Remembrance Sunday - For Our Tomorrow, They Gave Their Today

RECRUITMENT AND ENLISTMENT DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR - IWM Collection

MCMXIV by Philip Larkin

Those long uneven lines 

Standing as patiently 

As if they were stretched outside 

The Oval or Villa Park, 

The crowns of hats, the sun 

On moustached archaic faces 

Grinning as if it were all 

An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached 

Established names on the sunblinds, 

The farthings and sovereigns, 

And dark-clothed children at play 

Called after kings and queens, 

The tin advertisements 

For cocoa and twist, and the pubs 

Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring 

The place-names all hazed over 

With flowering grasses, and fields 

Shadowing Domesday lines 

Under wheat's restless silence; 

The differently-dressed servants 

With tiny rooms in huge houses, 

The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence, 

Never before or since, 

As changed itself to past 

Without a word--the men 

Leaving the gardens tidy, 

The thousands of marriages 

Lasting a little while longer: 

Never such innocence again.

Interwar period British 'Remembrance Day' poppy which belonged to Colonel Wilson of the Salvation Army.

I find Remembrance Sunday sadder each year. As I take my two minutes silence, not only do I think of those from the World Wars, but those who have fallen since last Remembrance Day. Living in an Army Town only makes the message more poignant and personal. The music played at the Cenotaph such as Heart of Oak by William Boyce, Nimrod by Edward Elgar, Flowers In The Forest and of course The Last Post, never fails to break my heart. They are full of pride, as well as such enormous sadness, and I can only imagine the faces of those brave men getting onto the trains leaving for the front, with no idea what lay before them. Every time. 

Despite few now remembering The First World War first hand, a century on, this day triggers the same emotional release. I always see men of that generation to be so stoic, which only upsets me more, knowing the things they've seen. Such emotion for that generation left behind, who forever had the shadows of the sons, fathers, brothers, husbands and comrades that should have come home. Family life shattered forever. A generation of men wiped out, empty chairs at the dinner table, yellowing family photographs over the fireplace. 

We will remember them.

War Horse - Part Two

As promised, here is the follow up to my last post - including a very interesting video that i found recently, which gives a strong insight into the horses used in WW1. 

The proportion of soldiers to animals on the battlefields was 4 men to 1 horse. Of the one million horses and mules sent to the Western Front during the conflict, only 67,000 returned home to the UK with 933,000 killed through injuries or illnesses, which were rife in the terrible conditions of the trenches. 

Horses in the Great War are as much a symbol of that conflict as the mud or the gas mask. A sad fact of the Great War battlefields is when a field was ploughed, the most common bones were horse or mule. I visited the battlefields a few years ago, and this fact was never mentioned. Many officers wanted to be buried with their horses if they fell, and there is at least one war grave where that indeed happened. These animals were loved and brought great comfort, perhaps a reminder of the "Green and Pleasant Land" they'd left behind.

A Cavalry horse stands over the body of its rider - from the book The War Horses

As author Simon Butler explains, this was not just ‘the first and last global conflict in which the horse played a vital role’, but also a war which changed the entire relationship between society and the horse. A nation which had depended on domestic horsepower up until 1914 suddenly lost its workhorses to the front and had to find mechanised alternatives. By 1918, there was no going back.

You can purchase his book HERE. It has many powerful photographs of horses from both sides of the fields, a very in-depth read.

  General Jack Seely and Warrior.

The tale of War Horse's equine hero exploits is fictional, however a similar tale about "Warrior" who carried General Jack Seely of the Canadian cavalry throughout the horrors of World War I are all true and documented documented in a book written by General Jack Seely, in 1934. Seely's book spoke about his time at battle with his beloved war horse who he called a 'courageous animal.' A group of cavalrymen dubbed Warrior 'The horse the Germans couldn't kill'. He writes how the horse's extraordinary character and some unbelievable twists of fate, helped him survive a war which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of horses. The first time General Seely rode the Warrior through shell fire, it was at the battle of Mons, on the French border and he was amazed to discover that Warrior did not try to run away and instead the thoroughbred 'was pretending to be brave and succeeding in his task.' I thought the portrait of the both of them above was truly spectacular.

The recent popularity of the play and film War Horse (based on the book by Michael Morpurgo) in my view, can only be a positive. It's imperative to inform a wider audience about such sacrifices, and despite some arguing about correct uniforms/language etc etc, it will undoubtedly encourage people to ask more questions, and discover the truth for themselves, particularly those who might not have previous interest of military history.

Here is the mentioned video, thank you for reading!

Christmas in Wartime

Animals in Wartime 1914-1918, Imperial War Museum.

In what will be my last post before Christmas, I thought i'd share some findings of Christmas in Wartime that I have collected recently, the Imperial War Museum's new website have begun to put their image collection online, I could have spent hours searching through! 

You cannot talk about Christmas in Wartime without mentioning the famous Christmas Day Truce of 1914, an unofficial ceasefire along the Western Front where many troops from both sides met in No-Mans-Land to exchange rations and sing carols. Most famously, was an all day football match (above) between Chester-based Royal Welch Fusiliers against their German opponents, the Saxons of the 133 Infantry Regiment and the Prussians of the 6 Jager Battalion in Frelinghien, France.

Captain C I Stockwell, who was present at the original Truce, wrote an account of the events on "one of the most curious Christmas Days" he had ever experienced.
He describes the singing, cheering and the exchanging of beer that took place. However, after this one night of peace and festivity, the fighting was resumed the next day.
Captain Stockwell recalls: "The German captain and I both saluted. He fired two shots in the air, and the war was on again".

The truces were not unique to the Christmas period, and reflected a growing mood of "live and let live", where infantry units in close proximity to each other would stop overtly aggressive behaviour, and often engage in small-scale fraternisation, engaging in conversation or bartering for cigarettes.

Of course, that first year many people believed that 'It'll all be over by Christmas!', a motto which actually followed on through the first years of The Second World War.

When WW2 broke out in September 1939, it was unknown to people at the time there would be five Christmases before May 1945, when this war was 'all over'. By that time the government's drive for maximum productivity had ensured that summer holidays were done away with, that Guy Fawkes' night had disappeared - the victim of blackout regulations - and that Easter eggs had disappeared, but at least the Christmas holiday still remained! So spirits were still high, and creativity and imagination with gifts, food and decorations were in full swing.

The above scan from Garden Work magazine in the 1940s shows some VERY useful and thrifty gifts that personally, i would be very pleased to recieve! Swapping seeds sounds like a great idea for next year.

We've already made ours this year, but i would be very interested to try this recipe for a wartime christmas pudding, making lots of use of plentiful root vegetables! 1940-1941 was the first Christmas 'on the ration', with food rationing having been a part of everyday life for almost a year. One positive note was in the week before Christmas, the tea ration was doubled and the sugar ration increased to twelve ounces!

I also found a very interesting recipe for "Mock Turkey", as  the greatest efforts to simulate normality were made at Christmas and for weddings with scarce ingredients being stockpiled for weeks or months! The creativity and enthusiasm they showed is admirable.

Mock Turkey

Ingredients
1 loaf bread (can be stale)
1 quart milk
1 carrot, grated
1 onion, minced or finely chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 dash of pepper
1lb sausage meat
1 tsp seasoning
MethodRemove crust from loaf of bread; tear apart and moisten with milk.
Add meat, chopped vegetables and seasoning.
Mix together well and place in a buttered baking dish.
Bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours. 

There was still plenty of non-rationed food available, however - at a price. Wines and spirits were plentiful, but French goods were almost completely gone, and imported fruit was extremely expensive. For Christmas, practical gifts were in vogue - gardening tools, books, bottling jars, seeds. Some gardening magazines even recommended a bag of fertilizer as a gift, and the most popular present for Christmas 1940 was soap! Well, all useful things!

British soldier eating Christmas meal in his slit trench with holiday cards from home propped up outside. December 25th 1944, Netherlands.

Christmas Party, Middlesex, December 1944

A child sleeps in an air-raid shelter festooned with Christmas decorations – a not uncommon sight in December 1940

Contents of a Christmas stocking, 1940. The contents have been made from wartime low-quality paper. 

Imperial War Museum Collection.

Gunner Jack Ward of 9th Medium Regiment, Royal Artillery, holds aloft two geese destined to become Christmas dinner,

19th December 1944.

Gunner H S Hadlow of 15th scottish Division in Holland announces that the Christmas pudding is ready,

19th December 1944.

I think we can all at least take some "Make Do And Mend" inspiration from these Christmas Pasts, and be pleased that we can all enjoy such food, drink and merriment this year!

I'll be back in 2012! Thanks for reading my blog this year!

Katie

Rememberance

 Antique silk poppies, found via The Vintage Cottage HERE

Those who read regularly will know how growing up in Aldershot, Home of the British Army, has had a lasting effect on me, and encouraged my interest in military history. Today is such an important time for thought and reflection. It's the 93rd year of Remembrance day, and I hope that many will pause and think at 11 o'clock.

The First Two Minute Silence in London (11 November 1919) was reported in the Manchester Guardian on 12 November 1919:

"The first stroke of eleven produced a magical effect. The tram cars glided into stillness, motors ceased to cough and fume, and stopped dead, and the mighty-limbed dray horses hunched back upon their loads and stopped also, seeming to do it of their own volition. Someone took off his hat, and with a nervous hesitancy the rest of the men bowed their heads also. Here and there an old soldier could be detected slipping unconsciously into the posture of 'attention'. An elderly woman, not far away, wiped her eyes, and the man beside her looked white and stern. Everyone stood very still ... The hush deepened. It had spread over the whole city and become so pronounced as to impress one with a sense of audibility. It was a silence which was almost pain ... And the spirit of memory brooded over it all^"

If only the modern world showed the same decency.

Those who choose to wear the poppy carry a powerful symbol, the red flower that sprung from the bodies of ALL those who fell in those fields, not just British soldiers. There has been too many examples of negative journalism directed at wearing poppies this week. I find it utterly disgraceful that people could be so cruel, and mostly, it just shows how ridiculous people can be. I would probably care about it more if i thought they knew anything about history themselves.

Those men fought for us. Never mind if it was right or wrong, they went to those trenches no matter what they believed. How could we ever question remembering their sacrifice? For my age group particularly, it doesn't seem the done thing to be proudly wearing the poppy (i'm probably supposed to be off protesting somewhere and causing aggravation) but sorry, you will never change my mind on this one. We've lost our last remaining WW1 soldiers now, and I can't help worrying that we could ever loose our traditions too.

I think Britain should also be proud to have such a potent symbol of remembrance in The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at Westminster Abbey which was inspired by an inscription on an anonymous grave in Armentieres, France, on a rough cross upon which was pencilled the words "An Unknown British Soldier". After seeing this grave in 1916, The Reverend David Railton wrote to the Dean of Westminster suggesting having a nationally recognised grave for an unknown soldier. As it was 1920, memories of the War was still raw, and Britain had a guilty concious about the thousands of bodies which lay unidentified in those foreign fields,

"Those parents and wives who had lost men to war didn't have anything tangible to grieve at, so the unknown warrior represented their loss" says Terry Charman, a historian at the Imperial War Museum.

The unknown warrior's body was chosen from a number of British servicemen exhumed from four battle areas - the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. These remains were brought to the chapel at St Pol on the night of 7 November 1920, where the officer in charge of troops in France and Flanders, Brig Gen L J Wyatt, went with a Col Gell. Neither had any idea where the bodies, laid on stretchers and covered by union jacks, were from.

"The point was that it literally could have been anybody. It could have been an earl or a duke's son, or a labourer from South Africa. The idea really caught the public mood, as it was a very democratic thing that it could have been someone from any rank." 

Gen Wyatt selected one body - it has been suggested he may have been blindfolded while making his choice - and the two officers placed it in a plain coffin and sealed it. The other bodies were reburied.
The next day the dead soldier began the journey to his final resting place. The coffin was taken to Boulogne and placed inside another coffin, made of oak from Hampton Court and sent over from England. Its plate bore the inscription: "A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country". This second coffin had a 16th Century sword, taken from King George V's private collection, fixed on top. A two minutes silence marked it's placement in Westminster Abbey.

"To have its own unknown warrior, for a country that sent troops to WWI, is part of its own national identity” Terry Charman

Ninety years on, the dead soldier continues to be honoured, by the public and royalty alike.
What's more, the symbolism of the act has been mirrored by many other countries around the world. Iraq, the United States, Germany and Poland are just some of those which have created their own memorials.
I hope you will take a moment today to consider how different the world would be now if those men hadn't gone. I know I always will. After visiting the battlegrounds myself and standing on that very same soil, I feel like I owe it to each and every one of them. No matter WHAT side of the line they fought on, we should remember them.

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields."

John McCrae, May 1915 

Thanks for reading.

Katie