I'm very busy working on a variety of projects this summer, which I hope will bear fruit in the fall, so I'm going to have to cut back on the frequency of my posts here for the next few months.
I will post every Friday.
Thanks for your support!
___________________
Blog updated every Friday
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Nottingham Great War centenary exhibition call for help
BBC News: Nottingham Great War centenary exhibition call for help
War I are being asked to help with an exhibition in Nottingham.
The Nottinghamshire Great War centenary exhibition will mark the contribution ordinary people made to the war.
It will open at Castle Museum in August 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI.
Organisers have appealed for volunteer guides to help visitors with their own research as well as personal mementos, letters and war diaries for the show.
Exhibition curator and military historian Major John Cotterill said: "We want our exhibition to be a living exhibition.
"An exhibition where people can come in and ask about their Great War ancestors and we can produce the photographs, the maps and the information that brings their query to life."
Hidden histories
Maj Cotterill, a serving soldier with the Mercian regiment based at Chilwell barracks, said: "I've been talking to people who have some incredible diaries - military and civilian - that have never been published.
"Some have been transcribed and some are stored away in people's attics," he said.
The military historian is appealing for war artefacts.
"Trench art that soldiers brought back, German helmets, all sorts of things," said Maj Cotterill.
"Normally museums take only stuff that has been donated but we are happy to take stuff that has been loaned."
People who have time or possessions to contribute to the exhibition are asked to write to RHQ Mercian at Foresters House, Chilwell, Nottingham NG9 5HA or email john.cotterill@btinternet.com directly.
War I are being asked to help with an exhibition in Nottingham.
The Nottinghamshire Great War centenary exhibition will mark the contribution ordinary people made to the war.
It will open at Castle Museum in August 2014, the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI.
Organisers have appealed for volunteer guides to help visitors with their own research as well as personal mementos, letters and war diaries for the show.
Exhibition curator and military historian Major John Cotterill said: "We want our exhibition to be a living exhibition.
"An exhibition where people can come in and ask about their Great War ancestors and we can produce the photographs, the maps and the information that brings their query to life."
Hidden histories
Maj Cotterill, a serving soldier with the Mercian regiment based at Chilwell barracks, said: "I've been talking to people who have some incredible diaries - military and civilian - that have never been published.
"Some have been transcribed and some are stored away in people's attics," he said.
The military historian is appealing for war artefacts.
"Trench art that soldiers brought back, German helmets, all sorts of things," said Maj Cotterill.
"Normally museums take only stuff that has been donated but we are happy to take stuff that has been loaned."
People who have time or possessions to contribute to the exhibition are asked to write to RHQ Mercian at Foresters House, Chilwell, Nottingham NG9 5HA or email john.cotterill@btinternet.com directly.
Friday, June 17, 2011
So No More He'll Go A-Roving
The Wall Street Journal: So No More He'll Go A-Roving
By DAVID MASON
Toward the end of his life, the great writer, war hero and traveler Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, who died on June 10 at age 96, grew deaf and suffered from poor eyesight, sometimes wearing a rakish eye patch to correct his vision. But when I saw him last September he was still volubly alert, his memory undimmed as he retold stories of World War II. His hair was thick, hardly grayed, and his hands resting on the tablecloth resembled knots of wood. We were seated outside for lunch beneath the Byzantine-styled arches of his villa in southern Greece. Ilex trees cast shadows on the stone walls, and waves washed the rocky beach nearby.
It was good to be back.
Thirty years ago, my first wife and I had lived in a tiny stone hut next door to this magnificent house on a bay called Kalamitsi, land once considered sacred to the Nereids, sea nymphs of Greek myth. A young would-be writer, I was given the great gift of friendship by Paddy and his wife, Joan. They meant as much to me as models of gracious living as anyone I have ever known. Joan (tall, angular, quiet, unfailingly wise) died in 2003, and Paddy soldiered on in her absence, buoyed by friends and his own unkillable enthusiasm for life.
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Getty Images
Soldier & Scholar .Patrick Leigh Fermor in the early 1990s.
In September, Paddy talked of the British retreat from northern Greece nearly 70 years earlier, how he and several companions in a Special Operations Executive unit found themselves making a mad dash south with a suitcase of money meant to shore up the Greek war effort. They bought a fishing boat, but it was shot out from under them by dive-bombing Stukas, "sending the suitcase and all that money straight to Davy Jones"—and several British commandos, Paddy among them, into the Aegean to swim for their lives. Following more trials, they made it to Crete in time for another battle and another retreat.
Paddy would return in 1942 to the island by parachute to live in the caves and mountains among shepherds and guerrilla fighters. He is best known for having kidnapped the German commander of the Cretan occupation in 1944—a story often related with romantic dash and brio and even made into a movie. Dirk Bogarde portrayed Paddy onscreen in "Ill Met by Moonlight" (1957). Yet Paddy himself avoided starring roles. The movie was based on a fellow officer's book on the raid, and Paddy preferred translating a Greek account by George Psychoundakis, "The Cretan Runner" (1955), to writing his own.
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F. Martin Ramin for The Wall Street Journal
Never inclined to introspection, Paddy was endlessly curious about the world, and that curiosity distinguished his life and writing from our confessional age. He insisted that the reference library be near the dining-room table for consultation during mealtime arguments. Once, as he recounted in his lecture, "The Aftermath of Travel," he started researching "the distribution of crocodiles on the Upper Volta River, where I had never been or ever wanted to go. I took down the right volume of the Encyclopedia, but must have opened it at the wrong page, for three weeks later I had read the complete works of Voltaire, but I still knew nothing about the distribution of those crocodiles."
What made Paddy famous as a writer—or as famous as a writer's writer can be—was his narrative of walking from Holland to Constantinople in the early 1930s. The writing was spurred by the unexpected recovery of diaries that he had assumed were lost forever, and what resulted was a pair of masterpieces, "A Time of Gifts" (1977) and "Between the Woods and the Water" (1986). A third volume completing the journey is still awaited. The glacial pace of Paddy's writing frustrated many readers, but his weaving and unweaving of sentences resulted in some of the richest English prose we have. Here he is in Vienna with a young Frisian Islander who learned his English from reading Shakespeare:
Our way back took us along the Graben and the Kärntnerstrasse. About lamplighting time, I had noticed a small, drifting population of decorative girls who shot unmistakable glances of invitation at passersby. Konrad shook his head. "You must beware, dear young," he said in a solemn voice. "These are wenches and they are always seeking only pelf. They are wanton, and it is their wont
The particular exuberance of his prose came from endless revision, where he added layer upon layer of detail as his mind leapt nimbly across cultures and centuries. He wrote to me in 1985 about the second volume: "I have just put the mss on the Oitylo-Athens bus where it is to be met by the typist, who will get to work on it at once: now for pruning, revision, scissors and paste, the moment I get it back." His manuscripts were fringed with emendations, often covered with fanciful scrawls and illustrations.
I have a copy of one of them, "Notes on the Hellespont," sent to me after he had celebrated his 70th birthday by swimming that legendary strait. The typescript is covered not only with marginal arrows and alterations but also with seagulls, clouds and waves drawn with his fountain pen. "I was swimming sidestroke, and began to notice a strange fluctuating and hissing noise under my submerged left ear; it was very eerie, like an echo in a vast dark room below, and I thought it must have been the grinding of pebbles and silt at the bottom of the sea."
It was after his long walk to Constantinople that Paddy gained intimate knowledge of Greece. On the plains of Thessaly, he participated in a cavalry charge during one of that country's frequent political upheavals, and in Athens he fell in love with a Romanian princess. He lived with her in a windmill in the Peloponnese and then on her rambling estate in Moldova. But when war came in 1939, he returned home and enlisted in the Irish Guards.
After the war—during which he met Joan in Cairo—there were more peregrinations around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean, the last of these resulting in "The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands" (1950) and his only novel, "The Violins of Saint-Jacques" (1953).
He and Joan knew they could never settle in Crete, where his wartime actions and subsequent friendships would result in an endless string of feasts and raki-drinking sprees that would have killed him in a Byronic flash. Instead their travels in Greece led them into the isolated middle peninsula of the southern Peloponnese: the Mani, walled off from the rest of Greece by the Taygetus Mountains. There they constructed one of the world's most inspired houses—not ostentatious in size but perfectly integrated into the landscape and culture of the region. Its walled garden, cypress and olive groves and the adjacent sea made the house feel open to the world, with terraces for intimate meals and spaces of quietude filled only by birdsong.
They lived in tents while the house was built. "We were given the raw-material free—grey, fawn, russet and apricot-coloured limestone—which we hacked, prized and blew out of the side of the Taygetus and roughly dressed with claw-chisels," he wrote in "The Aftermath of Travel." Our lunch last September was eaten near "a heavy stone lintel seven feet long, salvaged from a demolition in Tripoli," as Paddy recounted. "Roping it to a ladder, twelve of us sweated and swore and stumbled under it for a quarter of a mile down the steep tiers of the olive-groves and through a flock of sheep. The simple-hearted shepherd asked us what we were going to do with it and our godbrother answered through clenched teeth: 'We're going to chuck it in the sea, to see if it floats!' "
Until the house was completed, Paddy was always writing in other people's homes. He wrote the greatest of his books about Greece, "Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese" (1958), at the home of the painter Nikos Ghika on the island of Hydra. The next volume, "Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece," was drafted in France, Italy and England but finally finished at Kalamitsi in 1966. And I think it was the glorious dwelling with its large studio, its sea-pebbled terrace and shady isolation that made his later masterpieces possible.
But it also provided a temptation to countless visitors from all over the world. Paddy and the villa became a coveted destination for endless travelers. I met the likes of Stephen Spender, Bruce Chatwin, the publisher John Murray and the historian Steven Runciman passing by my hut, where I lived a lotus-eating life by the sea without electricity or running water. If I share some guilt for distracting Paddy from writing over the years, my gratitude overcomes it.
Paddy and Joan lent me books, fed me, regaled me with stories, introduced me to their friends and never once required proof that I was a personage of any stature. They were the most generous human beings I have ever known, and my own "time of gifts" began in their company. I walked with Paddy in the hills, swam with him in the sea and kept him apprised of my own crooked path in life. "I write in sackcloth and ashes," he would joke when his letters were delayed and would proceed to supply me with drafts of his intoxicating verbal vintage.
Paddy was not a travel writer—the term is an idiotic reduction for the purposes of marketing. He was a poet, a fantastic re-creator of experience, a maker of paradisiacal sentences that leave me hungry for life. Chatwin chided him for his verbal embroidery, but what a rare thing it is to find the baroque in our time, and Paddy was just as capable of the simple observation—turning on a tap in an overheated Greek village and seeing nothing but a lonely cockroach crawl out of it, or hearing the conversation of Greeks muffled by a bedroom wall, as he noted in "Mani": "The soft murmur of the town was suddenly drowned by the furious jay-like voices of two women below my window, arguing across a narrow lane about something I couldn't catch. It didn't matter. The point was the inventive richness of the language, the splendour of the vocabulary, the unstaunchable flow of imagination and invective. . . . I can actually see the words spin from their mouths like long balloons in comic strips."
He had the good luck, or bad, depending on your point of view, to become a legend in his own lifetime. He saw the remote part of Greece he had chosen for his home commercialized and was himself the subject of innumerable tours by people far less likely to sweat for their adventures. None of this bothered him, as far as I could see. Now that he is dead, friends exclaim to me: "What a life!" Indeed, and what books he made of it—their breadth and style worthy shadows of the man himself.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
The secret centenary
ABC.net.au: The secret centenary
Sixty thousand Anzacs were killed in the Great War. Hundreds of thousands of Australians had their lives shattered. The impact of the war was so far-reaching it is often said that it changed the course of Australian history.
Yet historians rarely recall that the secret decisions, which led to the sacrifice, were driven by manipulated race fear - of Japan - and then covered up.
My current Griffith Review 32 (May 2011) essay draws on neglected work by Defence historian John Mordike to show that the development of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was determined by a secret agreement that the Australian defence minister senator George Pearce made at the war office in London on June 17, 1911. That clandestine arrangement did not come out of the blue. It was the culmination of a brilliant British imperial deception going back to at least 1909. The formation of Alfred Deakin's post-federation national guard was used as a Trojan horse to mask an imperial expeditionary agenda and subvert the independent defence policy of the new nation. Such deceit was then facilitated by ruthless British manipulation of Australian fears of a Japanese attack on White Australia.
In the lead-up to the War Office discussions of 1911, the British chief of the imperial general staff general Sir William Nicholson said privately that he believed the threat of Japan was "somewhat remote". Yet Mordike has shown in Army for a nation (1992) and "We should do this thing quietly" (2002) Nicholson and other British officials played ruthlessly, on what they realised were the "irrational" fears of Australian ministers of the Japanese, to promote British interests.
By 1911, the British wanted an Australian expeditionary force to bolster secret preparations they were making for a war they anticipated with Germany by 1915. Pearce and prime minister Andrew Fisher, who was in London with him in 1911, believed that supporting Britain in such a war would be the best way of locking Britain into the defence of Australia against the Japanese in the pacific. Pearce then arranged with Nicholson to prepare an expeditionary force in the war office discussions, and Nicholson shrouded the arrangement in secrecy. He said: "I think it is much better we should do this thing quietly without any paper on the subject, because I am sure in some of the dominions it might be better not to say anything about preparations." Pearce agreed.
Both he and Nicholson had clearly realised that the undertaking violated the intention of the Australian Defence Act (1903), which denied the Australian government authority to send troops out of the country. Both Pearce and the Australian prime minister Andrew Fisher, who was aware of the secret undertaking, also believed that they would lose an election on the issue.
To ensure the cover-up, Nicholson then withheld the record of war office discussions from inclusion in the published "minutes of the proceedings of the imperial conference, 1911", of which those discussions were a part. In moves that kept the record out of circulation for 77 years, he first kept it in the War Office until 1912, and then placed it on secret war office operational planning file 106/43 where Mordike found it in 1988. Until then there was no public knowledge that the discussions, which determined the nature of Australia's involvement in the First World War, had ever taken place.
With the destruction of the Great War, the original cover-up grew into a monstrous deception. The 20,000 members of the First Contingent of the AIF were recruited in six weeks. But without the planning, organisation, formulation of tactical doctrine, training, supply, transport, medical and legal requirements that were under way from 1911 there was no way the AIF could have been ready as it was for Gallipoli. Without the Gallipoli landing and all that followed Australia's expeditionary military tradition would have been different. So would the national sense of dependence on "big and powerful" friends to save us from the perceived threat of an Asian invasion - which has never materialised. In 1914-18 the Japanese proved to be reliable allies. In 1942 when they bombed Darwin and Broome, they decided not to invade Australia because they calculated it was strategically impossible to do so.
The imprint of the Great War on our culture is so deep that historians have revealed a remarkable incapacity to deal with the hard evidence of the secret expeditionary decision and preparations of 1911-14. When Mordike finally presented the irrefutable documentation that our independent national defence policy was subverted by imperial subterfuge, our historians apparently lapsed into cognitive dissonance. As I show in my essay, they simply ignored the documents he had discovered and dismissed his work in a threadbare critique.
Hopefully, then, the centenary of the great expeditionary deception on June 17, 1911 will reveal the capacity of a new generation of historians to face the facts as we approach the centenary in 2014-15 of our involvement in the Great War. Only then will the sacrifice of the first 60,000 Anzacs be graced with the search for truth it deserves.
Greg Lockhart is a writer and academic, and has served with the Pacific Islands Regiment in Papua New Guinea and The Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam. His essay 'Race fear, dangerous denial' is published in the Griffith REVIEW 33: Wicked Problems, Exquisite Dilemmas (Text Publishing) www.griffithreview.com.
Sixty thousand Anzacs were killed in the Great War. Hundreds of thousands of Australians had their lives shattered. The impact of the war was so far-reaching it is often said that it changed the course of Australian history.
Yet historians rarely recall that the secret decisions, which led to the sacrifice, were driven by manipulated race fear - of Japan - and then covered up.
My current Griffith Review 32 (May 2011) essay draws on neglected work by Defence historian John Mordike to show that the development of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) was determined by a secret agreement that the Australian defence minister senator George Pearce made at the war office in London on June 17, 1911. That clandestine arrangement did not come out of the blue. It was the culmination of a brilliant British imperial deception going back to at least 1909. The formation of Alfred Deakin's post-federation national guard was used as a Trojan horse to mask an imperial expeditionary agenda and subvert the independent defence policy of the new nation. Such deceit was then facilitated by ruthless British manipulation of Australian fears of a Japanese attack on White Australia.
In the lead-up to the War Office discussions of 1911, the British chief of the imperial general staff general Sir William Nicholson said privately that he believed the threat of Japan was "somewhat remote". Yet Mordike has shown in Army for a nation (1992) and "We should do this thing quietly" (2002) Nicholson and other British officials played ruthlessly, on what they realised were the "irrational" fears of Australian ministers of the Japanese, to promote British interests.
By 1911, the British wanted an Australian expeditionary force to bolster secret preparations they were making for a war they anticipated with Germany by 1915. Pearce and prime minister Andrew Fisher, who was in London with him in 1911, believed that supporting Britain in such a war would be the best way of locking Britain into the defence of Australia against the Japanese in the pacific. Pearce then arranged with Nicholson to prepare an expeditionary force in the war office discussions, and Nicholson shrouded the arrangement in secrecy. He said: "I think it is much better we should do this thing quietly without any paper on the subject, because I am sure in some of the dominions it might be better not to say anything about preparations." Pearce agreed.
Both he and Nicholson had clearly realised that the undertaking violated the intention of the Australian Defence Act (1903), which denied the Australian government authority to send troops out of the country. Both Pearce and the Australian prime minister Andrew Fisher, who was aware of the secret undertaking, also believed that they would lose an election on the issue.
To ensure the cover-up, Nicholson then withheld the record of war office discussions from inclusion in the published "minutes of the proceedings of the imperial conference, 1911", of which those discussions were a part. In moves that kept the record out of circulation for 77 years, he first kept it in the War Office until 1912, and then placed it on secret war office operational planning file 106/43 where Mordike found it in 1988. Until then there was no public knowledge that the discussions, which determined the nature of Australia's involvement in the First World War, had ever taken place.
With the destruction of the Great War, the original cover-up grew into a monstrous deception. The 20,000 members of the First Contingent of the AIF were recruited in six weeks. But without the planning, organisation, formulation of tactical doctrine, training, supply, transport, medical and legal requirements that were under way from 1911 there was no way the AIF could have been ready as it was for Gallipoli. Without the Gallipoli landing and all that followed Australia's expeditionary military tradition would have been different. So would the national sense of dependence on "big and powerful" friends to save us from the perceived threat of an Asian invasion - which has never materialised. In 1914-18 the Japanese proved to be reliable allies. In 1942 when they bombed Darwin and Broome, they decided not to invade Australia because they calculated it was strategically impossible to do so.
The imprint of the Great War on our culture is so deep that historians have revealed a remarkable incapacity to deal with the hard evidence of the secret expeditionary decision and preparations of 1911-14. When Mordike finally presented the irrefutable documentation that our independent national defence policy was subverted by imperial subterfuge, our historians apparently lapsed into cognitive dissonance. As I show in my essay, they simply ignored the documents he had discovered and dismissed his work in a threadbare critique.
Hopefully, then, the centenary of the great expeditionary deception on June 17, 1911 will reveal the capacity of a new generation of historians to face the facts as we approach the centenary in 2014-15 of our involvement in the Great War. Only then will the sacrifice of the first 60,000 Anzacs be graced with the search for truth it deserves.
Greg Lockhart is a writer and academic, and has served with the Pacific Islands Regiment in Papua New Guinea and The Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam. His essay 'Race fear, dangerous denial' is published in the Griffith REVIEW 33: Wicked Problems, Exquisite Dilemmas (Text Publishing) www.griffithreview.com.
Monday, June 13, 2011
The magic of War Horse
The Telegraph (UK): The magic of War Horse
What is it about War Horse? How is it that a show that sounded technically impossible on paper – theatricalising a children’s novel (by Michael Morporgo) that gives a horse’s-eye-view of the First World War – has done so phenomenally well? What is it that makes grown adults weep, and silences to awe the most unruly teenager? What has taken it from being a surprise British success to a stalwart that has raced to victory in that toughest of theatrical meets, New York?
First it caused a stampede at the National in October 2007, following almost universal critical approval. Then a well-deserved West End transfer followed that looks set to run and run, making millionaires of its core creative team – it reportedly played to record-breaking 97 per cent capacity in 2010 and has been seen by more than a million people, including the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Now six Tony Awards, entirely merited and wholly eclipsing its two Olivier awards, mean it is almost certain to become a thundering hit Stateside, too – and that is before even greater interest is ignited by the Steven Spielberg film, partly inspired by the production, that is scheduled for release at the end of this year.
So what is it that seems to be resonating with audiences? It’s not as simple as saying: here’s a perfect family show, dealing with some unpalatable truths about a terrible chapter in human history in a palatable way – using puppets.
Yes, the horses, made of bamboo skeletal frames and gauze, embellished with plywood and bicycle brake-cable, nylon cord and leather, controlled from inside and out, sometimes mounted and ridden, are extraordinary. Immense, yet vulnerable, manifestly man-operated yet exquisitely lifelike – graceful to the core – they are a key component of the production’s wow-factor, a joy for adult and child alike. And it is only right that Handspring Puppet Company, from South Africa, was given a Special Tony Award, joining the five others handed out for Best Play (author Nick Stafford), Best Sound Design (Christopher Shutt), Best Lighting Design (Paule Constable), Best Scenic Design (Rae Smith) and Best Direction (Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott). Sunday night’s triumph is a vindication for an artistic shift at the National Theatre under Nicholas Hytner towards the “total” theatre experience, in which every creative element is stitched seamlessly together.
It is a sign of just how much care and attention was devoted to the visual impact of the horses that if you do the backstage tour at the National, you’ll encounter the forlorn sight of the mother of Joey, the equine hero of the piece whose enforced separation from – and final tear-jerking reunion with – his young farmhand owner, Albert, amid the horror of the Great War trenches forms the heart of the story. Apparently, her presence was deemed to detract from the effect of seeing Joey grow from being a stiff-limbed foal to a fully rearing and endearing young stallion. So she was dropped from the production at the last minute and has never taken her bow.
Yet it is too easy to attribute the power of the show to its meticulous external trappings. Let’s not forget that when Morpurgo – who himself abandoned an attempt to adapt his 1982 book for the big screen – learnt that the National was keen to create a stage version, using puppets, he thought they were “mad”. Why? One assumes because that approach seemed to run against the grain of what he wanted to do with the book. Inspired by conversations with Great War veterans in his local Devon pub, one of whom, a former cavalryman, confided that he coped by sharing his hopes and fears with his horse, the novelist wanted to give voice to that unspoken-of intimacy, along with the gut-wrenching reality of seeing millions of loyal beasts being blasted to oblivion, in common with their masters.
The paradox of the National production is that by rendering Joey mute, and getting inside the head of a horse in a literal way, this version still honours, rather than travesties, the original. Where Morpurgo relies on anthropomorphising Joey to talk to us, the National version gives us a dumb-show that speaks volumes. Although it is very different from the book, it gets to the essence of what makes it great – articulating in an ineffable way the combination of loyalty, love even, and shared innocence, a solidarity, that could exist between one man and his charge. At one level, it is a far-fetched fable – and yet we read it, in the theatre as much as on the page, as an archetype touching something very real and deep-rooted, primal even.
The success of the NT War Horse lies in the fact that it is a play of feeling, and a play of ideas. It has the epic qualities of that enduring, song-filled masterpiece about life in the trenches, Joan Littlewood’s Oh, What A Lovely War. It also has all the nuances of subtext, and unspoken declarations, of the most widely revered play about the horror of the Western Front, R C Sherriff’s Journey’s End.
I would argue that the theatrical version is more sophisticated than the book. In the shared act of storytelling, with all the theatrical artifice laid bare, the audience must harness its own imagination to make the world come fully alive. Rather than being a cheap excuse for weepy-eyed sentimentality, the show reins in unearned emotion by making us constantly aware that this adventure between boy and horse is an oblique way of broaching the impossible-to-fathom slaughter of the Great War. Behind this risk-taking theatrical enterprise stands the more immense backdrop of the courage and sacrifice of those who served, and lost their lives – soldiers as well as their equine comrades – in the war to end all wars.
What you get is the feeling that everyone on stage has come together to work in service to something greater than themselves. That is what makes the piece so moving. In seeing performers tending to the “horses”, you are reminded of the relationship between mankind and nature that was so brutally upended by the militarism of 1914-1918, and for a few heart-rending hours that damage is both acknowledged and, by an act of remembrance, fleetingly repaired.
Will Steven Spielberg – who has such great form depicting the carnage and mayhem of the Second World War, from Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan through Band of Brothers – be able to get close to pulling off the same feat with his DreamWorks film? They will be using real horses, those theatrical devices won’t apply – but I’d wager that he will.
For Spielberg, whose fascination seems to go to the heart of why American audiences are taking to War Horse so keenly, this is as much a means of honouring the relatively forgotten soldiers of that war as its unknown equine masses. So, with Richard Curtis and Lee Hall (of Billy Elliot fame) scripting, he will be looking to sound the depths of the lost generation’s pain. And that is made easier rather than harder by taking the narrative lead from a horse called Joey.
What is it about War Horse? How is it that a show that sounded technically impossible on paper – theatricalising a children’s novel (by Michael Morporgo) that gives a horse’s-eye-view of the First World War – has done so phenomenally well? What is it that makes grown adults weep, and silences to awe the most unruly teenager? What has taken it from being a surprise British success to a stalwart that has raced to victory in that toughest of theatrical meets, New York?
First it caused a stampede at the National in October 2007, following almost universal critical approval. Then a well-deserved West End transfer followed that looks set to run and run, making millionaires of its core creative team – it reportedly played to record-breaking 97 per cent capacity in 2010 and has been seen by more than a million people, including the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Now six Tony Awards, entirely merited and wholly eclipsing its two Olivier awards, mean it is almost certain to become a thundering hit Stateside, too – and that is before even greater interest is ignited by the Steven Spielberg film, partly inspired by the production, that is scheduled for release at the end of this year.
So what is it that seems to be resonating with audiences? It’s not as simple as saying: here’s a perfect family show, dealing with some unpalatable truths about a terrible chapter in human history in a palatable way – using puppets.
Yes, the horses, made of bamboo skeletal frames and gauze, embellished with plywood and bicycle brake-cable, nylon cord and leather, controlled from inside and out, sometimes mounted and ridden, are extraordinary. Immense, yet vulnerable, manifestly man-operated yet exquisitely lifelike – graceful to the core – they are a key component of the production’s wow-factor, a joy for adult and child alike. And it is only right that Handspring Puppet Company, from South Africa, was given a Special Tony Award, joining the five others handed out for Best Play (author Nick Stafford), Best Sound Design (Christopher Shutt), Best Lighting Design (Paule Constable), Best Scenic Design (Rae Smith) and Best Direction (Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott). Sunday night’s triumph is a vindication for an artistic shift at the National Theatre under Nicholas Hytner towards the “total” theatre experience, in which every creative element is stitched seamlessly together.
It is a sign of just how much care and attention was devoted to the visual impact of the horses that if you do the backstage tour at the National, you’ll encounter the forlorn sight of the mother of Joey, the equine hero of the piece whose enforced separation from – and final tear-jerking reunion with – his young farmhand owner, Albert, amid the horror of the Great War trenches forms the heart of the story. Apparently, her presence was deemed to detract from the effect of seeing Joey grow from being a stiff-limbed foal to a fully rearing and endearing young stallion. So she was dropped from the production at the last minute and has never taken her bow.
Yet it is too easy to attribute the power of the show to its meticulous external trappings. Let’s not forget that when Morpurgo – who himself abandoned an attempt to adapt his 1982 book for the big screen – learnt that the National was keen to create a stage version, using puppets, he thought they were “mad”. Why? One assumes because that approach seemed to run against the grain of what he wanted to do with the book. Inspired by conversations with Great War veterans in his local Devon pub, one of whom, a former cavalryman, confided that he coped by sharing his hopes and fears with his horse, the novelist wanted to give voice to that unspoken-of intimacy, along with the gut-wrenching reality of seeing millions of loyal beasts being blasted to oblivion, in common with their masters.
The paradox of the National production is that by rendering Joey mute, and getting inside the head of a horse in a literal way, this version still honours, rather than travesties, the original. Where Morpurgo relies on anthropomorphising Joey to talk to us, the National version gives us a dumb-show that speaks volumes. Although it is very different from the book, it gets to the essence of what makes it great – articulating in an ineffable way the combination of loyalty, love even, and shared innocence, a solidarity, that could exist between one man and his charge. At one level, it is a far-fetched fable – and yet we read it, in the theatre as much as on the page, as an archetype touching something very real and deep-rooted, primal even.
The success of the NT War Horse lies in the fact that it is a play of feeling, and a play of ideas. It has the epic qualities of that enduring, song-filled masterpiece about life in the trenches, Joan Littlewood’s Oh, What A Lovely War. It also has all the nuances of subtext, and unspoken declarations, of the most widely revered play about the horror of the Western Front, R C Sherriff’s Journey’s End.
I would argue that the theatrical version is more sophisticated than the book. In the shared act of storytelling, with all the theatrical artifice laid bare, the audience must harness its own imagination to make the world come fully alive. Rather than being a cheap excuse for weepy-eyed sentimentality, the show reins in unearned emotion by making us constantly aware that this adventure between boy and horse is an oblique way of broaching the impossible-to-fathom slaughter of the Great War. Behind this risk-taking theatrical enterprise stands the more immense backdrop of the courage and sacrifice of those who served, and lost their lives – soldiers as well as their equine comrades – in the war to end all wars.
What you get is the feeling that everyone on stage has come together to work in service to something greater than themselves. That is what makes the piece so moving. In seeing performers tending to the “horses”, you are reminded of the relationship between mankind and nature that was so brutally upended by the militarism of 1914-1918, and for a few heart-rending hours that damage is both acknowledged and, by an act of remembrance, fleetingly repaired.
Will Steven Spielberg – who has such great form depicting the carnage and mayhem of the Second World War, from Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan through Band of Brothers – be able to get close to pulling off the same feat with his DreamWorks film? They will be using real horses, those theatrical devices won’t apply – but I’d wager that he will.
For Spielberg, whose fascination seems to go to the heart of why American audiences are taking to War Horse so keenly, this is as much a means of honouring the relatively forgotten soldiers of that war as its unknown equine masses. So, with Richard Curtis and Lee Hall (of Billy Elliot fame) scripting, he will be looking to sound the depths of the lost generation’s pain. And that is made easier rather than harder by taking the narrative lead from a horse called Joey.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
THE SECRET CABAL, pt 15
As an atheist, I don't think much of religious folks - no matter what religion they espouse (although I will say that as a woman I'm very grateful every day that I was born in a secular Christian country, and the US to boot! then in a Moslem one, secular or otherwise.)
So I don't really agree with the views expressed in this website, but it's interesting about Colonel House. Make of it what you will.
NewsWithViews: THE SECRET CABAL, pt 15
By Dr. Stanley Monteith
June 11, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Last time, we answered several questions which relate to the current status of the United States. One last question remains.
Who was Colonel House, and why is he important today?
Colonel Edward Mandell House never held public office, but he was the most important political figure of the twentieth century. Colonel House controlled the Wilson administration, prolonged World War I, brought the U.S. into the Great War, helped write the Treaty of Versailles that led to World War II, aided the Bolsheviks, helped J.P. Morgan organize the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a close personal friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
How did Colonel House control President Wilson and his administration? Arthur Howden Smith knew Colonel House, and wrote:
"Colonel House would come into an office and say a few words quietly, and after he had gone you would suddenly become seized by a good idea. You would suggest that idea to your friends or superiors and be congratulated for it; it would work first rate, beyond your wildest dreams. You might forget about it. But some time, as sure as shooting, in cogitating profoundly over it, you would come to an abrupt realization that that idea had been oozed into your brain by Colonel House in the course of conversation."
How did Colonel House "ooze" his ideas into other men's minds? Ambassador Gerard was the American Ambassador to Germany from 1913-1917. Ambassador Gerard knew Colonel House, but didn't understand the source of his mysterious ability.
Ambassador Gerard described a tragic event that took place at that time:
"In the early months of 1915 it became apparent that the German blitzkrieg had lost its initial force. The push for Paris and the German sweep to a quick victory had failed. . . . The Germans . . . knew that the quickest way to the ear of Washington was through me, and in due course it was intimated to me that Germany was ready to make peace. . . . I felt justified, on February 11, 1915, (seven months after the war began - ed) in sending President Wilson the following cable in code.
It is my conviction that if a reasonable peace proposition were offered Germany very many men of influence would be inclined to use their efforts to induce Germany to accept the proposition. If peace does not come immediately a new and protracted phase of the war will commence. It will be fatal to hesitate or wait a moment; success is dependent on immediate action. It is my belief that if you seize the present opportunity you will be the instrument of bringing about the greatest peace which has ever been signed, but it will be fatal to hesitate or wait a moment."[3]
Germany wanted to end the war, but Colonel House had a different agenda.
Ambassador Gerard continued:
"The response to this cable was an instruction from President Wilson to refer everything to Colonel House, who, the communication specified, had been 'fully instructed and commissioned to act in all these matters'. . . .
All authority, therefore, had been vested in Colonel House, and as I was directed to report to Colonel House direct, the President ceased to be even a conduit of communications. . . .
Certainly Colonel E. Mandell House occupied a unique position in the annals of American diplomacy. He, who had never been appointed to any position and who had never be passed upon by the Senate, was 'fully instructed and commissioned' to act in the most grave situation. I have never ceased to wonder how he managed to attain such power and influence."
How did Colonel House attain his "power and influence"? The August Radio Liberty letter described the occult background of the organizations that were primarily responsible for World War I; i.e., the Grand Orient Masonic Lodge, and Cecil Rhodes' secret society. Sir Edward Grey precipitated the conflict. If you read Sir Edward's autobiography, you will discover he was closely affiliated with the Milner Group that was involved in the occult, and Colonel Edward Mandell House was a close friend.
The September Radio Liberty letter discussed Rasputin, the Russian mystic who controlled the Romanov family, and the part J.P. Morgan played in inciting the war. J.P. Morgan was involved in astrology.
How did Colonel House control President Wilson and his administration? Corinne McLaughlin and her husband, Gordon Davidson, answered that question in their book, "Spiritual Politics." They wote:
"Colonel Edward Mandell House, a close aide of President Wilson - who was called a 'man of mystery' -was guided inwardly to bring the idea of a League of Nations to the world. Colonel House was a quiet, self-effacing adviser with tremendous dedication, practical intelligence, and skill. 'By his idealism he touched those belonging to the Inner Government of the world, and by his mastery of practical politics he was able to influence those who governed the outer,' noted metaphysician Theodore Heline. Colonel House was also called by some, 'the Hidden Master of the New Deal.'"
I believe Colonel House was involved in occult practices, and I believe he used occult power to touch "those belonging to the Inner Government of the world." Dr. Dennis Cuddy researched the events that took place during that era, and wrote:
"In Changing Esoteric Values by Foster Bailey, on page 58, Colonel House is referred to as a 'disciple,' and President Wilson is referred to as a 'sixth ray disciple.' Foster's wife, Alice Bailey (the leading occultist of the day), referred to FDR as 'that great first ray disciple' in The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, in which she wrote of those who 'will develop the new world religion . . . [and] the new civilization. . . . They can, however, be delayed by the reactionary types of people, by the ultra-conservative and closed minds. . . . These must all be brought under the power of death.'"
Why did Colonel House prolong World War I, and kill millions of innocent people? Colonel House answered that question in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine in June 1923. Foreign Affairs is the official journal of the Council on Foreign Relations:
"If war had not come in 1914 in fierce and exaggerated form, the idea of an association of nations would probably have remained dormant, for great reforms seldom materialize except during great upheavals. . . . If law and order are good within states (nations), there can be no reason why they should not be good between states (nations)."
Colonel House prolonged World War I because he wanted world government. I believe Colonel House, President Wilson, and President Roosevelt were knowingly, or unknowingly, involved in the occult movement, and I believe the men who lead the BOD are knowingly or unknowingly involved in the occult movement today.
[rest of this entry redacted as it deals with present day stuff]
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about House:
So I don't really agree with the views expressed in this website, but it's interesting about Colonel House. Make of it what you will.
NewsWithViews: THE SECRET CABAL, pt 15
By Dr. Stanley Monteith
June 11, 2011
NewsWithViews.com
Last time, we answered several questions which relate to the current status of the United States. One last question remains.
Who was Colonel House, and why is he important today?
Colonel Edward Mandell House never held public office, but he was the most important political figure of the twentieth century. Colonel House controlled the Wilson administration, prolonged World War I, brought the U.S. into the Great War, helped write the Treaty of Versailles that led to World War II, aided the Bolsheviks, helped J.P. Morgan organize the Council on Foreign Relations, and was a close personal friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
How did Colonel House control President Wilson and his administration? Arthur Howden Smith knew Colonel House, and wrote:
"Colonel House would come into an office and say a few words quietly, and after he had gone you would suddenly become seized by a good idea. You would suggest that idea to your friends or superiors and be congratulated for it; it would work first rate, beyond your wildest dreams. You might forget about it. But some time, as sure as shooting, in cogitating profoundly over it, you would come to an abrupt realization that that idea had been oozed into your brain by Colonel House in the course of conversation."
How did Colonel House "ooze" his ideas into other men's minds? Ambassador Gerard was the American Ambassador to Germany from 1913-1917. Ambassador Gerard knew Colonel House, but didn't understand the source of his mysterious ability.
Ambassador Gerard described a tragic event that took place at that time:
"In the early months of 1915 it became apparent that the German blitzkrieg had lost its initial force. The push for Paris and the German sweep to a quick victory had failed. . . . The Germans . . . knew that the quickest way to the ear of Washington was through me, and in due course it was intimated to me that Germany was ready to make peace. . . . I felt justified, on February 11, 1915, (seven months after the war began - ed) in sending President Wilson the following cable in code.
It is my conviction that if a reasonable peace proposition were offered Germany very many men of influence would be inclined to use their efforts to induce Germany to accept the proposition. If peace does not come immediately a new and protracted phase of the war will commence. It will be fatal to hesitate or wait a moment; success is dependent on immediate action. It is my belief that if you seize the present opportunity you will be the instrument of bringing about the greatest peace which has ever been signed, but it will be fatal to hesitate or wait a moment."[3]
Germany wanted to end the war, but Colonel House had a different agenda.
Ambassador Gerard continued:
"The response to this cable was an instruction from President Wilson to refer everything to Colonel House, who, the communication specified, had been 'fully instructed and commissioned to act in all these matters'. . . .
All authority, therefore, had been vested in Colonel House, and as I was directed to report to Colonel House direct, the President ceased to be even a conduit of communications. . . .
Certainly Colonel E. Mandell House occupied a unique position in the annals of American diplomacy. He, who had never been appointed to any position and who had never be passed upon by the Senate, was 'fully instructed and commissioned' to act in the most grave situation. I have never ceased to wonder how he managed to attain such power and influence."
How did Colonel House attain his "power and influence"? The August Radio Liberty letter described the occult background of the organizations that were primarily responsible for World War I; i.e., the Grand Orient Masonic Lodge, and Cecil Rhodes' secret society. Sir Edward Grey precipitated the conflict. If you read Sir Edward's autobiography, you will discover he was closely affiliated with the Milner Group that was involved in the occult, and Colonel Edward Mandell House was a close friend.
The September Radio Liberty letter discussed Rasputin, the Russian mystic who controlled the Romanov family, and the part J.P. Morgan played in inciting the war. J.P. Morgan was involved in astrology.
How did Colonel House control President Wilson and his administration? Corinne McLaughlin and her husband, Gordon Davidson, answered that question in their book, "Spiritual Politics." They wote:
"Colonel Edward Mandell House, a close aide of President Wilson - who was called a 'man of mystery' -was guided inwardly to bring the idea of a League of Nations to the world. Colonel House was a quiet, self-effacing adviser with tremendous dedication, practical intelligence, and skill. 'By his idealism he touched those belonging to the Inner Government of the world, and by his mastery of practical politics he was able to influence those who governed the outer,' noted metaphysician Theodore Heline. Colonel House was also called by some, 'the Hidden Master of the New Deal.'"
I believe Colonel House was involved in occult practices, and I believe he used occult power to touch "those belonging to the Inner Government of the world." Dr. Dennis Cuddy researched the events that took place during that era, and wrote:
"In Changing Esoteric Values by Foster Bailey, on page 58, Colonel House is referred to as a 'disciple,' and President Wilson is referred to as a 'sixth ray disciple.' Foster's wife, Alice Bailey (the leading occultist of the day), referred to FDR as 'that great first ray disciple' in The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, in which she wrote of those who 'will develop the new world religion . . . [and] the new civilization. . . . They can, however, be delayed by the reactionary types of people, by the ultra-conservative and closed minds. . . . These must all be brought under the power of death.'"
Why did Colonel House prolong World War I, and kill millions of innocent people? Colonel House answered that question in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine in June 1923. Foreign Affairs is the official journal of the Council on Foreign Relations:
"If war had not come in 1914 in fierce and exaggerated form, the idea of an association of nations would probably have remained dormant, for great reforms seldom materialize except during great upheavals. . . . If law and order are good within states (nations), there can be no reason why they should not be good between states (nations)."
Colonel House prolonged World War I because he wanted world government. I believe Colonel House, President Wilson, and President Roosevelt were knowingly, or unknowingly, involved in the occult movement, and I believe the men who lead the BOD are knowingly or unknowingly involved in the occult movement today.
[rest of this entry redacted as it deals with present day stuff]
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about House:
Edward Mandell House (July 26, 1858 – March 28, 1938) was an American diplomat, politician, and presidential advisor. Commonly known by the title of Colonel House, although he had no military experience, he had enormous personal influence with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson as his foreign policy advisor until Wilson removed him in 1919.
Biography
House (originally "Huis" which became "House") was born in Houston, Texas. He was the son of Houston mayor Thomas William House, Sr.. House was educated in New England prep schools and went on to study at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1877, but he was forced to drop out when his father died. He married Loulie Hunter on 4 August 1881. On his return to Texas, House ran his family's business. He eventually sold the cotton plantations, and invested in banking. House moved to New York City about 1902.
In 1912, House published anonymously a novel called Philip Dru: Administrator, in which the title character, Dru, leads the democratic western U.S. in a civil war against the plutocratic East, becoming the dictator of America. Dru as dictator imposes a series of reforms which resemble the Bull Moose platform of 1912 and then vanishes. [Lash pp 230-35]
He became active in Texas politics and served as an advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, particularly in the area of foreign affairs. House functioned as Wilson's chief negotiator in Europe during the negotiations for peace (1917-1919), and as chief deputy for Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference.
House helped to make four men governor of Texas: James S. Hogg (1892), Charles A. Culberson (1894), Joseph D. Sayers (1898), and S. W. T. Lanham (1902). After the election House acted as unofficial advisor to each governor. Hogg gave House the title "Colonel" by promoting House to his staff.
House became a close friend and supporter of New Jersey governor Woodrow Wilson in 1911, and helped him win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. He became an intimate of Wilson and helped set up his administration. House was offered the cabinet position of his choice (except for Secretary of State which was already pledged to William Jennings Bryan) but declined, choosing instead "to serve wherever and whenever possible." House was even provided living quarters within the White House. After Wilson's first wife died in 1914, the President was even closer to House.
However, Wilson's second wife, Edith, of whom he had commissioned the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862-1947) to paint a portrait in 1916, disliked House, and his position weakened. House threw himself into world affairs, promoting Wilson's goal of brokering a peace to end World War I. He spent much of 1915 and 1916 in Europe, trying to negotiate peace through diplomacy. He was enthusiastic but lacked deep insight into European affairs and was misled by British diplomats. After the sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915, tension escalated with Germany and U.S. neutrality was precarious. House decided the war was an epic battle between democracy and autocracy; he argued the United States ought to help Britain and France win a limited Allied victory. However, Wilson still insisted on neutrality.
Edward M. House, ca. 1917House played a major role in shaping wartime diplomacy. Wilson had House assemble "The Inquiry"—a team of academic experts to devise efficient postwar solutions to all the world's problems. In September 1918, Wilson gave House the responsibility for preparing a constitution for a League of Nations. In October 1918, when Germany petitioned for peace based on the Fourteen Points, Wilson charged House with working out details of an armistice with the Allies.
House helped Wilson outline his Fourteen Points, and worked with the president on the drafting of the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations. House served on the League of Nations Commission on Mandates with Lord Milner and Lord Robert Cecil of Great Britain, M. Simon of France, Viscount Chinda of Japan, Guglielmo Marconi for Italy, and George Louis Beer as adviser. On May 30, 1919 House participated in a meeting in Paris, which laid the groundwork for establishment of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Throughout 1919, House urged Wilson to work with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge to achieve ratification of the Versailles Treaty.
However, the conference revealed serious policy disagreements between Wilson and House. Even worse were personality conflicts. Wilson had become much more intolerant and systematically broke with one after another of his closest advisors. When Wilson returned home in February 1919, House took his place on the Council of Ten where he negotiated compromises unacceptable to Wilson. In mid-March 1919, Wilson returned to Paris and lost confidence in House, relegating him to the sidelines.
In the 1920s, House strongly supported U.S. membership in the League of Nations and the World Court, the Permanent Court of International Justice.
In 1932, House supported Franklin D. Roosevelt without joining the inner circle. Although he became disillusioned with the New Deal, he did not express his reservations in public.
House died on March 28, 1938 in New York City, following a bout with pleurisy.
Friday, June 10, 2011
WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war
BBCNewsMagazine: WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war
Continue reading the main story
In today's MagazineQuiz of the week's news
Why is King Arthur so enduring?
Is the Olympic torch too 'bling'?
Caption Comp winners
Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail".
When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of rough scrubland in northern France four months ago, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
The privately-owned land in the sleepy rural village of La Boisselle had been practically untouched since fighting ceased in 1918, remaining one of the most poignant sites of the Battle of the Somme.
In his hand was a selection of grainy photographs of some of the British tunnellers killed in bloody subterranean battles there, and who lay permanently entombed directly under his feet.
When most people think of WWI, they think of trench warfare interrupted by occasional offensives, with men charging between the lines. But with the static nature of the war, military mining played a big part in the tactics on both sides.
The idea of digging underneath fortifications in order to undermine them goes back to classical times at least. But the use of high explosive in WWI gave it a new dimension.
One of the most notable episodes was at the Battle of Messines in 1917 where 455 tons of explosive placed in 21 tunnels that had taken more than a year to prepare created a huge explosion that killed an estimated 10,000 Germans.
Tunnelling was mainly done by professional miners, sent from the collieries of Britain to the Western Front.
Continue reading the main story
La Boisselle: A village under siege
28 Sep 1914 - German advance on Amiens halted by French forces. Fierce fighting over the cemetery and farm buildings
Dec 1914 - French begin mining to retake the farm. Intense struggle above and below ground
Aug 1915 - British take over the sector from the French with tunnels now at a depth of 40ft (12m)
1 July 1916 - British launch disastrous Battle of Somme with village on main axis of attack. Two huge mines - Y Sap and Lochnagar - create massive craters, one 270ft (82m) wide by 70ft (21m) deep
4 July 1916 - British capture village after further heavy fighting
March 1918 - German troops overrun trenches in the village during Operation Michael, part of the huge Kaiserschlacht offensive
Aug 1918 - Welsh troops liberate La Boisselle
What happened at La Boisselle in 1915-1916 is a classic example of mining and counter-mining, with both sides struggling desperately to locate and destroy each other's tunnels.
"When you stand on a spot and can look at a picture of a man still down there below you, it's amazing," Banning says.
"It just does something very strange to you, it makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck."
After six years of painstaking paper research by fellow historian Simon Jones, the researchers had built up detailed knowledge of the individual tragedies involved.
They knew the exact locations and depths at which each man was lost, the circumstances of their deaths, and almost all of their names.
And yet it was only when the owner of the site chose to open it up to research that they were able to finally connect the stories to the place.
The Lejeune family, who have owned the land since the 1920s, have a deep affinity with the site and have known many British veterans who served at La Boisselle.
But it was only after visiting the team's excavations at nearby Mametz last May that they decided to offer their land up for historical study.
Archaeologists, historians and their French and German partners now aim to preserve the area - named the Glory Hole by British troops - as a permanent memorial to the fallen.
Digging does not start until October, but the first practical steps of mapping the tunnels and trenches using ground penetrating radar, and exploring the geophysics are under way.
Some open tunnel sections have already been entered and are considered remarkably well preserved.
The team intends to leave the bodies undisturbed in the collapsed tunnels, but any others found in trenches will be reburied in accordance with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Bomb disposal experts will be on standby to negotiate the unexploded ordnance they will inevitably uncover.
Mining operations were often part of ground offensives They also expect to find graffiti on the walls, poetry, bottles of drink, and all manner of artefacts untouched since the day fighting ceased. In short, they say, it's a time capsule.
The long-term intention is to open the site to the public, and the whole project is expected to take five to 10 years.
For Jones, a former curator at the Royal Engineers Museum, the dig is about completing the stories of the two Tunnelling Companies (179th and 185th) who worked at the Glory Hole.
"Finding out about these men has become an obsession, and although we know a great deal about the lives of soldiers in WWI, these men have left very few clues as to their experience or feelings," he says.
Mining was perilous work in a hidden war, which remained a state secret for many years, meaning the men did not get the recognition they deserved.
By studying war diaries, tunnel plans, letters, maps and records, Mr Jones has identified 25 of the 28 British and all 10 French tunnellers at the Glory Hole. The number of Germans remains unclear.
Chris Lane, pictured inset alongside his great grandfather, says "it's important to know your past" The British were lost between August 1915 and April 1916, sometimes individually but more often two or more at a time.
"Often men from the same pits preferred to work alongside one another and hence were lost together," Mr Jones says.
One such miner was Sapper John Lane, 45, from Tipton in Staffordshire, a married father-of-four who left his colliery for the Western Front with four colleagues. None returned.
On 22 November 1915, he and four others were killed 80ft (24m) below when a German mine exploded, in turn detonating a British charge of 5,900lb (2,700kg).
For his great grandson Chris Lane, 45, from Redditch in Worcestershire, piecing together his relative's story has been a fascinating process.
He says they knew he was killed in a mine, but prior to his research, his grandfather always thought it was in Ypres in Belgium.
"It's important to know your past, one small incident for one family is history for lots of other people," he says.
The new dig is only the second on the Western Front to be officially sanctioned by the French authorities.
Patches of untouched virgin battlefield are rare. Most have been ploughed over, cleared or developed, and private landowners have been reluctant to hand them over for research.
It's a site of huge strategic importance. When the British launched the bloody Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, La Boisselle stood on the main axis of the attack.
Historians hope to discover more about Germany's fallen soldiers Of the 1.5m total casualties in the four-month campaign, 420,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded or missing having gained just two miles - a loss of two men per centimetre.
Fellow historian Peter Barton says La Boisselle is the "holy grail" for historians, containing the "complete evolution" of trench warfare.
"The site has got both sides of the line and the fourth dimension of underground warfare, making it a truly holistic project," he says.
"These are not just holes in the ground, they're homes - that was where you lived when you were holding the line.
"You became troglodytes. They designed, evolved and engineered a way of living and surviving, and had to go deeper and deeper as the shelling became more effective."
Barton's research took him to Munich and Stuttgart, where interpreters and translators have helped paint an even bigger picture.
"We'll know the Germans who killed the British and French, and vice-versa - it's the most supremely researched piece of battlefield on the Western Front," he says.
"Connecting those men who suffered and gave their lives there with their present day relatives is probably the most meaningful part."
Continue reading the main story
In today's MagazineQuiz of the week's news
Why is King Arthur so enduring?
Is the Olympic torch too 'bling'?
Caption Comp winners
Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. For WWI historians, it's the "holy grail".
When military historian Jeremy Banning stepped on to a patch of rough scrubland in northern France four months ago, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up.
The privately-owned land in the sleepy rural village of La Boisselle had been practically untouched since fighting ceased in 1918, remaining one of the most poignant sites of the Battle of the Somme.
In his hand was a selection of grainy photographs of some of the British tunnellers killed in bloody subterranean battles there, and who lay permanently entombed directly under his feet.
When most people think of WWI, they think of trench warfare interrupted by occasional offensives, with men charging between the lines. But with the static nature of the war, military mining played a big part in the tactics on both sides.
The idea of digging underneath fortifications in order to undermine them goes back to classical times at least. But the use of high explosive in WWI gave it a new dimension.
One of the most notable episodes was at the Battle of Messines in 1917 where 455 tons of explosive placed in 21 tunnels that had taken more than a year to prepare created a huge explosion that killed an estimated 10,000 Germans.
Tunnelling was mainly done by professional miners, sent from the collieries of Britain to the Western Front.
Continue reading the main story
La Boisselle: A village under siege
28 Sep 1914 - German advance on Amiens halted by French forces. Fierce fighting over the cemetery and farm buildings
Dec 1914 - French begin mining to retake the farm. Intense struggle above and below ground
Aug 1915 - British take over the sector from the French with tunnels now at a depth of 40ft (12m)
1 July 1916 - British launch disastrous Battle of Somme with village on main axis of attack. Two huge mines - Y Sap and Lochnagar - create massive craters, one 270ft (82m) wide by 70ft (21m) deep
4 July 1916 - British capture village after further heavy fighting
March 1918 - German troops overrun trenches in the village during Operation Michael, part of the huge Kaiserschlacht offensive
Aug 1918 - Welsh troops liberate La Boisselle
What happened at La Boisselle in 1915-1916 is a classic example of mining and counter-mining, with both sides struggling desperately to locate and destroy each other's tunnels.
"When you stand on a spot and can look at a picture of a man still down there below you, it's amazing," Banning says.
"It just does something very strange to you, it makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck."
After six years of painstaking paper research by fellow historian Simon Jones, the researchers had built up detailed knowledge of the individual tragedies involved.
They knew the exact locations and depths at which each man was lost, the circumstances of their deaths, and almost all of their names.
And yet it was only when the owner of the site chose to open it up to research that they were able to finally connect the stories to the place.
The Lejeune family, who have owned the land since the 1920s, have a deep affinity with the site and have known many British veterans who served at La Boisselle.
But it was only after visiting the team's excavations at nearby Mametz last May that they decided to offer their land up for historical study.
Archaeologists, historians and their French and German partners now aim to preserve the area - named the Glory Hole by British troops - as a permanent memorial to the fallen.
Digging does not start until October, but the first practical steps of mapping the tunnels and trenches using ground penetrating radar, and exploring the geophysics are under way.
Some open tunnel sections have already been entered and are considered remarkably well preserved.
The team intends to leave the bodies undisturbed in the collapsed tunnels, but any others found in trenches will be reburied in accordance with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Bomb disposal experts will be on standby to negotiate the unexploded ordnance they will inevitably uncover.
Mining operations were often part of ground offensives They also expect to find graffiti on the walls, poetry, bottles of drink, and all manner of artefacts untouched since the day fighting ceased. In short, they say, it's a time capsule.
The long-term intention is to open the site to the public, and the whole project is expected to take five to 10 years.
For Jones, a former curator at the Royal Engineers Museum, the dig is about completing the stories of the two Tunnelling Companies (179th and 185th) who worked at the Glory Hole.
"Finding out about these men has become an obsession, and although we know a great deal about the lives of soldiers in WWI, these men have left very few clues as to their experience or feelings," he says.
Mining was perilous work in a hidden war, which remained a state secret for many years, meaning the men did not get the recognition they deserved.
By studying war diaries, tunnel plans, letters, maps and records, Mr Jones has identified 25 of the 28 British and all 10 French tunnellers at the Glory Hole. The number of Germans remains unclear.
Chris Lane, pictured inset alongside his great grandfather, says "it's important to know your past" The British were lost between August 1915 and April 1916, sometimes individually but more often two or more at a time.
"Often men from the same pits preferred to work alongside one another and hence were lost together," Mr Jones says.
One such miner was Sapper John Lane, 45, from Tipton in Staffordshire, a married father-of-four who left his colliery for the Western Front with four colleagues. None returned.
On 22 November 1915, he and four others were killed 80ft (24m) below when a German mine exploded, in turn detonating a British charge of 5,900lb (2,700kg).
For his great grandson Chris Lane, 45, from Redditch in Worcestershire, piecing together his relative's story has been a fascinating process.
He says they knew he was killed in a mine, but prior to his research, his grandfather always thought it was in Ypres in Belgium.
"It's important to know your past, one small incident for one family is history for lots of other people," he says.
The new dig is only the second on the Western Front to be officially sanctioned by the French authorities.
Patches of untouched virgin battlefield are rare. Most have been ploughed over, cleared or developed, and private landowners have been reluctant to hand them over for research.
It's a site of huge strategic importance. When the British launched the bloody Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, La Boisselle stood on the main axis of the attack.
Historians hope to discover more about Germany's fallen soldiers Of the 1.5m total casualties in the four-month campaign, 420,000 British soldiers were killed, wounded or missing having gained just two miles - a loss of two men per centimetre.
Fellow historian Peter Barton says La Boisselle is the "holy grail" for historians, containing the "complete evolution" of trench warfare.
"The site has got both sides of the line and the fourth dimension of underground warfare, making it a truly holistic project," he says.
"These are not just holes in the ground, they're homes - that was where you lived when you were holding the line.
"You became troglodytes. They designed, evolved and engineered a way of living and surviving, and had to go deeper and deeper as the shelling became more effective."
Barton's research took him to Munich and Stuttgart, where interpreters and translators have helped paint an even bigger picture.
"We'll know the Germans who killed the British and French, and vice-versa - it's the most supremely researched piece of battlefield on the Western Front," he says.
"Connecting those men who suffered and gave their lives there with their present day relatives is probably the most meaningful part."
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Men who march away
BangaloreMirror: Men who march away
by Eunice de Souza
Every war is an irony because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends
One thinks of the First World War (1914-18) as far away and long ago, so it was somewhat disconcerting to read, a few weeks ago, about the death, at 110, of the last known combatant, Claude Stanley Choules. (A woman called Florence Green who was 110 in February, and served in the Royal Air Force canteens, is the only person left from that time).
He joined the British Royal Navy when he was 14, and was present at some of the decisive events of that time: the surrender of the German fleet at the Firth of Forth in 1918, the scuttling of the German fleet by the Germans themselves in 1919 when, despite the terms of the Armistice signed in November 1918, they found themselves interned in Scapa Flow which was not neutral territory.
Interestingly, though Choules served in both World Wars, and continued in service even after he migrated to Australia, he, like the British poets of the time, was an ardent pacifist, did not like to talk about the wars, and refused to take part in any memorial services. He did, however, publish his autobiography when he was 108.
Paul Fussell writes, in The Great War and Modern Memory, “Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends. In the Great War eight million people were destroyed because two people, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot… The Great War was more ironic than any before or since… It reversed The Idea of Progress… which had dominated the public consciousness for a century.”
The poet Wilfred Owen pointed to a poignant irony in his poem Strange Meeting. The soldier speaking in the poem thinks he recognizes someone in the vast underworld his spirit now inhabits. The other certainly recognizes him. “I am the enemy you killed, my friend,” he says. The idea is that it is not the young men on opposing sides who are enemies. War is the enemy, and the politicians who wage it for their own selfish reasons.
In Siegfried Sassoon’s poems, Religion, in the form of an Archbishop, commends those going out to fight the “Anti-Christ,” and Majors and Generals who give faulty orders who talk of a jolly good show and then “toddle off, to die safely home in bed.” Think of General Haig who ordered eleven divisions of British soldiers to climb out of their trenches and start walking forward. “Of the 120,000 who attacked,” Fussell says, “60,000 were killed or wounded on this one day.” Haig was elevated to the rank of Field Marshal.
British trenches in Flanders and Picardy, we are told, were dug where the water-table was the highest and the annual rainfall the most copious. Fussell quotes from a letter which Wilfred Owen wrote to his family, “In two and a half miles of trench which I waded yesterday there was not one inch of dry ground. The soldiers were plagued by lice, and by rats that were “big and black, with wet, muddy hair.” Ultimately, Fussell says, there was no defence against the water but humour. A soldier noted in his diary, “Water knee deep and up to the waist in places. Rumours of being relieved by the Grand Fleet.”
After such experiences, few used the words “Glory” and ‘Honour’ without irony. Romantic words depicting war began to disappear. The blood of young men is no longer what Rupert Brooke called it, “the red/Sweet wine of youth.” Especially at the beginning of the War, it was a different world, with different values, so there is no reason to condemn Brooke as a patriotic romantic, or a jingoist for saying, in his most famous lines, “If I should die, think only this of me/that there is some corner of a foreign field/is forever England.”
Monday, June 6, 2011
Tony-Winning World War I Drama Journey’s End Returns to the West End
Broadway.com: Tony-Winning World War I Drama Journey’s End Returns to the West End
David Grindley's Tony-winning production of Journey's End, R.C. Sherriff's World War I drama, is set to return to the London stage this summer. The play will begin performances at the Duke of York's Theatre on the West End on July 19, ahead of an official opening on July 22. The limited engagement will run until September 3, after which Journey’s End will resume its UK tour in Glasgow on September 6.
Journey’s End is set in the British trenches at St. Quentin in 1918, in the days leading up to the last great German Offensive of the First World War, a day that saw the deaths of 38,000 men. The cast will feature Graham Butler, Tim Chipping, Andy Daniel, Daniel Hanna, Simon Harrison, Nigel Hastings, Mike Hayley, Dominic Mafham, James Norton, Christian Patterson and Tony Turner as a company of officers preparing for a daring raid across No Man’s Land to gather intelligence.
The production originally opened at the Comedy Theatre in January 2004, before transferring to the Playhouse Theatre and then to the Duke of York’s and went on to complete two major tours around the United Kingdom, in 2004 and 2005. A Broadway production of the play received six 2007 Tony nominations and won the Tony for Best Revival. The Broadway mounting featured 2007 Tony nominees Boyd Gaines and Stark Sands alongside Jefferson Mays and Hugh Dancy as Captain Stanhope, the commander of this group of British officers awaiting their day of reckoning in a trench in France on the eve of a major battle.
Journey’s End is presented by Flora Suk-Hwa Yoon and Lee Menzies with Act Productions Ltd, Jeremy Meadow, Suzanna Rosenthal and The Shaftesbury Theatre.
David Grindley's Tony-winning production of Journey's End, R.C. Sherriff's World War I drama, is set to return to the London stage this summer. The play will begin performances at the Duke of York's Theatre on the West End on July 19, ahead of an official opening on July 22. The limited engagement will run until September 3, after which Journey’s End will resume its UK tour in Glasgow on September 6.
Journey’s End is set in the British trenches at St. Quentin in 1918, in the days leading up to the last great German Offensive of the First World War, a day that saw the deaths of 38,000 men. The cast will feature Graham Butler, Tim Chipping, Andy Daniel, Daniel Hanna, Simon Harrison, Nigel Hastings, Mike Hayley, Dominic Mafham, James Norton, Christian Patterson and Tony Turner as a company of officers preparing for a daring raid across No Man’s Land to gather intelligence.
The production originally opened at the Comedy Theatre in January 2004, before transferring to the Playhouse Theatre and then to the Duke of York’s and went on to complete two major tours around the United Kingdom, in 2004 and 2005. A Broadway production of the play received six 2007 Tony nominations and won the Tony for Best Revival. The Broadway mounting featured 2007 Tony nominees Boyd Gaines and Stark Sands alongside Jefferson Mays and Hugh Dancy as Captain Stanhope, the commander of this group of British officers awaiting their day of reckoning in a trench in France on the eve of a major battle.
Journey’s End is presented by Flora Suk-Hwa Yoon and Lee Menzies with Act Productions Ltd, Jeremy Meadow, Suzanna Rosenthal and The Shaftesbury Theatre.
A Glimpse Of The Great War Shaped A Young Gingrich
NPR: A Glimpse Of The Great War Shaped A Young Gingrich
[Part of an NPR series profiling Republicans who are thinking of running for the Presidency in 2012]
When you ask many politicians what inspired them to a life of public service, you often hear familiar words about a commitment to helping people, or perhaps a desire to run government more like a business.
Newt Gingrich has a different story to tell.
His stepfather was a career soldier, and in the 1950s, he was stationed in Europe. As an adolescent, Gingrich, raised an Army brat, witnessed some profound history. He was in Europe at the time of the 1956 uprisings in Hungary. Two years later, his stepfather, then stationed in France, took 15-year-old Newt to visit the World War l battlefield of Verdun.
"Verdun still had bomb damage, or artillery damage, from World War I — 42 years earlier," Gingrich recalled in a 1986 interview with C-SPAN.
"The last day," he continued, "we went to the ossuary, which is a big building — a glassed-in basement [that] has the bones of 100,000 men who were killed ... [who were] literally just laying rotting in the fields or blown apart from artillery."
Mel Steely, a retired professor who was on the panel that hired Gingrich to teach history at what is now the University of West Georgia, has written a biography of his former colleague. He says seeing Verdun had a powerful effect on young Newt.
"A sense of uselessness came over him at that point," Steely says. He says Gingrich asked himself: "What is it all about? All of these people died, and what does it really matter? What does it mean?"
Gingrich returned to the States that summer on an ocean liner with his family. The young man who had at one time wanted to be a zoo director now headed on a different course.
"He talks about just standing there on the railing and trying to figure out, 'What am I going to do?' " Steely says. " 'Where am I going to go? I really want to serve my country, but how do I do this?' And he came up with the idea that politics would probably be the best way to do it."
'Let's Go Meet Nelson Rockefeller'
Gingrich volunteered on a congressional campaign in 1960. He was always a Republican, and even formed a Young Republican Club as an undergraduate at Emory University.
But Gingrich was not always a conservative. In fact, in his first involvement in a presidential campaign in 1968, Gingrich supported, of all people, then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
As a grad student at Tulane, Gingrich tried to get his fellow students interested in attending a Rockefeller rally, Steely says.
"He came on the idea at the time of getting a big bus and putting two tubs of ice and beer on it. And then he would pull up in front [of] a fraternity house and say, 'Let's go meet Nelson Rockefeller. We got free beer,' " he says.
"And it would invariably get a large crowd of students. They'd all pile on the bus, and they'd go out, and Rocky [Rockefeller] would see a big crowd of people standing there, waving and yelling. And he would be happy, and Newt would be happy, and the students would be happy."
Gingrich taught history at West Georgia, but his interests were more and more political. In 1974, he decided to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Jack Flynt.
The timing wasn't great. It was the height of the Watergate scandal — the year Nixon resigned — and it was hard on the GOP everywhere. Still, Gingrich won 48 percent of the vote.
Two years later, he tried again — again coming up short. But in 1978, he finally prevailed.
The 'Man Of The Year'
Gingrich rose up the House ranks as a backbencher, lobbing rhetorical grenades at the entrenched Democratic majority. He elbowed aside GOP congressional leaders whom he considered too comfortable with their second-class status in the House.
In 1994, the Gingrich-led Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
In the majority, Republicans staged a showdown over the budget with then-President Bill Clinton. Gingrich's take-no-prisoners style of rhetoric was on full display.
"When he gets rid of the campaign advisers and quits the campaign speeches, and sits down with somebody who knows policy, and has somebody actually explain to him what we're doing," Gingrich said at the time, "I think that he will find that it's dramatically better than anything that he's ever proposed. And I think that he'll have every reason to sign it."
In 1995, Gingrich was everywhere. He held sometimes daily news conferences; his manifesto, To Renew America, topped the best-seller lists; he was Time magazine's Man of the Year.
But he was also a lightning rod. Two years later, after a lengthy investigation, he was fined $300,000 by the House Ethics Committee for violating rules against using a tax-exempt organization for political purposes.
By 1998, he had even worn out his welcome with House Republicans, who suffered surprise losses in that November's election.
Facing a challenge for the speaker's gavel, Gingrich uncharacteristically walked away from the fight. He confided in some colleagues, including then-Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber.
"We talked about it, about his decision," Weber says. "And it was personal. It was entirely his decision. He came to the conclusion not that he could not win, but that he could not go through this fight and effectively lead the narrow majority Republicans now have in the House for the next two years.
"So, it was really a decision about what was in the best interests of House Republicans and the Republican Party and the country," Weber says.
Out Of Office, But Not The Spotlight
Though perhaps chastened, Gingrich never fully moved out of the spotlight. He gave speeches, wrote books and became a commentator with Fox News.
His personal life also drew attention. In August of 2000, he divorced his second wife and 10 days later married his third, Callista, a former House staffer.
Match Game: What Inspired These Republicans?Although he spent the decade in private life, he was never entirely out of the public eye. After Barack Obama's election as president in 2008, Gingrich became one of his chief critics.
"I believe he stands for a politician-defined, bureaucratically implemented, Washington-centered system," Gingrich said. "He believes in a government-centered society in which government takes care of you, in which government runs virtually everything. I mean, just read what he says — none of this is made up."
As Gingrich told C-SPAN in 1986, the visit to Verdun set him on his path.
"I guess out of that experience, I came to the conclusion after my freshman year in high school that all this is real," he said. "That when you step out there late at night and you look up at the U.S. Capitol, and it's lit up and it's beautiful, this is the center of freedom on the planet. The capacity of our elected leadership to understand the challenges and to lead us and to guide us is the key test of a free society," he said.
"So, I decided in the summer of 1958 that I would do what I'm doing here today with you."
And now, Gingrich seems ready to set off once again, hoping his vision of leadership will propel him to the White House.
[Part of an NPR series profiling Republicans who are thinking of running for the Presidency in 2012]
When you ask many politicians what inspired them to a life of public service, you often hear familiar words about a commitment to helping people, or perhaps a desire to run government more like a business.
Newt Gingrich has a different story to tell.
His stepfather was a career soldier, and in the 1950s, he was stationed in Europe. As an adolescent, Gingrich, raised an Army brat, witnessed some profound history. He was in Europe at the time of the 1956 uprisings in Hungary. Two years later, his stepfather, then stationed in France, took 15-year-old Newt to visit the World War l battlefield of Verdun.
"Verdun still had bomb damage, or artillery damage, from World War I — 42 years earlier," Gingrich recalled in a 1986 interview with C-SPAN.
"The last day," he continued, "we went to the ossuary, which is a big building — a glassed-in basement [that] has the bones of 100,000 men who were killed ... [who were] literally just laying rotting in the fields or blown apart from artillery."
Mel Steely, a retired professor who was on the panel that hired Gingrich to teach history at what is now the University of West Georgia, has written a biography of his former colleague. He says seeing Verdun had a powerful effect on young Newt.
"A sense of uselessness came over him at that point," Steely says. He says Gingrich asked himself: "What is it all about? All of these people died, and what does it really matter? What does it mean?"
Gingrich returned to the States that summer on an ocean liner with his family. The young man who had at one time wanted to be a zoo director now headed on a different course.
"He talks about just standing there on the railing and trying to figure out, 'What am I going to do?' " Steely says. " 'Where am I going to go? I really want to serve my country, but how do I do this?' And he came up with the idea that politics would probably be the best way to do it."
'Let's Go Meet Nelson Rockefeller'
Gingrich volunteered on a congressional campaign in 1960. He was always a Republican, and even formed a Young Republican Club as an undergraduate at Emory University.
But Gingrich was not always a conservative. In fact, in his first involvement in a presidential campaign in 1968, Gingrich supported, of all people, then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller.
As a grad student at Tulane, Gingrich tried to get his fellow students interested in attending a Rockefeller rally, Steely says.
"He came on the idea at the time of getting a big bus and putting two tubs of ice and beer on it. And then he would pull up in front [of] a fraternity house and say, 'Let's go meet Nelson Rockefeller. We got free beer,' " he says.
"And it would invariably get a large crowd of students. They'd all pile on the bus, and they'd go out, and Rocky [Rockefeller] would see a big crowd of people standing there, waving and yelling. And he would be happy, and Newt would be happy, and the students would be happy."
Gingrich taught history at West Georgia, but his interests were more and more political. In 1974, he decided to challenge incumbent Democratic Rep. Jack Flynt.
The timing wasn't great. It was the height of the Watergate scandal — the year Nixon resigned — and it was hard on the GOP everywhere. Still, Gingrich won 48 percent of the vote.
Two years later, he tried again — again coming up short. But in 1978, he finally prevailed.
The 'Man Of The Year'
Gingrich rose up the House ranks as a backbencher, lobbing rhetorical grenades at the entrenched Democratic majority. He elbowed aside GOP congressional leaders whom he considered too comfortable with their second-class status in the House.
In 1994, the Gingrich-led Republicans won control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
In the majority, Republicans staged a showdown over the budget with then-President Bill Clinton. Gingrich's take-no-prisoners style of rhetoric was on full display.
"When he gets rid of the campaign advisers and quits the campaign speeches, and sits down with somebody who knows policy, and has somebody actually explain to him what we're doing," Gingrich said at the time, "I think that he will find that it's dramatically better than anything that he's ever proposed. And I think that he'll have every reason to sign it."
In 1995, Gingrich was everywhere. He held sometimes daily news conferences; his manifesto, To Renew America, topped the best-seller lists; he was Time magazine's Man of the Year.
But he was also a lightning rod. Two years later, after a lengthy investigation, he was fined $300,000 by the House Ethics Committee for violating rules against using a tax-exempt organization for political purposes.
By 1998, he had even worn out his welcome with House Republicans, who suffered surprise losses in that November's election.
Facing a challenge for the speaker's gavel, Gingrich uncharacteristically walked away from the fight. He confided in some colleagues, including then-Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber.
"We talked about it, about his decision," Weber says. "And it was personal. It was entirely his decision. He came to the conclusion not that he could not win, but that he could not go through this fight and effectively lead the narrow majority Republicans now have in the House for the next two years.
"So, it was really a decision about what was in the best interests of House Republicans and the Republican Party and the country," Weber says.
Out Of Office, But Not The Spotlight
Though perhaps chastened, Gingrich never fully moved out of the spotlight. He gave speeches, wrote books and became a commentator with Fox News.
His personal life also drew attention. In August of 2000, he divorced his second wife and 10 days later married his third, Callista, a former House staffer.
Match Game: What Inspired These Republicans?Although he spent the decade in private life, he was never entirely out of the public eye. After Barack Obama's election as president in 2008, Gingrich became one of his chief critics.
"I believe he stands for a politician-defined, bureaucratically implemented, Washington-centered system," Gingrich said. "He believes in a government-centered society in which government takes care of you, in which government runs virtually everything. I mean, just read what he says — none of this is made up."
As Gingrich told C-SPAN in 1986, the visit to Verdun set him on his path.
"I guess out of that experience, I came to the conclusion after my freshman year in high school that all this is real," he said. "That when you step out there late at night and you look up at the U.S. Capitol, and it's lit up and it's beautiful, this is the center of freedom on the planet. The capacity of our elected leadership to understand the challenges and to lead us and to guide us is the key test of a free society," he said.
"So, I decided in the summer of 1958 that I would do what I'm doing here today with you."
And now, Gingrich seems ready to set off once again, hoping his vision of leadership will propel him to the White House.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Those who said No
The Economist: Those who said No
Conscientious objection and patriotism in Britain
Charlotte Despard on the anti-war pathTo End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918. By Adam Hochschild. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 480 pages; $28. Published in Britain as “To End All Wars: How the First World War Divided Britain”. Macmillan; £20.
THE first world war, or the Great War as it was known to contemporaries, still exerts an unyielding grip on the consciousness of western Europeans, especially the British and the French. Schools organise regular trips to the battlefields and cemeteries of northern France and Flanders; the poems of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon are studied by every generation of English-literature students; nearly all the participating nations (with the exception of Germany) commemorate their military sacrifice on the anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11th 1918, when the guns on the Western Front fell silent.
The sheer scale of the slaughter of the first truly industrial war has become, if anything, more shocking with the passing of time. After nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan, Britain has lost fewer than 370 of its service people; on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in July 1916, 57,500 British soldiers were killed or wounded. Above all, 1914-18 has come to symbolise the futility of war. It was a conflict that seems to us to have been fought for no great principle and whose bitter fruit was the even more destructive 1939-45 war.
For these reasons among others, there continues to be a steady stream of books about the Great War. Adam Hochschild, an American popular historian with strong pacifist leanings, has found what appears to be a new angle: the divisions within British society over the war. His book is about those who passionately opposed the war, often at great personal cost.
It starts well enough with an account of the extraordinary relationship between Charlotte Despard, a fiery upper-class radical who organised protests against the fighting, and her brother, Sir John French, Britain’s most senior commander in the opening stages of the war. We also meet Emily Hobhouse, a rector’s daughter who first rose to prominence by exposing the vileness of Britain’s Boer war concentration camps. She is followed by Sylvia Pankhurst, the middle daughter of Emmeline (a suffragette campaigner like her daughter but who fervently backed the war), and by Keir Hardie, Sylvia’s much older lover and a pacifist Labour Party leader. A philosopher, Bertrand Russell, makes several appearances. Mr Hochschild celebrates the courage of other, humbler, conscientious objectors (as they were known) whose numbers reached about 20,000 after conscription was introduced in early 1916.
But there is a difficulty. To suggest, as the book’s British subtitle does, that Britain was “divided” over whether to fight is an exaggeration. There were principled critics of the war when hostilities broke out and more were recruited as the death toll mounted and people became aware of the horrors in France. But even George Lansbury, a pacifist journalist and future Labour Party leader, who had argued that it was madness for Europe’s workers to be killing each other on behalf of the ruling classes, confessed to feeling carried along by the “sense of danger and service”. As the carnage continued and nearly every community and family in Britain experienced loss, the dominant emotion on the home front was less fury at the human waste or the callous incompetence of the generals, but more a gritty stoicism and quiet pride in the bravery of the young men who fought.
The author is too honest not to recognise this. Consequently, the anti-war movement, such as it was, rather fades from centre stage as he concentrates on telling with verve and controlled anger the story of the war. Mr Hochschild gives little space to the revisionism of the past 30 years which advances the view that the war was not quite as futile as it later came to be seen (could Britain and France really ignore treaty obligations in the face of German aggression?) and that the commanders, at least in the latter stages, were not all bumbling dunderheads.
Mr Hochschild writes well and shines a light on some brave and worthy people who left a legacy of principled protest to future generations of activists. Beyond this, his book, though very readable, does not add greatly to our understanding of the cataclysmic event that set the first half of the 20th century on its disastrous course.
WWI Mini-Series Parade's End Begins At HBO
Television Blend: WWI Mini-Series Parade's End Begins At HBO
Another prestige project gets the go ahead at HBO and it sounds, well, prestigious. On top of their latest, and impressive, slate of mini-series and films (including the gorgeous Mildred Pierce) HBO just green-lit a new five-parter set during The Great War... you know, WWI. Based on the four part series by British writer Madox Ford, Parade's End begins soon at Home Box Office Entertainment.
The Hollywood Reporter made the announcement also adding that Benedict Cumberbatch (from BBC's awesome series Sherlock) and Rebecca Hall are attached to star in the Tom Stoppard (Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love) scripted, Susanna White (Generation Kill) directed mini-series. THR describes the show as "a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat (Cumberbatch), his mean socialite wife (Hall) and a young suffragette."
No word yet on who will play the 'suffragette' but she best have some talent if she intends to keep up with the likes of Cumberbatch and Hall (especially when delivering the lines of Tom Stoppard).
Production on the series isn't said to begin until the fall so it might be some time before we get to watch Parade's End.
Another prestige project gets the go ahead at HBO and it sounds, well, prestigious. On top of their latest, and impressive, slate of mini-series and films (including the gorgeous Mildred Pierce) HBO just green-lit a new five-parter set during The Great War... you know, WWI. Based on the four part series by British writer Madox Ford, Parade's End begins soon at Home Box Office Entertainment.
The Hollywood Reporter made the announcement also adding that Benedict Cumberbatch (from BBC's awesome series Sherlock) and Rebecca Hall are attached to star in the Tom Stoppard (Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love) scripted, Susanna White (Generation Kill) directed mini-series. THR describes the show as "a love triangle between a conservative English aristocrat (Cumberbatch), his mean socialite wife (Hall) and a young suffragette."
No word yet on who will play the 'suffragette' but she best have some talent if she intends to keep up with the likes of Cumberbatch and Hall (especially when delivering the lines of Tom Stoppard).
Production on the series isn't said to begin until the fall so it might be some time before we get to watch Parade's End.
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