Flanders' fields

[matt_mcl]

How much of Remembrance/Armistice Day ceremonies do Canadians and Americans have in common? Here are some things that Canadians have:

1) those little felt poppies
2) "In Flanders' Fields" by John McCrae
3) a moment of silence at 11:00 am

Do you guys have these?

[Jorge]

Don't recall any of those in the US in my experience, even amongst people who know what those refer to.

Then again, Veteran's Day as regards the general public here seems to have transformed into a second Memorial Day. Not entirely surprising in a country where few people know that WW1 didn't involve Napoleon (directly), think Flanders is a dessert, and point at Africa when asked to place Canada on a globe.

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O le mea a tamaali'i fa'asala, a o le mea a tufanua fa'alumaina.

[Ringo]

Matt,

We did when I was young observe 11:00 on 11/11; that has been lost completely in the NOW sense of time.

Regards

[aseymayo]

think Flanders is a dessert

Flanders is a dessert? What idiots! Everyone knows Flanders' Fields is Ned's backyard.

Mmmmmmmmmmm, dessert.

[Ukulele Ike]

We Americans (ooops, pardon me, citizens of the United States) never did the poppy thing, at least not in my living memory.

I've read about it in English novels, though. Must be one of those things you guys have in common with the Teabags.

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Uke

[John W. Kennedy]

The US doesn't remember WWI much. We got in near the very end, the Central Powers collapsed soon after, and we weren't much hurt. We did, however, want to forget it as soon as possible.

We also have a vague notion that we won it single-handed.

------------------
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

[Jodi]

Well, I remember the red poppies, and I ain't that old (30). Come to think of it, I haven't seen them around, lately, though . . .

Our local Veterans' Day remembrance is a service at the Veterans' Memorial and a full-page thank-you in the paper to all the local servicemen who served in any armed combat. Plus the VFW goes out and puts new little American flags on the graves of soldiers who died in the wars. But for most people it's business as usual, which is kind of a shame.

We Americans (ooops, pardon me, citizens of the United States) never did the poppy thing, at least not in my living memory.

Veterans of the Foreign Wars here in the United States exchange hand made poppies for small donations, usually at Memorial Day in May, though. I have one straw hat that I save to wear at the town Memorial Day parade, and every year I get a poppy from one of the vets walking along the parade route -- it has several on it now.

-Melin

[smilingjaws]

I traded a couple of dollars for red paper poppies last year for Veteran's Day.
I read "In Flander's Field" to my Sunday School class on that weekend.
Sadly, very few people under 50 or 60 know about the poem (I'm 43 but I like poetry)

[Lawrence]

My guess would be that most of the WWI remembrances that the US has were wiped away by the WWII experience. Our men were really in combat only about 8 months, between April and November 1918, and we lost about 100,000 men. The US economy never got really on a wartime footing. There was no rationing. The First World War was quickly forgotten in the US when our really serious war, WW!!, began. The whole country was at war and knew it was fighting for its life. We were attacked by surprise. There were truly evil leaders abroad to oppose. We were in it to conquer rather than to influence the peace.

This is, I think, the difference between America and the British Commonwealth as regards feelings toward the various World Wars. The British Commonwealth thinks of WWI as its big war and its great tragedy. Millions of British, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealander young men lost their lives in that war. Not that many Commonwealth citizens died in WWII. Sure, they lost a few hundred thousand, like we did, and that was a terrible tragedy for everyone involved. But MILLIONS of Commonwealth citizens died in France between 1914 and 1918. If I am correct, the Australian and New Zealander national days commemorate the ANZAC troops who fought in WWI.

The US commemorations of wartime dead and of those who served our country are Memorial Day and Veterans' Day. Though Veterans' Day is the Monday of the week of Nov. 11th, I don't think Americans are commemorating the dead of any specific war on either of those days. This is definitely not true of Commonwealth commemorations, which on Nov. 11th are directly devoted to the dead of the First World War. That's why we don't do poppies or read "In Flanders Fields".

[Erroneous]

This is all very big in Australia. Poppies, a minute of silence, and that bugle tune I keep forgetting the name of. The enormous ANZAC losses at Gallipoli, in WWI, seem to be burned really really deeply into Australian consciousness.

[torq]

I've seen the poppies, though they're not as common here as the OP implies they are in Canada.

And, yeah, I've read the poem (a long time ago), but AFAIK there are not huge gatherings held to hear someone read it aloud or anything like that.

[Rodd Hill]

I asked a friend of mine who grew up in Kansas during WWII (She would have been in her mid-teens in 1945) if she had learned the famous poem by the Canadian Army Medical Corps doctor, John McCrae. She recalled it being taught to her in Greade School in the late 1930s.

I know from family that it is very well known in Great Britain (or at least it used to be).

I will go as far to say that I suspect that "In Flanders Fields" is the most widely-known Canadian work of art in the world. McCrae, who died later in the war of disease, was so disgusted with the slaughter around him that he threw his Military Cross, a gallantry award, into a canal in France.

Re: the poppy: I have a photo dated 1917 of a young Canadian university engineering student wearing a large crepe-paper poppy on the lapel of his civilian suit. (He was later killed in the autumn of 1918, after joining the Canadian Army.)

The little paper (now, alas, plastic) poppies seem to have appeared first in the 1920s, and were originally made by disabled veterans under the trade name "Vetcraft."

I was always taught to wear only one, to remove it after the 11:00 am ceremonies, and to dispose of it "in a dignified manner."

Americans should remember that many thousands of young US boys crossed the border into Canada during 1914-17 period to join up, so much so that three battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were offically known as "Canadian American" battalions.

[matt_mcl]

The poppies I refer to are indeed ubiquitous up here - I'd say half to three-quarters of people wear them on or about Remembrance Day. They are customarily sold by veterans, purchased on a pay-what-you-will basis by passersby, and doled out to small children, who promptly remove the green inner part and fold the poppy in half, placing it in their mouths so they look like a pair of obscene red lips. The minute of silence is observed pretty much everywhere.

For those of you who have been deprived of In Flanders' Fields, I will post it.

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.

[matt_mcl]

I should point out that in Canada, Remembrance Day does not only commemorate WWI; it commemorates all wars in which Canada has fought (at least in living memory), although it does indeed have its origins in WWI. It's roughly equivalent to the US Memorial Day in that way, I suppose. And it's much more present in our national consciousness than it seems to be in Britain as described. Nearly every Canadian schoolchild knows In Flanders' Fields or the French translation.

[JBENZ]

The Brits do have a way with war poetry but the best one is still:

Dulce et Decorum Est
Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.


I have a not-entirely-tonguincheekless collection of war poetry at: http://www.geocities.com/~jbenz/warart.html



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JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis

[smilingjaws]

I might add that 25% of Britian's young men were lost to that most stupid of wars, WWI.
Americans do not think much about that war. I think we lost more to the flu epidemic of 1917 than we did to the War.
Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth really made me aware of the horror of that war. PBS had a Masterpiece theatre on it.

Thanks so much for posting "In Flanders Field"--a beautiful and moving tribute to those lost.

[mr john]

I doubt most americans could tell you the signifigance of 11 11 11, and we have a problem remembering the difference between Memorialday( end of May- to remember those who died in war dating back to the war between the states 1860's) and And Veterans day ( november originaly Armistice day 11-11 , changed to veterans day after WW2 [instead of having VE and VJ days] now honoring ALL veterans, peace time as well, I think the general attitude towards the Great War in the US is that it was a big mistakethat we got involved at all. Of course once we did get into it WE won it, in fact the war wasn't important to anybody in anyway till WE were envolved. After all it had dragged on for years untill WE got there then it was over in months. About the only commimeration of WW1 around here that I have noticed is the annual airing of Sgt.York on the PBS station. For you non-USA folks Sgt York won that war single handed. Here is the poem that gives me a sense of that war,

"I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,when spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple blossoms fill the air-
I have a rendevous with Death........."
There is more. it is short but i can't type soo,
at the end he says "But I've a rendevous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town;
When spring trips north again this year
And I to my pledged word am true, I shall not fail that rendezvous."
Alan Seeger 1888-1916

[John W. Kennedy]

There was no rationing [in WWI in the USA].


Not by law, but there de-factor rationing by very strong propaganda, and some shortages. (My wife is a docent in an historic house.)

------------------
John W. Kennedy
"Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays."
-- Charles Williams

[Rodd Hill]

Even Canada's greatest memorial to the 60,000 men killed in the Great War is under threat. I'm surprised that this didn't hit the news yet, but the Vimy Ridge Memorial in France has been closed due to large bits of masonry falling off.

Here's an excellent Canadian Government site with details of the moving and elegant Vimy Memorial, as well as others in Canada and abroad...

http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/general/sub.cfm?source=memorials/ww1mem/vimy

[Ukulele Ike]

J String: Is that the monument that was designed by Grant Wood, best known for painting AMERICAN GOTHIC? Whyever did it end up in Kansas City?

Rodd: Thanks for the cool link. Has anyone else noticed that WWI monuments and memorials are unerringly classy and moving in a way that WWII monuments and memorials are not?
I'll be uncharacteristically conservative, and opine that this is because it was considered fitting in 1920 to include representational art and sculpture, but the late '40s art world preferred to go for the abstract.

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Uke

[cornflakes]

Erroneous: ...that bugle tune I keep forgetting the name of...


If it's the same for you Aussies as it is for us Yanks, taps is the name of the bugle call. I don't know if they still do, but army forts and camps used to signal every event of the day with a call. Taps was the end of the day.

[Jodi]

MR. JOHN -- I'm not sure if your post was serious or tongue-in-cheek, but I think the very fact that the war had drug on for years before the arrival of the Americans indicates it was important to the Europeans (and Commonwealth nations) who were fighting it. The reason it was won so quickly after WE showed up is because WE were hundreds of thousands of fresh troops who had NOT already suffered through years of brutal, demoralizing fighting. The fact that both sides were so entirely decimated by the time the Americans arrived only underscores the enormous losses suffered by other nations in that war -- which is why they remember it and we don't.

[Rodd Hill]

"Taps" is indeed the American name of the bugle call that closes the day (or did, anyway) at military encampments, forts, etc.

In the British and Commonwealth forces, it has always been known as "the Last Post." Rookie soldiers are still sent by their more experienced elders to "go and whitewash (or paint) the last post.

Incidentally, at the Menin Gate in the town of Ypres (now Ieper, I believe) in Belgium, the gate is closed and the last post played every evening at 8 o'clock, and all traffic comes to a standstill. This ceremony has only been interrupted when the Germans occupied Belgium during the Second World War. Ypres was the scene of some of the worst fighting on the Western Front for almost 4 years.

The Menin Gate memorial commemorates those British soldiers killed at Ypres between August 1914 and August 1917 who were never found or identified. The Memorial to the Missing contains 54,000 names.

Those who died and were never found and identified in Ypres between August 1917 and November 1918 are commemorated at the nearby Tyne Cot British Military Cemetery. Another 35,000 unknown are remembered there.

Here's a good link:

http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/menin.htm

Also incidentally, Canada's losses in the Great War, if expressed in proportional terms, were the same as US deaths in the Civil War. (Assuming US pop. roughly 10 times greater than Canada, and our fatal casualties of 60,000).

[Ukulele Ike]

Rodd, these links are FABULOUS!!! You got any more?

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Uke

[Rodd Hill]

More than happy to oblige, Uke!

http://www.widomaker.com/~poirier/Links.htm#FortMuseums

http://www.cfcsc.dnd.ca/links/milhist/mus.html (this is a good one)

http://www.du.edu/~tomills/military/empire.htm (best resource for British & Commonwealth military history)

http://www.stemnet.nf.ca/monuments/index.htm (Military memorials in Canada)

http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/

http://www.worldwar1.com/ (best WWI site on the web, very detailed

And one of my favourites:

http://www.fylde.demon.co.uk/welcome.htm#CONTENTS

[Rodd Hill]

A couple more:

The US Battle Monuments Commission:
http://www.abmc.gov/index.shtml

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
http://www.cwgc.org/

"We can truly say that the whole circuit of the earth is girdled with the graves of our dead . . . and, in the course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come, than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war."

King George V, Flanders, 1922.


The German War Graves commission:
http://www.volksbund.de/homepage.htm

French War Graves Department:
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/anciens-combattants/index.html

[Jodi]

Thanks for the sites, Rodd; very interesting information on what is, for most Americans, a forgotten war.

[tracer]

And since we're all in the war poetry spirit, I thought I'd throw in one of my favorites. I don't know who wrote it, but it's been set to music (chorus + oboe), and I've sung the Tenor part, which is how I remember it:

No Mark
Corn grew where the corn was spilled
In the wreck where Davy Jones was killed
Scrub oak grows and sassafrass,
Around the shady stone you pass
To show where Stonewall Jackson fell
That Saturday at Chancellorsville.
And soapweed bayonets are stealed across
The Custer battlefield.

But where you die, the sky is black
A little while with cracking flak.
Then ocean closes very still
Above your skull that held our will.

O swing away, white gull, white gull.
Evening star be beautiful.


Hmmm ... now that I look at it in print, it's not as impressive as I remember it being when I sang it. I guess the music makes a difference. Benjamin Britten's War Requiem, anyone?

[Fyodor]

At Canadian Remembrance Day ceremonies this is often receited:

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them."

If you go to some of the war graveyards all over the world it will shock you - row after row of graves of boys 18 to 22 years old. Everything we have we owe to them. My 78 year old father still can shed a tear when he thinks of his friends from school who were killed.

One of our local newspaper columnists went to Walmart at 11 AM November 11. The staff shut down for two minutes but the shoppers kept right on going. Yay! It's a holiday! Let's go shopping. Some shoppers were upset that the cash registers shut down for two minutes and abused the staff. I suppose those young men died for those moronic shoppers also.

[Lawrence]

The Liberty Memorial in Kansas City was put up after WWI to honor America's dead in that war. It was closed down in 1994? after it was determined to be unsafe for visitors. Kansas City has decided to restore it and set up a bi-state tax for only the second time in its history for the reconstruction, which will cost more than $250 million. Why is it in Kansas City? Because the people of Kansas City built it. The Rainbow Division, made up largely of soldiers from Kansas and Missouri, saw a lot of fighting during WWI; one of its best soldiers was Harry Truman of Independence, Artillery Captain (though of course the monument was built before Truman became famous). In honor of their soldiers and of all the Allied soldiers, the Liberty Memorial was erected by public subscription. One of the main streets in KC is Rainbow Boulevard...and you can guess why it's called that.

[Lawrence]

Another comment: there is an equally impressive monument on the campus of the University of Kansas at Lawrence, called the Campanile, which was also built to commemorate those who died in WWI and especially the KU students, some 250, who were killed in that war. In the Student Union there is a large framed memorial to all those students, including several female nurses and several black soldiers, who died in the First World War. It includes photographs of all of them. It is moving.

[Ukulele Ike]

Any morbid folks like me who enjoy this sort of stuff, get hold of THE PENGUIN BOOK OF FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY. All the above and lots lots more.

See also the paintings of Otto Dix, particularly the triptychs METROPOLIS and WAR.

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Uke

[J String]

quote:
"The US doesn't remember WWI much. We got in near the very end, the Central Powers collapsed soon after, and we weren't much hurt. We did, however, want to forget it as
soon as possible."

Unfortunately true. The WWI memorial in Kansas City is suffering from decay and (as far as I know) is no longer open to the public. Americans have a dreadfully short memory when it comes to important stuff.

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It's a long way to heaven, but only three short steps to hell.

[radar ralf]

For a very interesting account of trench warfare in WWI, read "Birdsong" by Sebastian Faulks. Growing up in Kansas, I remember observing both "Decoration Day" (Memorial Day - when we decorated the graves)and "Remembrance Day" (Veterans' Day - when everyone wore a paper poppy).

[CatInHat]

Also, read All Quiet on the Western Front, which was written by a German WWI veteran. A really powerful book, imo.

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Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
-- Unknown

[Occam]

When your finished with that read, "The Black Obelisk". It's by the same guy.