9 posts tagged “world war one”
She couldn't be bothered. She couldn't be bothered to straighten her glistening spine. The world didn't interest her sufficiently to open her eyes wide and give it her full attention. Their black depths remained hidden and inaccessible behind gray shores. Her pink arms, weak and rounded, are barely strong enough to hold a fan torn from an ostrich's wingspan. Her fatigued, exhausted posture is not the result of a vitamin deficiency, of the A's, B-12's, D's dissolved in a surfeit of cocktails. It is merely the languid weariness adopted by young society in the early 1920's. Before the flappers fluttered, before hems tickled ladies' knees, before Art Deco's sonogram was viewed at the Paris Exposition Des Arts Decoratifs in 1925, the 'Lost Generation' staggered out of World War One and made a high art of indifference and cynicism.
Her gown shines like a cold moon and is the color of a fish freshly pulled out of the sea. It glides effortlessly over her body, baring her rounded shoulders but trailing across the floor: covering it like a nacreous lake. There is no corset; there are no laces, no buckles, no hooks, no buttons. They would make it just too complicated...
...and she couldn't be bothered.
Many years ago the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held an exhibit that occupied an embarrassed corner of one of its galleries.
It was a showing of German art, from that pocket of time between the World Wars. No one wanted to see those pictures. Art that carries its truth like an unextracted knife is not popular. What I saw were reminders of the green-hued visions the artists saw in the trenches, or the equally gangrenous sights trapped inside their minds like a poisonous fog. Those memories could only be faced if they bled onto the canvas, or were torn from a lithographer's stone.
I visited this collection five times.
One artist interested me in particular. His name was Otto Dix. He treated his disturbing subjects with skill and delicacy. Like Egon Schiele's twisted nudes, they were shocking and magnificent.
In 1924, Dix unleashed a portfolio of rabid dogs struggling in their restraints; he called the series of drawings 'Der Krieg' ('The War'). At this time, carousing in her perfumed mud, Germany was daring and suicidal - pressing a razorblade to her jugular, tapping it with her bloody claws to see how far she could go before the pale skin broke.
I was stunned by the lines that knitted a blanket of lunar architecture: craters ripped out of a protesting earth by iron fists roaring out of the howitzers and tearing handfuls of dirt from the meek crust before throwing it into the black sky.
There was a small etching of a fearsome sculpture: a skull - all hair, skin and cartilage melted into the earth. Its expression had evaporated into the atmosphere. And yet it lived: sprouting from a cracked jaw, through a destroyed mouth, over teeth that slanted like a rotted fence, inside wriggling orbits, were worms. Vibrant and hungry, symbolic and hated - they hinted at the afterlife that the missing skeleton was experiencing, as they waited to be harvested from their field of bone.
Nothing was easy to look at. I feel awkward posting these two examples here. I think I was aware of the slender, yet powerful lines, the charismatic contrasts, the scumptural dark - before I noticed the corpses, the landscapes: the entire grisaille of hopelessness.
People are inclined to ignore misery. It is a human tendency. But at this eloquent exhibit, art stepped in...not to make the war to end all wars palatable, but to make sure it remained unforgettable.
I received for my birthday - from a friend who knows my tastes well - a very unusual book: "The Occult and Psychical Sciences: Psychical Phenomena and The War", by Hereward Carrington. It was originally published in 1918, when war wasn't qualified by a number, a date, or a place. It was just The War - people didn't think there would ever be another one.
The book is a collection of thoughts, theories, sittings and readings - dreamed up and written down during the course of the war, from 1914-1918. During this time, when continents were drowning in sorrow, psychics, spiritualists and mediums tricked, cheated and bilked their clients - while at the same time giving them immeasurable comfort.
One passage of the book was a 'communication' from 1916 via Ouija board between Michael Whitty, ('M'), editor of Azoth Magazine ("A Monthly Magazine of Philosophy, Theosphy, Mysticism, Spiritualism, Physical Research, Higher Thought, Symbolism, Astrology and Occultism") and a soldier ('O') - dead, but apparently still not beyond his pain:
O: When very young - bayonet still in me
M: Where were you fighting?
O: I must not tell
M: Why not? If you have been killed it does not matter now.
O: I will not tell
M: Why wil you not?
O: Yes boss...orders not to...
M: Are you French?
O: No
M: Are you Italian or Russian?
O: No Canadian
M: Oh, a Canadian, eh?
O: It hurts
M: You are deluding yourself. If you are dead you are in a new body - the bayonet may be sticking in the old body but it is not really sticking in you now.
O: Just try a bit yourself
M: Will you do what I tell you? If you will I can help you -
O: Are you sure you can whats it
M: Will you do it?
O: If I can
(M. tells him to wish himself back where his body was and find it, and then he would see the bayonet in it and realize that it was not really in him now)
O: If I go back now I'll get in a scrap with a bloody german
M: The dead don't fight with each other
O: They still scrap
M: Where is your mother?
O: Been dead years
M: Well you think of her and call her and she will come to you.
O: Nothing doing
M: Well, I will pull it out for you. Place yourself so that the head of the bayonet is in my hand here (holding out hand) - is it there?
O: Yes go easy go easy
M: All right - it won't hurt (suddenly pulling as if removing the bayonet). There - it's out now. I've got it.
(pause)
O: Its OK now
M: Well, goodnight -
O: Thanks
I don't accept this book as a statement of fact, but rather as a sign - or sympton - of the times. Mothers, sisters, wives and lovers were desperate to hear from their departed ones, or to at least hear what happened to them: there are times when ignorance is not bliss, at all.
So if this little dialogue convinced even one reader that a living man was able to extract a bayonet from the side of a suffering spirit, I say let it stand - if not on truth, at least on the consolation it gave, when there was none left in the world.
December 1914: the cold winter was made colder by disappointment and homesickness. The wind and rain shouted across the plains of France, whipping and biting like harpies. And when the rain collected in the trenches, the men were forced to stay partly submerged in the freezing water - water poisoned by the corpses lying hidden in its depths.
All that summer, when volunteers marched to meet the acclaim of their fellow citizens and certain death by strangers, experts said that they would be home for Christmas. This was merely a squabble to occupy one's time during the turgid, frivolous summer, before coming home in time for the holidays. This was just a bit of healthy exercise.
But dominoes once pushed must fall, and now the Western Front stretched like a livid wound from Switzerland, through France, to end on the Belgian coast before bleeding into the North Sea.
On Christmas Eve, things seemed bleaker than ever. Fogs swathed the huddled soldiers like a cold breath of despair.
Suddenly, there was a shimmering of light over the German trenches. British sentries watching for fixed bayonets, instead reported sights of bayonets wrapped with tiny lights lifted above the parapets. Small fir trees, bearing lit candles, were held high, daring the sniper's fire. But the night was silent.
Isolated, flickering spots of light were seen all along the Front, in the lifing dusk. Tremulous reminders of the sacred date; they were a timid sharing of holiday greetings.
German voices were raucous: 'A happy Christmas to you Englishmen!" And then they were singing: "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" The British retaliated by singing the carol in English. There was, in fact, a merry volley of carols: "The First Noel" ricocheted against "O Tannenbaum", "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" was answered with "Adeste Fideles" - as lively as any exchange of bullets.
Battalion leaders ventured into No Man's Land to shake hands. After this tacit agreement, men from both sides scrambled out to look into the enemy's face and discover a humanity that they never expected to see.
Gifts were exchanged: tins of bully beef, badges, caps, buttons, chocolate, cigarettes. Photographs of families and sweethearts were shared - as were the stories, plans and hopes that graced each face like a halo. Frostbit hands smoothed pictures torn and creased with repeated viewings; small holes in the margins showed where they had been pinned to the dirt walls of the trenches.
Impromptu discussions broke out, small oases of friendship. Men spoke of their homes, their schools, what they would do when the war ended (the conflict was only four months old, so such a topic could be discussed without derision).
The Christmas Truce of 1914 ended as it had begun, by mutual agreement. The men then retired into their homes in the earth, back to living with fear and forgeting the unlikely camaraderie that had flourished so spontaneously.
This Truce is seen as myth, as legend, but most importantly it is seen as the truth. The memories of that early morning lives with reverence in the memories of those that were there.
But whatever had been learned during those few hours of companionship would be torn and distorted within the next year. Poison gas at Ypres. The slaughter at Gallipoli...history would change everything. But for the time, the fellowship of a common holiday held sway and the one thing that the soldiers learned about each other was that a terrible mistake had been made. And now they just wanted to go home.
I collect World War One postcards. I have a book full of sad expressions, seen on one side of the card, read on the other. War strains the body, the mind, the heart. Sometimes it destroys them altogether.
A few of my postcards have correspondence written on the back - a student's handwriting in Gothic curlicues, a farm boy's misspelled print. A husband's wry greeting ('Dear Wife'), a son's report ('also strained a sinew').
Though different, they are all examples of emotions stretched taut as a soldier's line of communication with his loved ones is extended over trenches, barbed wire, blasted forests, oceans, danger and loneliness. Running low to the ground, sentiments of all nationalities traverse numerous No Man's Lands and pass, shuddering, by the charnel houses of Verdun, the Somme, Gallipoli and Ypres (pronounced like a sigh of despair) until they reach their individual safe havens.
I'm lucky to have in my collection a correspondence between Herbert and Nell - their affection having traveled via a 3 1/2" x 5" magic carpet made of cardboard - I have four cards from battlefront to homefront. I'm sure (I hope!) there are more. I'll present one here:
My Dearest Nell
These words are just my thoughts dearie as my heart dearie is always with you, and I am always thinking of you & I know you are of me, roll on the time when I shall see you again, I am simply longing for it, it will be all the nicer when we do meet wont it love. Good bye just for a little while
Your devoted love
For Ever
Herbert
XXXXXX
Another example of the emotion of battle probably never happened. Many histories of World War One mention it, and then dismiss it: a high-ranking officer was being driven - with difficulty - to the battlefront, after the Battle of Passchendaele had churned it into an earthy stew. As conditions worsened, he eventually burst into tears, crying, 'My God, did we really send men to fight in that?"
I think in the thousands of years of warfare this must have happened - many, many times - those that witness such devastation are so overcome that they can only find solace, and escape, in tears.
That are many things about war that should be remembered. Maps. Arrows. Battles. Geography. Statistics. Strategies.
But what must be remembered are the faces - and what the eyes saw, and what the lips said, the blood that was red - not black or sepia - the flesh that was once warm, and then abruptly turned cold; the emotions traveling from one front to the other and the sea of hands extended; desparate to receive them.
This past Sunday Boyfriend and I went to the Ventura Flea Market. In many ways I prefer it to the one market to rule them all, The Rose Bowl Flea Market. It's within walking distance of the cooling beach; while within The Bowl, the heat of thousands of bodies buying, selling and negotiating all manner of treats, compounded by the heat created by a bowl shaped arena located inland is dazzling, if not beguiling.
Anyway, so last Sunday I bought this postcard. The faded, sepia caption reads: 'The “Fighting Fifth” (Norhumberland Fusiliers) after the battle of St. Eloi'.
And on the back, besides the printed proclamation “Passed by Censor” and written greetings from Esther to Miss H. Wakeling of Carlton County New Brunswick, it also says, 'Assisted by the Royal Fusiliers, the “Fighting Fifth (Norhumberland Fusiliers) took with splendid dash the first and second line trenches at St. Eloi'.
This is an Official War Photograph, from 1916. It means that in all likelihood it is not quite the spontaneous explosion of exuberance one hopes for, when studying a picture of soldiers who appear to be safe and celebrating. No doubt volunteers were requested (“You, you and you.”) and were commanded to be happy.
But they did win this engagement. Rushing the German trenches with mad fervor, some mining below their strongholds to blow them skyward in a muddy, bloody mass, they did carry the day. I found this description of them, from a soldier who was there, Phillip Gibbs, in his book ‘Now It Can Be Told (1927):
"I saw the Royal Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers come back from this exploit, exhausted, caked from head to foot in wet clay. Their steel helmets were covered with sand-bagging, their trench-waders, their rifles, and smoke helmets were all plastered by wet, white earth, and they looked a ragged regiment of scarecrows gathered from the fields of . Some of them had shawls tied about their helmets, and some of them wore the shiny black helmets of the Jaeger Regiment and the gray coats of German soldiers. They had had luck. They had not left many comrades behind, and they had come out with life to the good world. Tired as they were, they came along as though to carnival. They had proved their courage through an ugly job. They had done "damn well," as one of them remarked; and they were out of the shell-fire which ravaged the ground they had taken, where other men lay."
So they did survive with spirits intact, like any good Englishman would. They had protected their comrades as army and University had taught them. They had returned with souvenirs because families back home were waiting for them.
They were alive.
Like all World War One geeks I scourred the postcard through a magnifying glass, my weak eyes red and protesting. So what. Damn…my eyes.
Anyway, I saw the men holding (what I think are) their portable trench mortars aloft. There’s one fellow to the left who thought he’d want to be captured for posteriety wearing his gas mask. There’s a man, bare-headed, seated on the ground, center front, who’s lighting up. Throughout, in fact, cigarettes (no soldier went far without his Woodbines) are clenched between smiling, tired lips. Helmets (the ‘tin hats’ had only recently been introduced) and rifles are hoisted above their heads.
But on the horizon - looking like a promise, a rebuke, or a threat - there is a rifle held high, higher than all the others. Balanced on top is that unknown soldier’s helmet, reflecting the arrangement to be found on every soldier’s grave.
Book: Show us a great biography or memoir.
World War One was a premature, savage and unnecessary harvest of, in Wilfred Owen's words, "half the seed of Europe". So it's ironic, horribly so - as irony often is - that it was also responsible for one of the lushest flowerings of memoir-writing English literature had ever experienced.
The authors for the most part were University-educated, well-read and sensitive to the waste and laziness of their gilt, Edwardian lives. They not only welcomed the chance to 'do their bit', but they welcomed the war itself. They saw it as a purgative, a cleansing agent to purify a decadent country.
This explains the exquisite tragedy of these memoirs. Suddenly a soldier, shell-shocked into reality, he saw sights that he had never imagined in even his most barbaric dreams.
But through it all he retained some delicacy of thought, of expression. Which is why these works are so beautifully written, so insightful, so heart-breakingly clear and unmerciless.
And it was this lack of mercy which held back the publication of these books. For the most part they weren't published until the 1930's, sufficient time to keep the angry words and incriminating memories from doing their damage.
When Edwin Campion Vaughan left for France in January, 1917, he pitied the loved ones waving their boys goodbye - realizing that "the excitement of the venture into the dreamed of but unrealized land of war, eclipsed the sorrow of parting..." In late August he was climbing over a pile of bodies shredded by shrapnel to get to HQ's entrance, "...as I did so, a hand stretched out and clung to my equipment. Horrified I dragged a living man from amongst the corpses."
And in the final lines of the book: "Feeling sick and lonely I returned to my tent to write out my casualty report; but instead I sat on the floor and drank whisky after whisky as I gazed into a black and empty future."
Guy Chapman, on the other hand, had no "...romantic illusions. I was not eager, or even resigned to self-sacrifice, and my heart gave back no answering throb to the thought of England." Months later that realism was pounded into despair: "We descended to primal man. No washing or shaving here; and the demands of nature answered as quickly as possible in the handiest and deepest shell-hole."
By the war's end, he had become bitter and angry: "Our civilization was being torn in pieces before our eyes. England was said to be a country fit only for profiteers to live in...England had vanished over the horizon of the mind. I did not want to see it."
I think that both of these books are pure examples of how beauty and horror can co-mingle in one life and can also occasionally create a work of memorable art.
The noble Precision has tagged me; daring me to list 5 Things About Me That No One Knows; i.e. 5 Things About Me That No One Could Really Care Less About. However. I shall press on.
1. I am a pro-wrestling fan. I remember watching my first Smackdown, taking a look at the Hardy Boyz and thinking, uh huh, that's for me. When, during the heat of a match one or - thrilldom - both would tear off their shirts, well, that was just some fine television viewing. Now, the Boyz are no longer a tag team - Matt Hardy is on Friday's Smackdown, Jeff is on Monday Night Raw. Both are extravagantly easy on the eyes. Oh, and the rest of the WWE is fun, too.
But the Hardys - woof!
2. I achieved my adult height - 5' 6.5" (NEVER forget that half-inch - it's good for an extra two pounds) by the time I was 10. That same year I started receiving a particular monthly visitor. Now, etiquette always dictated that if a person arrives at a soiree early, that person should be the first person leaving. So let me put it this way: THE PARTY'S OVER!
3. I had a World War One veteran as a pen pal. His name was Bert Stokes, and he was a survivor of terrible battles, like The Somme and Passchendaele. I was a member of the Western Front Association in 1994, and had noticed the name as one of the heads of the WFA's New Zealand branch. I had also read that name in a book on The Somme, and wrote to him asking if they were one and the same. It was indeed, and we corresponded for the entire year - he passed on in December, shortly before his 99th birthday. He was the oldest living veteran in New Zealand at that time, and was much loved. A bible he kept in his front pocket had once stopped a bullet. I guess once is enough.
4. I was a member of the Fairfax High School tennis team. But I would get so nervous before matches that I took part in only one - it was against Hollywood High. I played doubles with Gizella and was so appalling that people were not only irritated with me, but were giving me those suspicious side glances as if they thought something was seriously wrong with me. If they were just mad, believe me, I wouldn't be merely speculating 30 years later.
5. I'm a sarcastic person. Goodness, very much so. I think it's a gift, a blessing, an art. If you think sarcastic people are rude, then you've just been unfortunate enought to meet people who, shall we say, simply don't know how to handle a gun. Anyway, it's accepted: I'm sarcastic. However, I am also Highly Sensitive - which can make things rather difficult. In other words, I can dish it out, but can't be served. My advice to people similarly inclined - get your word in first.
Well. That's done. I toss down the gauntlet of revelation in the faces of the following five:
Sabba (welcome back - HAH!)
I'll be away from my computer tomorrow, and so unable to offer any homage to Veteran's/Remembrance/Armistice Day. So I'll do it now. The postcard here is from my collection of World War One cards; I'd estimate that I have over 150. This particular kind was embroidered in colored silks - after the war they lost their popularity and were no longer made. Along with this image, I thought I'd include a poem by Wilfred Owen, my favorite war poet. The problem lay in choosing which one. The title I did have in mind is rather less well known than 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' and 'Dulce et Decorum Est'. It's my favorite, with a real kicker of a final line:
The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
