#The First World War

[theworldofwars]

Propaganda made by the allies of WW1 of what could happen to the United States if the Central Powers won.

[cannedbluesblog]

James McCudden WW1 British Flying Ace VC. The girl on the motorbike with him is his sister. He died in Auxi-le-Château, France, 1918 aged 23.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔢 𝔬𝔣 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 𝔟𝔶 𝔅𝔢𝔯𝔫𝔞𝔯𝔡 𝔓𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔡𝔤𝔢, յգյԴ

[wellntruly]

#2 for the ask game? (favorite film as a child)

I promise this is not me retconning my life it truly was A Little Princess, the children's film by young Alfonso Cuarón & cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, now five Oscars between them at time of writing.

Tiny me of course had no idea of the future pedigree of this movie, I was just captured mind & soul by the green walls and the blowing leaves and particularly this one moment where someone mentions that it's the War, and then you're hearing the haunting whine of a shell somewhere overhead and this distant *boom, boom* as the camera fills with the wan grey and mud of trenches and overcoats, and about fifteen years later in the midst of a war poets period I would suddenly remember this and be like, oh.

A profoundly Orientalist text on adult revisit, but still incredibly gorgeous to watch, and that First World War sound cue: still hits. It always hits. I've said this weird thing before but easily our most aurally distinct armed conflict, to the point that "war" still sounded like the Western Front all the way through at least the 1970s.

[dolline]

I have just found out that Wilfred Owen was killed 1 week before ww1 ended and I will not recover

[postcard-from-the-past]

Ruins of the Château d'Ablain-Saint-Nazaire during the First World War, Artois region of France

French vintage postcard

[arda-marred]

Regarding the fictional Sam Gamgee’s link to the First World War, Carpenter’s Biography quotes Tolkien as saying, “My ‘Sam Gamgee’ is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” A batman, in military parlance, was a soldier who (as well as being required to fight) was tasked with looking after an officer’s kit, cooking, and cleaning. Tolkien’s phrasing in the letter sent to Minchin is different, and very interesting too: “My ‘Samwise’ is indeed (as you note) largely a reflexion of the English soldier—grafted on the village-boys of early days, the memory of the privates and my batmen that I knew in the 1914 War, and recognized as so far superior to myself.” It gives the extra dimension that in portraying Sam, Tolkien had also drawn on memories of lads from the rural outskirts of Birmingham, where he had lived between the ages of three and eight. This dovetails well with his statement elsewhere that the society of the Shire is “more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee” (Letters p. 230)—that is, a village like Sarehole in 1897, Queen Victoria’s 60th year on the throne and Tolkien’s fifth on earth. Amid all Tolkien’s astonishing inventiveness, and alongside the vast knowledge of matters mythological and medieval that he poured into his legendarium, this is a point too easily overlooked: contemporary life, especially the life he knew in his formative years, was a powerful well-spring of creativity in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s comment to Minchin also provides support for a point I have made in various talks on how the Great War shaped The Lord of the Rings. By silently linking his hobbits with the boys of 1901, who had grown into the young men of 1914, Tolkien was able to draw directly upon the war into which he and those men were then hurled. He had seen, and felt, how war could change those who went through it. Many of the dangers he describes in The Lord of the Rings may be fantastical, though many are not and others are only symbolically so. But the fear, the resourcefulness, the demoralisation, the courage, the sorrow, the innocent laughter in the face of dreadful odds: all these things he had known, and he infused his fiction with them. This, and memories of those rural roots, bring the hobbits vividly to life.

[empirearchives]

“The autocratic rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria wanted to crush the revolutionary ideas for which Napoleon stood, including meritocracy, equality before the law, anti-feudalism and religious toleration. Essentially, they wanted to turn the clock back to a time when Europe was safe for aristocracy. At this they succeeded—until the outbreak of the Great War a century later.”

Andrew Roberts, Smithsonian magazine, June 2015

Theory that World War I is the continuation and completion of the Napoleonic wars. In this essay I will…

[droppingthegloves]

if the great war has a million fans, i am one of them🙋‼️. if the great war has ten fans, i am one of them. if the great war has only one☝️fan, it is me🙋. if the great war has no fans, that means i am no longer alive😰🪦💔🕊️. if the world is against the great war, i am against the world❌🌍💥 . i'll support the great war until my last breath😻😵💪.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Sir Michael Howard CBE: The gallantry of inexperience made their [the U.S.] losses heavy -- over 10,000 killed or wounded -- but they learned fast; and the very presence of these tall, cheerful, well-fed boys from the Middle West with their boundless optimism convinced their weary allies that the war could not now be lost.

@grrlpup: Aw, we were the golden retriever emotional support animals of World War I!

[theworldofwars]

Christmas Dinner 1916 At the Front, Canadian Expeditionary Force From the collection of William McLellan

[backofthebookshelf]

I know I'm a week late but I do think people are misunderstanding the point of the Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger

The point was never "Anthony Bourdain has good politics and is an unproblematic fave," the point is that even someone with mainstream liberalish politics who goes to Cambodia for a food tour - a, let's be honest, very bougie type of trip to be part of your job - and has a basic understanding of history and a bare minimum of human decency can come away from that bougie food tour wanting to murder Henry Kissinger with their bare hands. The point is that Henry Kissinger fucked up this country so bad the only reason he wasn't lynched decades ago is because it's on the opposite side of the world and the people who were in proximity to him never really saw what it was. The point is that if we could see firsthand what our First World politics do to the Third World we would understand that monsters walk among us and it's a cultural failing that we let them die at home at 100 years old surrounded by their friends and family.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

𝔖𝔢𝔯𝔟𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔠𝔦𝔳𝔦𝔩𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔰𝔬𝔫𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔡 𝔦𝔫 𝔞 𝔰𝔢𝔪𝔦-𝔠𝔦𝔯𝔠𝔩𝔢, 𝔢𝔵𝔢𝔠𝔲𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔟𝔶 𝔞𝔫 𝔄𝔲𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔬-ℌ𝔲𝔫𝔤𝔞𝔯𝔦𝔞𝔫 𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔰𝔮𝔲𝔞𝔡 𝔦𝔫 𝔚𝔬𝔯𝔩𝔡 𝔚𝔞𝔯 ℑ.

[wellntruly]

"Sassoon, Siegfried." "Sounds Wagnerian."

Benediction (2021), dir. Terence Davies

[postcard-from-the-past]

The Belfry's famous lion saved from the ruins during the First World War in Arras, Artois region of France

French vintage postcard