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.
It’s a long way to heaven, but only three short steps to hell.
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
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.
Uke
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.
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.
“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).
Rodd, these links are FABULOUS!!! You got any more?
Uke
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:
A couple more:
The US Battle Monuments Commission:
http://www.abmc.gov/index.shtml
The Commonwealth War Graves Commission:
http://www.cwgc.org/
The German War Graves commission:
http://www.volksbund.de/homepage.htm
French War Graves Department:
http://www.defense.gouv.fr/anciens-combattants/index.html
Thanks for the sites, Rodd; very interesting information on what is, for most Americans, a forgotten war.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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).
Also, read All Quiet on the Western Front, which was written by a German WWI veteran. A really powerful book, imo.
Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
– Unknown
When your finished with that read, “The Black Obelisk”. It’s by the same guy.