OMNI
FIRST WORLD WAR NEWSLETTER
#1, CENTENARY. SEPTEMBER
28, 2014.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Environmental Protection.
What’s at stake: September 28, 2014, is the centenary anniversary
of World War One (1914-1918). Let us
not allow that brutal, catastrophic war to be white-washed and glorified. Let us not allow Sgt. York to be again
elevated to Hero. Already the British are refurbishing the
headstones of the Commonwealth’s killed.
Already England ’s Prince
Michael of Kent
And
the wars are now ongoing, permanent war.
My
blog:
War Department/Peace Department
War Department/Peace Department
Newsletters
Index:
See
WAR: Anti-War, Causes, Consequences, Costs, Crimes, Dissent, v. Human Needs,
Imperialism, Memorialization, Militarism, Mythis, Prevention, Profiteering, Recruiting, Shell Shock
(PTSD), Victims, WWII
Contents World War I Newsletter #1
StopWar WWI
Centenary, Google Search
Remembering
WWI
Casert,
Ceremony for Soldier’s Body Found
Melvin,
Gravestone Touch-Ups
Poems about
WWI
“In Flanders
Fields”
Dick, Poem for the British Troops
The Christmas
Truce, 1914
Books on WWI
Hochschild, To End All Wars: Three
Reviews
Wendy Schwartz
Andrew Motion
Bill Griffin
Johnny Got His Gun, Google
Search
Koenigsberg,
Why Are We More Horrified At the Jewish Holocaust Than at WWI?
PREPARING
FOR THE 100-YEAR COMMEMORATION
GOOGLE SEARCH, STOPWAR WWI CENTENARY, April
17, 2014
No
Glory in War
From First World War machine guns to Obama's drones: 100 years
of mechanised ... A canker of ignorance and bigotry infects the First World War centenary.
How the government is using next year's centenary to justify ...
Stop the War Coalition
Nov 11, 2013 - The pro-war voices on David Cameron's first world war committee co-ordinating next year's centenary events are .... Stop the War Coalition 86
Durham Road London N7 7DT email: office@stopwar.org.uk
Tel: 020 7561 4830.
Anti-war activists battle to get their voices heard in WW1 ...
Stop the War Coalition
Sep 8, 2013 - Anti-war activists battle to get their voices heard in WW1 centenaryevents ... the centenary of the first world war with an alternative range of activities,
.... Road London N7 7DT email: office@stopwar.org.uk
Tel: 020 7561 4830.
Campaign group calls for support after criticising Centenary ...
Posted on centenarynews.com on 21 May 2013 ...
The website of the campaign group,ww1.stopwar.org.uk,
encourages members of the public to add their ...
Government pledges £50m to commemorate WWI
centenary
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19914524
Oct 11, 2012
£50m allocated for WWI centenary ... Play Ukraine Ukraine
BBC News - Worcestershire WWI
centenary events appeal
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-17987501
May 8, 2012 - An appeal is made for ideas of how the centenary of the outbreak ofWorld
War I should be ... Mrs Taylor
said: "The problem with WWI war memorials is that they were all funded
by .... 6: Ukraine
My Dad and my Uncle were in World
War One - YouTube
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPyNod6qsxY
YouTube
Sep 24, 2013 - Uploaded by StoptheWarCoalition
... £50 million on
commemorating the centenary of the first world war. ... Tony Benn - Never
be afraid of ...
Honouring those who tried to stop the first
world war ...
The Guardian
Jan 16, 2014 - First world war 100 years on .... Germany
Wandsworth Stop the War Coalition to host debate on how ...
Mar 16, 2014 - Prime Minister David Cameron's desire to mark the centenary of theFirst
World War with a
celebration similar to the Diamond Jubilee ... on Stop the War and No Glory in
War visit stopwar.org.uk
and noglory.org respectively.
[PDF]
Calendar of WW1 Peace
Plans.pdf - Network for Peace
Cathedral
www.gov.uk/government/topical-events/first-world-war- centenary. Monday 4 August ....
historian Neil Faulkner http://stopwar.org.uk/shop/no-glory.
RAF
CASERT (AP). “SOLDIER’S BODY FOUND IN
FIELD SENDS OUT CALL.” Arkansas
The body of
British Lt. John Pritchard was found accidentally recently in a field in northern France US
DON
MELVIN (AP). “WWI GRAVESTONES GETTING
100-YEAR TOUCH-UPS.” ADG (same).
Poems Against
War. Ed. Gregg
Mosson. 2010.
Poems
about WWI
Carol Dine, “The Trench, 1923.”
Gregg Mosson, “In the Charnel House: Reflections on WWI.” “Letter by a French Soldier, 1916, Found at
Verdun”
In
Flanders Fields
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD., ArlingtonCemetary.net, Reader Supported News, June 29, 2014
Excerpt: "McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in theYpres salient in the
spring of 1915."
READ MORE
Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD., ArlingtonCemetary.net, Reader Supported News, June 29, 2014
Excerpt: "McCrae's "In Flanders Fields" remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the
READ MORE
Then
Conscription Began,
for the British Troops
By
Dick Bennett
The
soldiers cheered “God and Country!”
for
victory over the enemy.
God
with us. The enemy, Gott mit uns.
Over
five foot eight the volunteers came,
cheering
right and honor.
They
walked tall to kill the enemy,
into
the wire, into the guns.
After
the Battle of the Marne
over
five foot six the volunteers came
drank
their rum to cheer their fear.
After
the Battle of Ypres
five
foot four the volunteers came
steeled
by Cross or mother, wife, and kids,
by
rum, comrades, fears and tears,
they
crept toward wire and guns.
Back
home conscription had begun.
Christmas
truces - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce
As well
as joint burial ceremonies, several meetings ended in carol-singing. ... In the early months of immobile trench warfare, the truces were not unique to the ..... Turkish War of Independence including the
Greco-Turkish War (1919–1923) ...
CHRISTMAS TRUCE WORLD WAR ONE, 1914
British and German soldiers meeting in No Man's Land during the
Christmas Truce of 1914.
Picture courtesy the National Army
Museum
Though World War I had been raging for only four months, it was
already proving to be one of the bloodiest wars in history. Soldiers on both
sides were trapped in trenches, exposed to the cold and wet winter weather,
covered in mud, and extremely careful of sniper shots. Machines guns had proven
their worth in war, bringing new meaning to the word "slaughter."
In a place where bloodshed was nearly commonplace and mud and
the enemy were fought with equal vigor, something surprising occurred on the
front for Christmas in 1914. The men who lay shivering in the trenches embraced
the Christmas spirit. In one of the truest acts of goodwill toward men,
soldiers from both sides in the southern portion of the Ypres Salient set aside
their weapons and hatred, if only temporarily, and met in No Man's Land.
Digging In
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28,
1914, the world was plunged into war. Germany, realizing they were likely to
face a two-front war, attempted to defeat the western foes before the Russians
were able to mobilize their forces in the East (estimated to take six weeks),
using the Schlieffen Plan.
Though the Germans had made a strong offensive into France France
Once the trenches were built, winter rains tried to obliterate
them. The rains not only flooded the dug-outs, they turned the trenches into
mud holes - a terrible enemy in and of itself.
It had been pouring, and
mud lay deep in the trenches; they were caked from head to foot, and I have
never seen anything like their rifles! Not one would work, and they were just
lying about the trenches getting stiff and cold. One fellow had got both feet
jammed in the clay, and when told to get up by an officer, had to get on all
fours; he then got his hands stuck in too, and was caught like a fly on a
flypaper; all he could do was look round and say to his pals, 'For Gawd's sake,
shoot me!' I laughed till I cried. But they will shake down, directly they
learn that the harder one works in the trenches, the drier and more comfortable
one can keep both them and oneself.1
The trenches of both sides were only a few hundred feet apart,
buffered by a relatively flat area known as "No Man's Land." The
stalemate had halted all but a scattered number of small attacks; thus,
soldiers on each side spent a large amount of time dealing with the mud,
keeping their heads down in order to avoid sniper fire, and watching carefully
for any surprise enemy raids on their trench.
Fraternizing
Restless in their trenches, covered in mud, and eating the same
rations every day, some soldiers began to wonder about the un-seen enemy, men
declared monsters by propagandists.
We hated their guts when
they killed any of our friends; then we really did dislike them intensely. But
otherwise we joked about them and I think they joked about us. And we thought,
well, poor so-and-sos, they're in the same kind of muck as we are.2
The uncomfortableness of living in trenches coupled with the
closeness of the enemy who lived in similar conditions contributed to a growing
"live and let live" policy. Andrew Todd, a telegraphist of the Royal
Engineers, wrote of an example in a letter:
Perhaps it will surprise
you to learn that the soldiers in both lines of trenches have become very
'pally' with each other. The trenches are only 60 yards apart at one place, and
every morning about breakfast time one of the soldiers sticks a board in the
air. As soon as this board goes up all firing ceases, and men from either side
draw their water and rations. All through the breakfast hour, and so long as
this board is up, silence reigns supreme, but whenever the board comes down the
first unlucky devil who shows even so much as a hand gets a bullet through it.3
Sometimes the two enemies would yell at each other. Some of the
German soldiers had worked in Britain
before the war and asked about a store or area in England
During the winter it was
not unusual for little groups of men to gather in the front trench, and there
hold impromptu concerts, singing patriotic and sentimental songs. The Germans
did much the same, and on calm evenings the songs from one line floated to the
trenches on the other side, and were there received with applause and sometimes
calls for an encore.4
After hearing of such fraternization, General Sir Horace
Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, ordered:
The Corps Commander,
therefore, directs Divisional Commanders to impress on all subordinate
commanders the absolute necessity of encouraging the offensive spirit of the
troops, while on the defensive, by every means in their power.
Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices (e.g.
'we won't fire if you don't' etc.) and the exchange of tobacco and other
comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely
prohibited.5
BOOKS ON WWI
To End All Wars—2 Reviews:
Wendy Schwartz, Andrew Motion
Johnny Got
His Gun
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 448 pages
Reviewed by Wendy Schwartz, “WWI, the Picture of Futility.” Win (April 2012).
The battle at Passchendaele
Although non-pacifists might attempt to justify some wars because their intent is to save lives or protect freedoms, no reasonable person could justify the carnage produced by World War I (WWI). In his masterful history of this almost-forgotten war, Adam Hochschild demonstrates vividly and painfully how four years of fighting produced nearly 1 million deaths, 20 times that many young soldiers with grievous injuries, and more than 1,000 incarcerated resisters. These war victims came from a dozen fighting countries, many of which suffered ruined farmland, destroyed cities, and a bankrupt economy.
Hochschild, a well-credentialed journalist and historian, provides a fresh account of “the war to end all wars.” To End All Wars is not the gung ho play-byplay account found in yawn-inducing history texts. Rather, Hochschild provides cogent portraits of the military planners, explains their decisions and the consequences, and describes some key battles, primarily the resulting carnage (this is not a book to read around mealtime). His primary focus, though, is on the civilians—jingoist and socialist pacifist alike—who commanded international attention. The story of WWI, Hochschild writes, is about “clashing sets of dreams”: on one hand, the desire “to rejuvenate the national spirit and the bonds of empire” and, on the other, to prevent the “workingmen of
A particularly vociferous supporter of
Kipling’s intellectual equal on the antiwar side was Bertrand Russell, a recipient of the same prize, a logician, and
Emmeline Pankhurst under arrest
The famed Pankhurst matriarchy overloads the narrative of the war with every stripe of moral outrage. Although all the family members united to found the impressive movement for women’s suffrage in Britain—and served harsh prison sentences and endured forced feedings in response to their hunger strikes—different family members reflected all sides of those disparate dreams for WWI. Here are the Pankhurst family highlights: Mother Emmeline ended her involvement with suffrage in order to spend her time militantly promoting the war. She later ardently supported
These brief snapshots only hint at why To End All Wars is a fascinating book. For decades I have devoured leftwing history books, and this is by far the liveliest, least dogmatic, and most nuanced book I’ve encountered, especially considering that Adam Hochschild did not have the benefit of interviewing the key figures whose stories he presents. But the book’s importance transcends its value as a good read. Because many historians—cited by Hochschild, who shares this view—have called WWI the most senseless war ever fought, it is critical for pacifist activists to understand the reasons for every decision made by its architects so we can knowledgeably refute similar arguments for current and future wars. Although proponents of a particular war may find ways to justify it, and say that it is different from and more compelling than every other, the essence of all wars is the same. And WWI provides more examples of the futility of fighting than any other war. We would also do well to study anti-WWI tactics so we can adapt the most effective for our current peace activities and avoid repeating the errors that instigated a backlash.
Wendy Schwartz, a pacifist activist, is the granddaughter of a WWI veteran who never fully recovered from his wounds. She is proud to have been the friend and colleague at WRL of two courageous yet humble WWI resisters: David Berkinghoff and Prafulla Mukerji.
To End All Wars by Adam Hochschild – review
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/may/08/all-wars-adam-hochschild-review
Has dissent in Britain during the first world war been exaggerated?
·
Email
Email
·
·
o The Guardian, Friday
6 May 2011
The lost generation ... British troops approach the trenches near Ypres during the first world war. Photograph: © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS
Adam Hochschild opens and closes his history of the first world war with a couple of questions. The first asks "Why does it bring a lump to the throat to see words like sleep, rest, sacrifice [written in a visitors' book at a cemetery on the Somme], when my reason for being here is the belief that this war was needless folly and madness?" And the second: "If we were allowed to magically roll back history to the start of the 20th century and undo one – and only one – event, is there any doubt that it would be the war that broke out in 1914?" Either one of these would give a pretty clear idea of the attitude Hochschild takes to his narrative. Put together, and combined with the subtitle of his book, they promise a powerful controlling argument. To End All Wars, we suppose, is a history of dissent, an account of pacifist movements, conscientious objectors and deserters who (we also suppose) created much more difficulty for the authorities than we are generally led to believe.
1.
To End All Wars: How the First World
War Divided Britain
2.
by Adam Hochschild
3.
4.
Buy the book
Does Hochschild deliver on the implications of his questions? Yes and no. On the one hand his strong feelings about the war (foolish and mad) provoke him into writing with a sense of personal commitment to its myriad tragedies – and this makes his book feel charged and moving. His attention to refuseniks of one kind and another is striking, too: the story of fighting in France is punctuated at regular intervals, throughout its long and winding course, with well-furnished accounts of people who challenged Kitchener's assertion that their country needed them to fight: Bertrand Russell and Emily Hobhouse; Keir Hardie and Charlotte Despard; Stephen Hobhouse and Sylvia Pankhurst.
On the other hand, Hochschild's ambitions to write revisionist history are hampered. One problem (if that's quite a sufficient word for it) is the facts themselves: despite the horrific slaughter of 1914-18, instances of loyalty to the cause, and of unwavering bravery in the face of impossible odds, remain vastly more numerous and often more compelling than the occasions of dissent. This is not to imply the objectors themselves didn't show extraordinary courage in their own way. They did – and, as proof, one of the most affecting passages in the entire book deals with a soldier named Albert Rochester, who was given the task of clearing up after the execution of three Bantam soldiers in early 1917 ("I helped carry those bodies towards their last resting place; I collected all the blood-soaked straw and burnt it").
But for complicated and interesting reasons the army held its shape, and the country kept its faith, right through to the bitter end of the war. The objectors were brave and sensible and far-sighted and (it's reasonable to argue) right. But they can hardly be said to have "divided Britain".
The other obstacle that stands in the way of Hochschild's argument is also to do with the facts of the war – but in a different sense. Although the well-known protesters (Russell et al) have their own drama and charisma, and the less well-known ones (Rochester) have their deep poignancy, our sympathy for them is continually being deflected, or reorganised, or even to some degree sapped by the monstrous experience of the soldiers at the front. The suffering of these men cannot help being the main focus of any history of the war – especially one so good at marshalling statistics as this one.
It is an irony, of a sort. Hochschild meticulously assembles details in order to fuel his own and our dismay at the pointlessness of so much suffering – and the details are so appalling they quickly seize and dominate our interest: six million sandbags were being shipped to France every month by May 1915; 224,221 shells were fired by British guns in the last 65 minutes before the first attack on the first day of the Somme; 47,000 tons of meat were sent to the bottom of the ocean inside ships sunk during the first six months of unlimited submarine warfare; between September 1914 and November 1918 722,000 British soldiers were killed and 200,000 from the empire. "If the British dead alone were to rise up and march 24 hours a day past a given spot, four abreast, it would take them more than two and a half days."
Very few of these facts will be new to war experts, of which there are a good number. Several of them are now common knowledge – so great is our national preoccupation with the war. Given this, and despite the new angles Hochschild opens in his book, it's impossible to avoid the killer question: do we really need another account of this sort? The easy answer is no – because the standard histories are reliable, and even include a decent amount of material that Hochschild foregrounds. Instead of a rehash, however well-written, what we need is a book that builds on existing work to reveal more comprehensively than has yet been done the experiences and voices of "ordinary soldiers". That would be a memorial worth erecting, when we commemorate the centenary of the conflict in three years' time.
Yet for all that, Hochschild has done his work well. The book is thoroughly researched, wide-ranging in its curiosities, and always compassionate and sympathetic. It is also significant as the latest in a long series of books that prove a melancholy point. During the first few decades after the war, despite (or because of) the large number of important first-hand accounts that appeared, the majority wanted to shift their attention away from thinking in public about loss and suffering.
In the last couple of generations, thanks in part to the canonisation within the curriculum of the poets of the first world war, the scars of the trenches have been identified as our national psychic wound. Hochschild, being American, might feel some distance from this, but the experience of reading his book suggests not. He suffers the same compulsion that we do: to remind ourselves afresh, several times every new generation, of the generation that was lost.
Andrew Motion's The Cinder Path is published by Faber.
REVIEW BY BILL GRIFFIN of TO END ALL WARS in The Catholic Worker (Aug.-Sept. 2014). [On Sept. 26, 2014 I was not able to find an online copy of this excellent review. –Dick]
JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, Google Search, Sept. 30, 2014
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun the novel
Wikipedia Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1938 by American novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and published September 1939 by J. B. Lippincott ...
Plot - Characters - Title and context - Publication
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun_(film)
Wikipedia Johnny Got His Gun is a 1971 drama anti-war film based on the novel of the same name written and directed by Dalton Trumbo and starring Timothy Bottoms, ...
Synopsis - Cast - Production - Reception
www.imdb.com/title/tt0067277/
Internet Movie Database
Rating: 7.9/10 - 9,975 votes
Joe, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death --- a quadruple amputee ...
More images for Johnny Got His Gun
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDEkev-4hgo
Nov 6, 2013 - Uploaded by dianying hao
Johnny Got His Gun 1971 Full Movie. dianying hao. SubscribeSubscribedUnsubscribe 107. Subscription ...
www.johnnygothisgunthemovie.com/
Please join us in the campaign to donate a copy of the new feature film version of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, starring Ben McKenzie (Southland, The ...
www.rogerebert.com/reviews/johnny-got-his-gun-1971
Roger Ebert Rating: 4/4 - Review by Roger Ebert
Jan 1, 1971 - Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun" smelled like that kind of anti-war film. It came out of the Cannes Film Festival with three awards and a ...
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END WORLD WAR I NEWSLETTER #1
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