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1918 – World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France. The war officially stops at 11:00 (The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) this is annually honored with two-minutes of silence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
World War I also known as the First World War, the Great War, the World War (prior to the outbreak of the Second World War), and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies of World War I centered around the Triple Entente and the Central Powers, centered around the Triple Alliance. More than 70 million military personnel were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were killed, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in history. During the conflict, the industrial and scientific capabilities of the main combatants were entirely devoted to the war effort...
Anthem For Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen
What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
A list of WW I books is mentioned in a Bookflurries: Bookchat two years ago.
There is more about each book at the site:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
1. Mrs. Mike by the Freedman’s shows what sending so many young men to war does to a tiny community in Canada.
Mrs. Mike is based on the life of Katherine Mary O'Fallon Flannigan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
2. Testament of Youth and Testament of Experience, memoirs by Vera Brittain tell of the cost of losing so many lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
3. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
There are her letters home as well. Letters from Africa 1914-1931.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
5. Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
6. Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer, Antje Bultmann Lemke (Translator)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...
Albert Schweitzer was in Africa when the war came.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
In 1912, now armed with a medical degree, Schweitzer made a definite proposal to go as a medical doctor to work at his own expense in the Paris Missionary Society's mission at Lambaréné on the Ogooué river, in what is now the Gabon, in Africa (then a French colony). He refused to attend a committee to inquire into his doctrine, but met each committee member personally and was at last accepted.
By concerts and other fund-raising he was ready to equip a small hospital, taking satisfaction that Bach himself had assisted in the enterprise. In Spring 1913 he and his wife set off to establish a hospital near an already existing mission post. The site was nearly 200 miles (14 days by raft[26]) upstream from the mouth of the Ogooé at Port Gentil (Cape Lopez) (and so accessible to external communications), but downstream of most tributaries, so that internal communications within Gabon converged towards Lambaréné.
In the first nine months he and his wife had about 2,000 patients to examine, some travelling many days and hundreds of kilometers to reach him. In addition to injuries he was often treating severe sandflea and crawcraw sores (washing with mercuric chloride), framboesia (using arseno-benzol injections), tropical eating sores (cleaning and potassium permanganate), heart disease (treated with digitalin), tropical dysentery (emetine (syrup of ipecac) and arseno-benzol), tropical malaria (quinine and Arrhenal arsenic), sleeping sickness, treated at that time with atoxyl, leprosy (chaulmoogra oil), fevers, strangulated hernias (surgery), necrosis, abdominal tumours and chronic constipation and nicotine poisoning, while also attempting to deal with deliberate poisonings, fetishism and fear of cannibalism among the Mbahouin.
Mrs. Schweitzer was anaesthetist for surgical operations, using chloroform and omnipon, a synthesized morphine derivative.
After briefly occupying a shed formerly used as a chicken hut, in autumn 1913 they built their first hospital of corrugated iron, with two 13-foot rooms (consulting room and operating theatre) and with a dispensary and sterilising room in spaces below the broad eaves. The waiting room and dormitory (42 by 20 feet), were built like native huts, of unhewn logs, along a 30-yard path leading from the hospital to the landing-place. The Schweitzers had their own bungalow, and employed as their assistant Joseph, a French-speaking Galoa (Mpongwe) who first came as a patient.
When World War I broke out in summer of 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, Germans in a French colony, were put under supervision at Lambaréné (where work continued) by the French military.
In 1917, exhausted by over four years' work and by tropical anaemia, they were taken to Bordeaux and interned first in Garaison, and then from March 1918 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. In July 1918, after being transferred via Switzerland to his home in Alsace, he was a free man again.
7. Charles Todd writes the mysteries set after WW I where the ghost of a soldier speaks to detective Ian Rutledge. These are very poignant.
Murder Stone
Test of Wills
Search the Dark
Wings of Fire
Legacy of the Dead
Watchers of Time
A Fearsome Doubt
A Cold Treachery
A Long Shadow
A Lonely Death
Bess series set in WW I
A Duty to the Dead
An Impartial Witness
A Bitter Truth
8. Remembrance Rock by Carl Sandburg
I love this book as it follows a family through history.
9. The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie was a nurse in WW I.
10. A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
11. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
12. World War I by S. L. A. Marshall, David M. Kennedy
13. World War One British Poets: Brooke, Owen, Sassoon, Rosenberg, and Others by Candace Ward (Editor)
14. Behind the Lines (movie)
I have this poignant movie:
http://video.barnesandnoble.com/...
Director: Gillies MacKinnon Cast: Jonathan Pryce, James Wilby, Jonny Lee Miller, Stuart Bunce
This period drama was based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by author Pat Barker, one of a trilogy dealing with World War I. James Wilby stars as Siegfried Sassoon, the real-life war hero and poet who, in 1917, writes a statement against the war that is read in Parliament. Faced with the choice of either a court-martial or time in a mental hospital as a result, Sassoon chooses the hospital, and is sent to Craiglockart, a Scottish castle where shell-shocked vets are being treated by Freudian therapist Dr. William Rivers (Jonathan Pryce).
Sassoon soon befriends a pair of fellow inmates. One, Billy Prior (Jonny Lee Miller) is suffering from battlefield trauma. The other is shy young fan and fellow poet Wilfred Owen (Stuart Bunce), whose own anti-war writings, encouraged by Sassoon, will go on to make him posthumously famous as well. In the meanwhile, the once-zealous Dr. Rivers begins to question his role of mending patients' minds so that they may simply go back to the front lines.
Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
Rupert Brooke and other W W I poets’ page
http://www.world-war-pictures.com/...
The Soldier
Rupert Brooke
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
15. The Zimmermann Telegram by Barbara Tuchman
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...
16. Fighting the Flying Circus: The Greatest True Air Adventure to Come out of World War I by Eddie V. Rickenbacker
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...
17. Anti-Submarine Warfare in World War I: British Naval Aviation and the Defeat of the U-Boats by John Abbatiello
This story would have to be found in the library or interloan.
18. U-Boat War 1914-1918 by James B. Connolly, Karl Von Schenk
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...
19. No Man's Land: 1918, the Last Year of the Great War by John Toland
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...
20. Rilla of Ingleside by L. M. Montgomery
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Siegfried Sassoon
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Trench Duty
Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours’ watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There’s the big bombardment on our right
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark’s a glare
Of flickering horror in the sectors where
We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
‘What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?’
Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
Why did he do it? ... Starlight overhead—
Blank stars. I’m wide-awake; and some chap’s dead.
A Soldier's Declaration
http://greatwar.nl/...
I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects witch actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerity's for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.
S. Sassoon,
(Open Letter, published in The Times newspaper, 31 July 1917)
Poems by Siegfried Sassoon
http://www.poemhunter.com/...
List of books about WW I
There is a long list of non-fiction including the air war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
A few books and novels from the wiki list:
Le Feu (Under Fire), (1916) novel by Henri Barbusse
Three Soldiers (1921) novel by John Dos Passos
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) by T. E. Lawrence
The Good Soldier Švejk (1923) satirical novel by Jaroslav Hašek
Death of a Hero (1929) novel by Richard Aldington
A Farewell to Arms, (1929) novel by Ernest Hemingway
Goodbye to All That, (1929) autobiography of Robert Graves
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,(1930) novel by Siegfried Sassoon
Joe's War: Memoirs of a Doughboy (1983), autobiography by Joseph N. Rizzi ISBN 0960477012
Regeneration, (1991), The Eye in the Door, 1993; The Ghost Road novels by Pat Barker
To the Last Man (2005), novel by Jeff Shaara
A Young Man's War (2008), letters from the Front by Alec Ward
God's Sparrows (1937), a novel by Philip Child.
Generals Die in Bed (1930), a novel by Charles Yale Harrison.
Winged Victory (1934), a novel by V.M. Yeates.
The Bartholomew Bandy novels (1962, 1973-76) (Three Cheers for Me!, That's Me in the Middle and It's Me Again) by Donald Jac
A poem that creates questions and is explained at this site:
http://www.thebeckoning.com/...
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
W.B. Yeats
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
Not to Keep
http://www.bartleby.com/...
Robert Frost
(From The Yale Review, January 1917.)
THEY sent him back to her. The letter came
Saying… And she could have him. And before
She could be sure there was no hidden ill
Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
Living. They gave him back to her alive—
How else? They are not known to send the dead—
And not disfigured visibly. His face?
His hands? She had to look, and ask,
“What was it, dear?” And she had given all
And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
And all the rest for them permissible ease.
She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”
“Enough,
Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
And medicine and rest, and you a week,
Can cure me of to go again.” The same
Grim giving to do over for them both.
She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
How was it with him for a second trial.
And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
They had given him back to her, but not to keep.
An interesting site
www.firstworldwar.com
Another site to explore and a few examples:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/...
Prose & Poetry - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
http://www.firstworldwar.com/...
This is worth reading all of it…here is a tiny bit:
Conan Doyle had a strong feeling that conflict was coming after a 1911 automobile event. That year he took part in the International Road Competition organized by Prince Henry of Prussia. Known as the Prince Henry Tour, this contest was designed to pit the quality of British automobiles against German automobiles. The route took the participants from Hamburg, Germany to London.
Conan Doyle and his wife, Jean, were one of the British driving teams. Each of the ninety cars involved in the contest carried a military observer from the opposite team. Conan Doyle was surprised at the hostile attitudes of many of the German observers. He also heard much talk about the inevitability of war.
The British won the competition, but most of the participants came away with the conviction that war was near…
In the first few weeks of the war three British cruisers were lost. The 1,400 men aboard the cruisers were lost as well. Conan Doyle thought the loss of life was preventable. He wrote to the War Office urging that each sailor be given an "inflatable rubber belt" to assist the sailors in case their ships went down.
Sir Arthur was never reluctant to use his personal popularity when fighting for a just cause. Therefore he also sent letters to the press proposing these very same ideas. He knew that while the War Office might ignore the voice of one man, it couldn't ignore the voice of public opinion.
His plan worked. The government soon ordered inflatable rubber collars, the forerunner of today's lifejackets, for the country's sailors.
Conan Doyle would use this same tactic later when advocating that lifeboats be carried on military vessels. He also urged that body armour be issued to frontline soldiers…
Prose & Poetry - Francis Ledwidge
http://www.firstworldwar.com/...
Prose & Poetry - Literary Ambulance Drivers
http://www.firstworldwar.com/...
A remarkable number of well known authors were ambulance drivers during World War I. Among them were Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, and Somerset Maugham. Robert Service, the writer of Yukon poetry including The Shooting of Dan McGrew, and Charles Nordhoff, co-author of Mutiny On the Bounty, drove ambulances in the Great War.
At least 23 well known literary figures drove ambulances in the First World War.
If the list were expanded to include those working in medically related fields during the war, such names as Gertrude Stein, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and E.M. Forster could be added…
Many young men had a strong desire to be in the middle of the action but were not physically fit for acceptance in an army. Hemingway, who had defective vision in his left eye, expressed these viewpoints when, prior to joining, he wrote to his sister, Marcelline, "But I'll make it to Europe some way in spite of this optic. I can't let a show like this go on without getting into it."
Dos Passos was so myopic he couldn't see the top letter on an eye chart. War was more dangerous than many thought. After getting wounded, a soldier might be sped off to the hospital by a half blind ambulance driver.
Somerset Maugham at 40 and 5'6" was both too old and too short to enlist at the beginning of the war. So he joined a British Red Cross ambulance unit attached to the French Army. One of his co-drivers, Desmond MacCarthy, later became literary critic for The Sunday Times…
Principal characters in Dos Passos' 1919 follow his own history of serving first with Norton-Harjes in France then with The American Red Cross in Italy. The 42nd Parallel had ended with its main character headed to France to drive an ambulance. His first novel, One Man's Initiation, 1917, was about the war.
The primary character in Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms like Hemingway himself is wounded while serving as an ambulance driver in Italy and falls in love with his nurse in the hospital. Both Dos Passos and Hemingway returned later in their writing to WWI.
Robert Service's Rhymes of a Red Cross Man were derived from his own experience. The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings was about his time in a French prison.
Charles Nordhoff began his writing career when his accounts of his ambulance service were published in The Atlantic Monthly. His co-author of Mutiny on the Bounty, Charles Norman Hall, served in the Lafayette Escadrille and also wrote accounts of the war for The Atlantic Monthly.
Gertrude Stein wrote about her WWI work in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
Dorothea Canfield Fisher wrote simple stories in Braille for blinded French soldiers. She also wrote Home Fires and The Day of Glory about the war.
John Masefield wrote The Old Front Line and The Battle of the Somme.
Writers Who Were Ambulance Drivers in WWI
Ernest Hemingway
John Dos Passos
E.E. Cummings
Somerset Maugham
John Masefield
Malcolm Cowley
Sidney Howard
Robert Service
Louis Bromfield
Harry Crosby
Julian Green
Dashiell Hammett
William Seabrook
Robert Hillyer
John Howard Lawson
William Slater Brown
Charles Nordhoff
Sir Hugh Walpole
Desmond MacCarthy
Russell Davenport
Edward Weeks
C. Leroy Baldridge
Samuel Chamberlain
Related Occupation
Gertrude Stein, visited hospitals and drove for American Fund for French Wounded)
Marjory Stoneman Douglas, worked at American Red Cross headquarters in Paris because she was in love with an ambulance driver.
E.M. Forster, interviewed wounded in Egyptian hospitals
Dorothea Francis Canfield Fisher, made home in France for husband while he was ambulance driver
Archibald Cronin, doctor
Edmund Wilson, stretcher bearer
Anne Green, nurse
Article contributed by Steve Ruediger
Diaries of the week:
Write On! A few more thoughts on last week's topic.
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Thursday Classical Music OPUS 58: Beethoven Symphony #7 (part 2)
by Dumbo
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Books that changed my life: Cycle of the West
by the one who knows
http://www.dailykos.com/...
2 DK Eco Writers Finalists in MIT Climate CoLab Contest
by boatsie
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Big congratulations to beachbabe in fl and gmoke!!!
gmoke’s paper is here:
http://climatecolab.org/...
The Daily Kos Community Quilt - a Virtual Tour
by Sara R
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Shout Out For Help For Sara R & Community Quilt
by One bite at a time
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Kos Katalogue - Where the 99% Shops with the 99%!
by Sara R
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Clean Cookstoves in Tanzania
by gmoke
http://www.dailykos.com/...
e-Readers & Book Club: For Our Next Read
by Limelite
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Limelite says:
Bloody murder! Please note the inclusion of the NEW series hosted by Susan from 29 on MON nights, 7:00 PM (ET).
NOTE: plf515 has book talk on Wednesday mornings early.