In Memoriam - by Alice Winn

[Bruin Fisher]

A hundred years and more have passed since the Great War, the 1914-1918 war that was ‘the war to end all wars’. It was a dreadful war, marking the end of wars being fought between heroic, chivalrous foes with a strict code of honour. It was the war that introduced mechanised killing, with machine guns mowing down lines of soldiers marching stolidly into fire. It was also the war that killed with gas, which burned its victims from the inside out.

Part of the reason why that war inspired such powerful writing by such as Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Erich Maria Remarque, is that children were still being taught that war is glorious and the young men, children really, who signed up were expecting to win glory for themselves, in victory or in death. Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.

The war to end all wars didn’t work. Only twenty years later it all happened again, on an even greater scale and with even more powerful weaponry. That second one required that world wars be numbered, World War 2 - and its predecessor became World War 1. There hasn’t been a World War 3, yet, so did these wars end all wars? Sadly, no – there are always wars going on somewhere, just not on a worldwide scale.

My father was just too young to be called up to fight in the Second World War. He did National Service in peacetime just after the war ended. I have lived my life without experiencing war. I have had the luxury of considering my life valuable, but human life is not valuable, really. Nations still fling themselves into conflict with their neighbours without regard to the vast numbers of their citizens who will die. Like the columns of soldiers who marched in line into machine gun fire in World War 1, and like the Light Brigade sixty years before that in the Crimean War, who rode similarly into fire, and died pointlessly, soldiers are still being sent to their deaths so that their masters can claim to have captured a town which will be retaken by the enemy the following week.

Military leaders still factor expected casualties as ‘collateral damage’, and they must consider a certain level of such ‘damage’ as acceptable in the pursuit of their aims, or no battles would ever be fought. Human life is still expendable, and I, having lived a life insulated from this harsh reality, struggle to think of my own life in those terms.

I have just read In Memoriam by Alice Winn. I was powerfully affected by it. It has changed me. I highly recommend it – if you get a chance to read it, do.

[Rutabaga]

An eye-opening history of the runup to World War 1 is "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark.  I read it about a month ago, and it shows dramatically how the dynamics within sovereign governments can lead to unfortunate results.  It also carries worrisome lessons for today's world.

R

 

[Bruin Fisher]

1 hour ago, Rutabaga said:

An eye-opening history of the runup to World War 1 is "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark.  I read it about a month ago, and it shows dramatically how the dynamics within sovereign governments can lead to unfortunate results.  It also carries worrisome lessons for today's world.

R

 

Thanks for this! I checked out The Sleepwalkers, it looks very good, an authoritative explanation of the complex causes of World War 1.

What I failed to mention, perhaps unforgivably, in my first post in this thread, is that In Memoriam is a touching gay love story, that just happens to be set in WW1. Its meticulous research and harrowing account of the horrors of war are what affected me so powerfully. That and the love story.

[Alien Son]

I haven't read either of the books mentioned, so this is more a general reflection on war and my feelings about it.

Like you, Bruin, I haven't had any personal experience of war. I was the right age to be called up for service during Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. Selection was by ballot by birthday. I missed out in the ballot, but I most likely would have been rejected because of my hearing loss. I know two guys who served in Vietnam. One seemed unwilling to talk when I rather insensitively asked him about his experience not long after the event, and I think he was affected pretty badly by the war. Somehow, I've never asked the other one anything about it. 

My father was 14 when the Great War began. He enlisted (in the UK; he was born and grew up in England) as soon as he could, and was in training in Ireland when the war ended. I remember lots of stories, many of them funny, about his time in the army. I can't help wondering how much different his experience and memories might have been had he actually experienced the trenches.

Two of Dad's older brothers served in that war. One was in the British army; he was killed at Salonika in Greece and is buried in a war cemetery in Iraq. The other, having already migrated to Australia, served in the Australian Infantry Force (AIF) and returned home safely. I don't remember hearing any stories of his war service, and I don't remember hearing much about the brother who died.

My grandfather, Mum's father, enlisted in the AIF in 1916 at the age of 37. His wife had died in 1910 when Mum was nearly four, and Mum was mostly brought up by relatives, although Grandpa was close by. Grandpa served in France. He made it home safely, but spent a couple of periods in hospital in England and France with injuries and illness. He died when I was six months old, so I never knew him. I once asked my sister (15 years older than me) whether Grandpa spoke of the war. She didn't remember his ever mentioning it. Sadly, I never asked my mother how she felt about his leaving her when she was 10 and not returning until she was 13, when he was demobbed in 1919. I have postcards he sent to her, though, that indicate that he missed her.

One of Grandpa's younger brothers also enlisted and served in France. He came home at the end of the war. His daughter told me some years ago that the two brothers met up in France on one occasion. They were in columns marching in opposite directions, so only had a chance to wave and yell a greeting.

Two cousins of my mother's enlisted in the AIF. Both were killed and are buried in war cemeteries in France.

When I look back it's obvious that my thinking about war changed dramatically over the years. During the Vietnam War I supported Australia's involvement, and I was pretty dismissive of the anti-war protests that were held around Australia at the time. Twenty years later I had changed my opinion and come to believe that our involvement was wrong. Later, I was vehemently opposed to Australia's involvement in the invasion of Iraq.

I don't think I ever thought much about the Great War until I visited a war memorial in Goulburn in New South Wales in 1985. On display were some large B&W photos of scenes in France and Belgium showing the destruction resulting from the war. They were dramatic, and they had a profound effect on me. I think by then I was already pretty much anti-war, but these photos hammered home the futility and cost of war.

Many years later I thought again of those photos and how they had affected me. I went searching on the internet and found a lot of similar images (probably even some of the same ones). I used them to create a PowerPoint presentation. I've uploaded an HTML version of it here, if anyone would like to watch it. In the original PowerPoint the slides are much bigger, so if you'd like to download that, it's here.

~ John

 

[Merkin]

I suspect we who are reading this are all the children of war.  That is to say, my father went off into World War II when I was nearly four years old, and when he returned I was in school, seven going on eight, and we hardly knew one another.  He returned depressed and melancholy, this man who I barely remembered as laughing and loving. He never spoke of the war, and he never became a father to me, wrapped up as he was mired in his own memories.  Until he died, in the 1960s, we hardly spoke to one another.

[Bruin Fisher]

I'm feeling a little emotional just now, impressed by your comments, guys. Perhaps we've all been adversely affected by war, even when we've escaped direct involvement. Many of us were brought up by emotionally crippled men and frustrated women. At one point in the book In Memoriam, a girls' school mistress addresses her students, telling them that only one in ten of them can hope ever to marry. Apparently there was a generation of 'surplus women', not enough surviving men to go around.

One effect of the book for me has been the image in my head of a whole generation of privileged enthusiastic patriotic public schoolboys and their more plebeian equivalents in lower ranks, volunteering to fight for their country, signing up at 17 or 18 although the age limit was 19. And months later going 'over the top' in France or Belgium and being mown down by enemy machine gun fire. In just one day's battle, apparently, 60,000 soldiers on the Allied side died. These were children, just on the cusp of adulthood with what should have been a whole life stretching decades ahead of them, just snuffed out. It's enough even at this remove to make you cry.

With our 21st century sensibilities we can argue that war is futile, of course. But even with the attitudes that prevailed at the time it should have been obvious that having thousands and thousands of men march into a hail of machine gun fire scything them down, and then replacing them with the next wave and the next, day after day, was futile. Lions led by donkeys. There were so many corpses that there was nowhere left to bury them. The craters made by exploding shells revealed decomposing human remains everywhere. Dead bodies got left where they were, an obstacle to be clambered over by the next advancing wave of cannon fodder.

Thank you John for the link to your excellent Powerpoint presentation. The photos look like a film set - surely the countryside couldn't have been laid so comprehensively waste? Surely the destruction couldn't have been so complete? But the photos are there as evidence. Truly awful.

Big hugs all round.

[Alien Son]

Yes, it was truly awful, yet some good things did come out of the Great War. One example... Australian soldiers played a vital role in saving the village of Villers-Bretonneux in northern France from occupation by the Germans. Their sacrifice is still remembered in the village. The soldiers who lost their lives are buried in a war cemetery close by, and that cemetery also contains an Australian monument to the personnel killed on the Western Front. In the aftermath of the war, schoolkids in Victoria raised money to help rebuild the Villers-Bretonneaux school. That gesture is still remembered in the village, which returned the favour in 2009 after disastrous bushfires destroyed Strathewen Primary School in Victoria. Villers-Bretonneaux raised funds to help rebuild the school. The special relationship is commemorated on 25 April every year at the Villers-Bretonneaux memorial, with French and Australian officials and civilians taking part in an ANZAC Day service. (April 25 is ANZAC Day, and commemorates the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops at Gallipoli in 1915. The acronym stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.) There's a page about the Villers-Bretonneaux relationship with my country here.

When I did some research as I was putting together the Great War presentation, I was flabbergasted at the statistics. The numbers of military personnel (nine million) and civilians (eight million) who lost their lives is breathtaking enough, but add to that the number of homes, factories, schools and churches destroyed, the farms left full of craters, and the livestock killed. Even today, bodies are still being recovered, and artifacts turn up regularly as farmers plough their fields. It's hard to imagine how anyone ever recovered from that war. It's no wonder that returned servicemen and women didn't want to talk about it.

Thanks for your kind comments, Bruin.

[Jason Rimbaud]

I discovered a podcast, Hardcore History by Dan Carlin a few years ago. He has amazing series with multiple episodes each on a wide range of topics. Currently, one of the series is called Supernova In the East, detailing the history and reasons why Japan thought it was a good idea to bomb Pearl Harbor. Dan goes deep into the culture and what happened to Japan when they were dragged into the open in the mid 1800's by American traders. It's a fascinating listen with six parts averaging three to four hours each part. I strongly recommend giving him a listen. He also has King of Kings, detailing the entire history of the Persian Kings ending with Alexander the Great. 

And if you wanted to go behind the paywall, my favorite is Blueprint to Armageddon, detailing the events that started the first Great War. I can't recommend Dan Carlin enough. 

 

https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

[Bruin Fisher]

1 hour ago, Jason Rimbaud said:

I discovered a podcast, Hardcore History by Dan Carlin a few years ago. He has amazing series with multiple episodes each on a wide range of topics. Currently, one of the series is called Supernova In the East, detailing the history and reasons why Japan thought it was a good idea to bomb Pearl Harbor. Dan goes deep into the culture and what happened to Japan when they were dragged into the open in the mid 1800's by American traders. It's a fascinating listen with six parts averaging three to four hours each part. I strongly recommend giving him a listen. He also has King of Kings, detailing the entire history of the Persian Kings ending with Alexander the Great. 

And if you wanted to go behind the paywall, my favorite is Blueprint to Armageddon, detailing the events that started the first Great War. I can't recommend Dan Carlin enough. 

 

https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-series/

Thanks Jason, I'm checking out Dan Carlin for sure.

[Alien Son]

On 9/3/2023 at 8:55 AM, Alien Son said:

In the aftermath of the war, schoolkids in Victoria raised money to help rebuild the Villers-Bretonneaux school. That gesture is still remembered in the village, which returned the favour in 2009 after disastrous bushfires destroyed Strathewen Primary School in Victoria. Villers-Bretonneaux raised funds to help rebuild the school.

In case anyone's interested, this news article demonstrates that the relationship between Villers-Bretonneaux and Victoria is still strong. The people of the village raised $40, 000 to help the people of Corryong, in northeastern Victoria, recover from more disastrous bushfires in the summer of 2019-2020.

[Merkin]

Could Corryong be an Aussie version of Carry On?  Would seem to fit.

[Alien Son]

Hi, Merkin

I'd never thought about it, but I would have said it's an Aboriginal word. This website offers a few interpretations. One of the explanations it gives is that Corryong comes from an Aboriginal word, 'cooyong', meaning 'bandicoot' which is a native Australian animal. Interestingly, there's a suburb of Melbourne named Kooyong.