THE GREAT WAR

We travelled to the Somme and Flanders fields a couple of years back.

The whole area is just heart-breaking. I had no particular interest (was simply going along) - but was both fascinated and overwhelmed by what we saw.

There was a two-hour "special" on the tee-vee today about archaeologists digging up a section of the trenches near Ypres in Belgium. It was pretty damned horrendous, as they provided a great deal of detail on the trench warfare.

My uncle Charlie was mustard gassed in the Great War, but I never knew the details. He died when I was four, I think. I could double check if I find a certain photo that was in Life magazine of a plane being finished at Douglas - he was the liaison between the tool and dye makers and management, as my aunt told it.

We lived with my aunt for a while in the fifties, and I remember that she said some people from Douglas still dropped by to visit once in a while. I mention the plane since it was just finished the day before he died of a heart problem, so I might be able to check the date from the magazine photo. No matter, except to me. Anyway, I kept hearing that he was never very "well". My aunt was born in 1900, and he was a couple years earlier, so he would have died at about 47 or so.

I only met him once, when my mother and I visited he and my aunt in either Wichita or Oklahoma City, where they were living while he was at the Douglas plants. That memory is all about him showing me how to make ice cream with some container with a crank on the back porch by the top of the steps - my father being in the AAF in WWII and otherwise occupied.

I still have Charlie's rock collection - he used to explore southern california and the southwest in the twenties and the thirties. I still have his tool kit in his handmade tool chest. Still have a photo of him with a banjo.. Actually, I've several photos of him and my aunt in what I presume is a model T. Will show them should a miracle occur and I hook up my scanner.

He's probably responsible for my love of dogs. He and my aunt had an irish setter, Rusty, who outlived Charlie, and who was there when we lived at my aunt's house the first time, back in '46 and '47... my first love of a dog.

He's also responsible for my love of westerns. Those were about the only books in the house except for the set of Dickens, which I still have, and so when we lived there again in the fifties, I read my way through his westerns.

Rest in peace, Charlie.


My mother and aunt had a brother that was a navy sailor, but I think it must have been just after the WWI armistice. He was stationed in California; his enthusiasm for it is why the rest of the family moved there from Boston in the early 20's.

On my father's side - he and his brother were eight and eleven in 1914, so out of the fray.

All three, the uncle who was a sailor and my father and his brother, became involved in the early movie industry. Not the earliest time, but in the twenties and thirties and later. Not that that is relevant to the thread, just talking.


I'm sure I saw All Quiet on the Western Front w/Lew Ayres, but don't remember it specifically. There are some other movies, one in particular that is one the edge of my vision, but I'll have to nose around online to bring them to mind.

There was a fairly recent historical novel that got to me - Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks.

Thanks for the great link, mein hamburger freund (did i spell that correctly?), those are great photos. In the caption under the first photo, they write: "The overwhelming majority of photos taken during World War I were black and white, lending the conflict a stark aesthetic which dominates our visual memory of the war." While that is true, i was surprised and pleased to see that the color photos bring out detail that you would never see in the black and white photos.

(By the way, i think they load so slowly because they are of a very high resolution--great photos.)

There were quite a few images which one does not usually see--the square of the small French village filled with horse-drawn wagons, obviously a rear area supply point; the snow on the trenches in winter; the French refugees around their buggy, with the boy in the traces to pull the buggy. A very interesting photo set.

Fascinating thread. My dad was born in 1908 when his dad was in his early 30's. So WW1 didn't involve them serving. But the family, there in Wisconsin, were German language speakers. I recall my dad talking about the animosity directed towards the German immigrants there.

That's rather ironic. There was a regiment from Milwaukee (Arther MacArthur's old regiment--he was the father of Douglas MacArthur) which had so many speakers of German as their mother tongue that during the ragged stumbling retreat of the Germans in late 1918, they (the Americans) would march along singing German songs, convincingly enough that German stragglers would come crawling out of the brush or the cellars of burned out houses thinking they would be joining comrades, only to be taken prisoner.

But yes, i'll bet it was hard on many of the Americans of German descent. There was a huge internment of Ukrainians in the Great War in Canada. They came from a part of the Ukraine which was then under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, and so were interned as enemy aliens. It is an almost unknown part of Canada's history--they were just dumped, shoved out of the camps when the war ended, and they were never recognized by the government, nor given any compensation. One woman, who was a small girl then, was commenting on it in recent years. The Canadian government remains mum on the subject.

Eric Bogle, a Scottish emigrant to Australia wrote a song about the Australians who lost their lives at the battle of Gallipoli, called "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda". These are the lyrics, with his intro from a live performance:

This... in Australia, every year, we have... we celebrate... we remember "ANZAC DAY" -- an' it's a very important day in Australia... the whole day is given over to remembering the soldiers who died in... all the wars and... the whole day -- in Britain, in England, they have two minutes of silence once a year.
It's important in Australia, because at Gallipoli, in 1915, for the first time, the Australian soldiers had Australian officers -- before then, the Australian army had British officers.

And... by this time, it was an all-Australian army, and they did quite well... and Australia was very proud of 'em. And they engendered a great sense of national pride, back home in Australia.

The saying arose that Australia became a nation founded on the blood of our soldiers who died at Gallipoli. So... it was very important to Australia.

We have... in Britain just now.. and THEN it was "our brave boys at Gallipoli"... in Britain, just before John [Munro] and I left three days ago, it was "our brave boys in the Falkland Islands." The jingoism always remains the same... it's just the wars that are different... but they seem stupid, hackneyed phrases... which demeans the soldiers...

Right... I'll get off my pulpit... stop preaching and sing a song...
I get quite heated about this subject...

Now when I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915, my country said, "Son,
It's time you stop ramblin', there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As the ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli.
And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water;
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was waitin', he primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.
But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
When we stopped to bury our slain,
Well, we buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.
And those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
Never knew there was worse things than dying.
For I'll go no more "Waltzing Matilda,"
All around the green bush far and free --
To hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more "Waltzing Matilda" for me.
So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship sailed into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve, to mourn and to pity.
But the band played "Waltzing Matilda,"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.
And so now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory,
And the old men march slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask meself the same question.
But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear
Someday, no one will march there at all.
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda.
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong,
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?

One of the most moving anti-war songs I've ever listened to and I've listened to it dozens of times.

Gallipoli became kind of a defining moment for Australia, they remember it every year as ANZAC Day (Australia New Zealand Army Corps). In 1990, the 75th anniversary of the battle, the Aussie government sent every living veteran who could make the trip, I think around 7o ("really tough old guys" as Eric described them) back to the battlefield. For most it was their first time back. The government asked Eric to write a song for the remembrance. He wrote "The Gift of Years", from the viewpoint of one of the veterans, sitting by the grave of his buddy who didn't make it. It's a lovely song:

I can't get a link to work right, but the lyrics are available at ericbogle.net

Gallipoli was a balls-up from the very beginning, even before they landed the Aussies and the French. The Franco-English fleet went into the Sea of Marmara to bombard the forts, and got slightly mauled. Far less damage comparatively, though, then say the damage Nelson was willing to endure at Copenhagen in 1801. But as Churchill pointed out, these were all officers with a peace-time mentality, and the thought of loosing their ships appalled them. The would not renew the conflict the next day, which is why they dicked around forever and then decided to land troops.

In fact, the Turks filled their pants. Their forts were battered to hell, more than half their gunners had deserted, they were almost out of shells, the Germans kept begging them to hang on, but they were sure they were toast. The Allies could have walked all over them the next day, but the naval powers that were had decided it was unacceptable to actually lose ships in a battle. The "Young Turk" government of Enver Bey had, in fact, packed up all the records on a train and were preparing to evacuate Constantinople.

Even so, when the Allies landed, the Turks, who by then had had plenty of time to prepare, were not prepared, and once again panicked. However, a young regimental commander moved his troops right up, and when his division commander panicked, he took control of the division, and moved them forward to attack the newly landed troops, and allow the troops behind them to build a line of field fortifications--trenches. He was given command of the division, and was responsible more than any other Turkish commander for the defeat of the Allies.

His name was Mustafa Kemal. After the war, in a bit of particularly idiotic hubris, the French landed a Greek army to conquer Anatolia. Kemal was under an order to be arrested by the government, but kept out of the way, while fending off the Greeks, who weren't much of an army, but had lavish support from the French. The Allies imposed a settlement on Turkey, but Kemal was having none of it, and organized a Grand National Assembly, which raised it's own army. He fought on three fronts, and as the Greeks were the largest Allied force, he concentrated on them. He finally definitively defeated the Greeks in 1922.

Kemal was not fighting to preserve the old, corrupt Osmanli Empire, but he was fighting to preserve the Turkish heartland, the Anatolian plateau and the surrounding mountainous regions which Turks saw as their homeland. Finally, in 1923, the Allies were forced to recognize an independent Turkish republic, and Kemal became the President.

Kemal became known as Atatürk, "Father of the Turks." The honorific was formally bestowed on him by the national assembly in 1934. In his 15 years as President of the Republic, he dragged Turkey (often kicking and screaming) both into the modern world, and into the western world, and the European sphere. He did much to liberate women, and to abrogate the power of Imams and Mullahs. He had a rather corrupt government, but it was simon pure in comparison to the accumlated corruption of centuries which was the Osmanli Empire, and which the Young Turks had simply taken over, rather than eliminated.

Modern Turkey may not be perfect, certainly, but it is a modern nation, and it is a creation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Gallipoli created Atatürk as surely as it created the Australian sense of national identity.

It was the Germans, too. They showed them how to make the trench fortifications, and supplied them with the heavy machine guns.

What an effing disaster.

Some months back, they discovered a mass grave ner the Fromelles battlefield, said to contain the remains of 170 Aussie diggers and some British soldiers:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story0,21985,23771448-662,00.html

There's been much discussion as to what to do with the remains, leave them there - or bury them in one of the war cemeteries. Apparently they are to be exhumed and given individual burials, perhaps at Fromelles.http://www.defence.gov.au/fromelles/index.htm

Itr was not far from the Australian memorial at Fromelles

And the killing still goes on. Incredibly, unexploded munitions from WW1 are still being retrieved at the rate of 50,000 and 75,000 tons of them a year!!. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16131857

and lethal 91 years on..

Just bookmarking.

Source: CWGC

in the falkland islands there are large areas that are closed to any traffic .
the argentine army placed mines in many areas of the boggy land and we were told that it is near impossible to remove or explode those mines without being blown up . those mines may sit there for another century or so .
hbg

these fenced off areas are in many parts of the falkland islands

an interesting article about the great war by the JAPAN TIMES .
it is probably forgotten by most that japan fought alongside the allies against germany in WW I .

the germans had the colony and fortress of TSINGTAO on the chinese mainland .
even though japan and germany had excellent relations , japan was bound under a treaty to give assistance to britain - and so the japanese army with some british troops stormed the fortress , defeated the germmans and the germans were held as POW's in japan .
as a boy i read several accounts of the battle of tsingtao , but had really forgotten about it .
hbg

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20081109x1.html

from the article :



german troops moving to the outer defences of tsingtao during the siege

Another Eric Bogle Tune

After a visit to the war cemeteries in France in the early seventies Bogle turned a traditional Scottish lamento into a dramatic fictitious conversation with Private William McBride. Maybe Bogle was inspired by an headstone he had seen, but problably the man and the name are equally fictitious.

Piet Chielens, coordinator of the In Flanders Fields War Museum in Ypres, Belgium, and organizer of yearly peace concerts in Flanders, once checked all 1,700,000 names that are registered with the Commanwealth War Commission. He found no less than ten Privates William McBride.

Three of these William McBride's fell in 1916, two were members of the Northern Irish Regiment, the Royal Inniskilling Fusilliers, and died more or less in the same spot during the Battle of the Somme in 1916. One was 21, the other 19 years old. "The law of the greatest numbers does beat even the most poetical license", Chielens remarks.

The 19 years old Pte William McBride is buried in Authuille British Cemetery, near Albert and Beaumont-Hamel, where the Inniskilling Fusilliers were deployed as part of the 29th Division

No Man's Land

Well how do you do, Private William McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your grave side?
A rest for awhile in the warm summer sun,
I've been walking all day and I'm nearly done.
And I see by your gravestone that you were only 19
when you joined the glorious fallen in 1916.
Well I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean
Or, William McBride, was it slow and obscene?

Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
In some faithful heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart are you always 19.
Or are you just a stranger without even a name
Forever enclosed behind some glass-pane
In an old photograph torn and tattered and stained
And fading to yellow in a brown leather frame?

Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

Well the sun it shines down on these green fields of France,
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance.
The trenches are vanished now under the plough
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now.
But here in this graveyard it is still No Man's Land
And the countless white crosses in mute witness stand.
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation that was butchered and downed.

Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

And I can't help but wonder now Willie McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause?
Did you really believe them that this war would end war?
But the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame -
The killing, the dying - it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it's all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again.

Did they beat the drum slowly?
did they sound the pipe lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er ye as they lowered you down?
Did the bugle sing 'The Last Post' in chorus?
Did the pipes play 'The Flowers o' the Forest'?

Eric Bogle really nails it, doesn't he?

I really like that song. It has such a good rhythm - so it gets into your head. I'm sure I have it stored on this computer somewhere - but couldn't find it. Back to the CDs.

My mother was in the hospital before she died. I noticed the dedication to the World War 2 vets new memorial on tv and I called the hospital and asked them to turn it on for her... I don't know why I did that.

She began to cry and cry and she cried so hard and so long that they had to sedate her.