet on the Western Front to remember that the experiences of the soldier were not that different on the other side of no-man's land.
Belgium formed me in many ways. In February of 1979, while I was in history class, we heard an explosion at school. A farmer in a field near us had been harrowing a field and connected with live WWI ordnance. He didn't survive. Every commun had its own memorial, often with the same surname recurring. In Place Sainte-Catherine, there's a memorial to the carrier pigeons who gave their lives serving.
The idealism was real. The hope that this bloody, in both senses of the word, conflict might be the world's last was genuine.
So. Watch Human Nature and Family of Blood from Martha's season of Doctor Who. Watch Lawrence of Arabia and really grasp that this is a very small part of a world turning upside down. Watch Blackadder Goes Forth.
Comprehend.
This post is brought to you by Michael Gove who wants British school children to be taught about World War I in "the right way" while ignoring that the idealists who survived the war, including Rudyard Kipling, were no longer idealists when it ended.