90 years ago today the Armistice was signed, ending the Great War. It was carnage on a scale not known before, where over a million British Servicemen and women perished, many in the mud of the Somme. It is perhaps beyond our imaginations to realise how awful this must have been, dealing with daily shelling, the cold or heat, constant sniper fire, poor food, lice, disease and boredom. Then if you cracked under the stress of it all, your own side would shoot you as a coward.
At 11.00 am, I sat silently in my car for two minutes in memory of the many people from all over the world who have perished in this and other wars, before and since: and tears came to my eyes.
I cried for their sacrifice and for the fact, despite our rememberance, we haven't learned a thing or wars, the most futile of human activity, would genuinely become a thing of the past.
Angharad.
Try this link for a digital archive of World War I, through poetry and other material.
Comments
A sober day...
My grandfather, the first of our family to be born in the States, was drafted and fought on the front lines in WWI, exactly where I don't know - all the documents we have just say "somewhere in France".
I never knew him; he eventually succumbed to the wounds he suffered being gassed & etc. in the trenches in 1944, a long time before I came along. He returned home to Boston to discover that his wife and daughter, the family he thought was safe, had died in the Spanish flu pandemic. On top of that, he was an Italian in a city going crazy with the racist anti-immigrant hysteria of the Saco & Vancetti trials, two Italian immigrants his own age at the time who were legally lynched.
I don't know what kind of mettle he had to survive that and still love his country, but on bad days I hope I inherited whatever genes he had that helped him to do so.
YW
He conquers who endures. ~ Persius
The Great War was a bloodbath
The insanity of trench warfare coupled with mass assalts against modern artilery, machine guns, flame throwers, barbed wire and poison proved many a British and other Gernmnerals rto be uncaring congenital idiots. As awful as WWII was with killing on a truely world wide scale, mass arial bombing of cites, death camps and such, WWI was a sick warm-up.
Few soldiers of that war are still alive. They deserve our thanks as do the soldiers of latter generations. I am so happy my father though drafted in WWII missed seeing combat as the war ended before he finished training. He did fall of a truck and break his arm for his country though.
But that's the Army Corps of Engineers for you.
John in Wauwatosa aprox four mile from Woods National Cemetary -- it's next to Miller Park, the baseball palace --
John in Wauwatosa
The last of a long line of gallant men
At the 11th hour of the llth day of the 11th month in London's Whitehall today, three of the surviving ex-servicemen (veterans) from the Great War laid wreaths at the Cenotaph to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice to end that bloody conflict. The three men, aged 108, 110 and 112 years were rthe guests of honour at the ceremony and afterwards at 10 Downing Street, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a reception for them.
see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7720601.stm for details
Gabi
Who's Grandfather, as a member of the Royal Flying Corps, became one of the first members of the Royal Air Force. His eyesight was not good enough to be a pilot, so he served as an Observer! (I would have thought that 20/20 vision was just as important for an observer as for a pilot.)
Gabi.
Vision...
>> I would have thought that 20/20 vision was just as important for an observer as for a pilot.
Pilots couldn't wear glasses, partly because their peripheral vision was almost as important as their central vision. Observers could wear glasses and sometimes did, since many of their observations were made through binoculars or through the viewfinders of cameras, so minor correction problems were irrelevant.
The development of closed cockpits and contact lenses has relaxed the standards a bit in recent times, but binocular vision deficits and visual field defects of any sort are still a ticket out the door.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
As a teenager ...
... I was in digs with an elderly couple, both in their 80s. Charlie had fought in the trenches and his wife told me that when he came home he'd been made to strip off in the yard so that his clothes could be be burnt to get rid of the lice. On one occasion he'd had to keep his boots on for over 2 weeks in case they were required to move quickly. He didn't say much but what he did say was more than enough. At least he was one of the lucky ones who survived unlike my uncle whose grave I visited in France a couple of years ago.
US readers may be interested to know that Charlie, a bricklayer, spent quite some time in Calofornia helping to rebuild San Francisco after one of the earth quakes had damaged many buildings. Not sure how old he was but he died in 1960 while I was there and he must have been 84 so he wasn't a young man during the Great War. I think he was in San Francisco in the 1900s.
What a waste!
Geoff
I grew up observing today....
Now, I find in my current town/church, it's all but ignored, if not ignored. It's as if some members of the congregation/the pastor seem to prefer to not even acknowledge it ever happened.
It's not that I'm looking for recognition for my small bit of service... More, we have living (& one very recently passed on) members that served in WWII as well, and it seems like their service is ignored.
I find this a bit disturbing...
*sighs*
Annette
War is no remedy
I'm sorry to be coarse, but someone once said that fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity.
Someone else said that war does not decide who's right, but who's left
Fighting will never solve anything--it simply begets more fighting.
I had relatives who fought in the wars and I too find it saddening that after all the fighting, bloodshed, broken homes, families, shattered economies and fucked-up minds that resulted from the various conflicts, we appear to have learnt nothing.
Wake up world. Smell the coffee and realise how fragile we really are.
NB
Peace
Perhaps.
War may be no remidy, as you say, but sometimes the alternative may be worse... At least for some.
A very simplistic example comes to mind when a single country decides to "take over" neighbors against said neighbors will. If one is willing to use war as a tool, is the best thing to accept this and not resist?
How about the case of genocide. Is it right to sit back and watch millions be killed, and do NOTHING?
I'm probably as anti-war as anyone you can find, but I do think there are (& have been) times where the alternative appeared worse than the war.
In and of itself, DOES war solve things? Not normally, but it CAN provide an opportunity to solve things. Being prepared to fight does NOT necessarily imply a desire to fight. I can still recall a presentation by a General in the Air Force Strategic Air Command (At the time, their moto was "Peace is our Profession". He said, "If we EVER have to actually do what we've trained to do with our missles and bombers, we've failed. However, we still need to be prepared to do so, and convence others that we will act, if we're forced to." It's stuck with me to some extent (Note, I don't recall which general, and do admit to paraphrasing - it was over 30 years ago).
*sighs*
Annette
I agree Annette
But isn't the initial act, an act of war?
Subjugation of peoples is no way to go, neither is genocide and fighting for ones lives and for the lives of the loved ones is possibly the only recourse, but had the protagonists not taken that first step, it would never have been necessary in the first place.
Can I condone any act of war?
No.
Many countries including France, Italy, England, USA, Germany, Russia, Mongolia, Spain and others, have participated in some form of war in which they were the protagonists; Attempting to bring forth some sort of subjugation of an indigenous people for their lands or attempt to change their beliefs and it's not right under any circumstance.
I'm just an idealist...
My Great Grandfather Fought in WWI
My great grandpa, Kenneth Gage Macaulay,was wounded by shrapnel in France. He had it in his Pancreas and developed diabetes later in life. When he died, he was completely blind. We found out that he also served with General Pershing and a very young Captain by the name of George Patton. He believed very fervently, that freedom demanded that we never forget the price that has been paid in the blood and sacrifice of men and women in uniform. President Abraham Lincoln described this sacrifice as "The last full measure of devotion". May we never forget that above all, freedom isn't free.
Hugs,
Jen
My grandfather ...
... fought in WWI. He was from Wisconsin and was born in 1892 (27 years after the Civil War ended!), one of the "old men" in his unit. Men trusted him to keep their money for safekeeping, "just in case," and he later became an insurance salesman. He was in the artillery and drove a team of horses.
My grandfather saw a great deal of death and misery and was a huge supporter of the League of Nations. He was extremely disappointed when President Wilson and the US Senate failed to reach a compromise, which meant that the US never joined, and even more let down when the LoN collapsed. He lived to be 96 and was always on his "soap box," talking peace and mainly liberal causes to anyone who would listen. His last major project was helping Vietnamese and Cambodians to resettle in the US after the Vietnam war. He was a sort of "Chairman Emeritus" of the organization, and had a habit of breaking into song at the oddest moments (he was a terrible singer, BTW), embarrassing everyone but himself. :)
Aardvark
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
World War One
"The Great War" spawned a great wave of revulsion against war and many anti-war movements all over the world, or at least those parts of it made to weep by war's devastation.
Artists, too, had their say.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ntt3wy-L8Ok
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GlYynHmE8b0
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NA79kVLHZ5c
Too bad it had no lasting effect...
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style