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Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

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… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War / The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day

by | 198 Comments

This post is in: 

Saw this on Twitter today:

And there’s your microcosm of the brutal, wretched, murderous idiocy of that “Great” War whose end we remember today. One minute to go–as everyone on the line knows–and the guns of he Western Front are in full cry.

And then silence–and pity the soldiers dead in those last sixty seconds. And every minute of the previous four years.

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day

For me,  World War I is a talisman, a constant reminder that one must always deeply mistrust, perhaps loathe, anyone from the 101st Chairborne slavering to send other people’s kids in harms way. I am not a pacifist in an absolute sense. But I believe that the use of military power in any circumstance, however urgent or inescapable it may seem (or be) in the moment, is the result of prior failures.

But leave such highfalutin thoughts behind for a moment, and listen into that silence. The birds can be heard again, metaphorically if not literally, for the first time in the four years before this recording could be made.

Before and together with Veteran’s Day, there was/is another name for November 11th:  Remembrance Day.

Image: George Grosz, Fit For Active Service, 1918

Reader Interactions

198Comments

  1. 1.

    jl

    Thanks for the recording, both horrifying and inspiring.

    But, I heard the birds sing literally, not metaphorically. I was surprised that there would be any birds out. I guess they got used to the mayhem. And, where could they have gone anyway? They had to make the best of it.

  2. 2.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @jl: The bird song was what struck me immediately. Ready instantly to start doing their bird thing as soon as the humans stop the stupidity.

  4. 4.

    geg6

    I’ve heard the recording before.  Eerie.  And I agree with your premise that war is the result of prior failures, always.  But we are human and, thus, prone to failure.

    Meanwhile, Twitler apparently doesn’t understand (or more likely, doesn’t give a shit about) the whole idea and significance of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month because he was quite late to the ceremony today and left military members, veterans and their families standing in the rain while he spray tanned and fussed with the tribble on his head.  Ugh, I HATE him so much.

  7. 7.

    neldob

    I never really understood why WW1 was fought. The recording is a reminder of the absurdity and horror of so much war.

  9. 9.

    maeve

    On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – it always sends a chill through me that it was so calculated – but hearing that tape is even more chilling

  10. 10.

    bluefoot

    That recording always gets to me. Bombs and guns. Silence. And then bird song. And then I think about the human cost of a war that the world kind of slid into “accidentally.”

  13. 13.

    jl

    @neldob: ” I never really understood why WW1 was fought. ”

    In retrospect, I don’t think anyone else does either, or ever did. The leaders at the time had their reasons, but I think there has been a consensus ever since that they were complete fools.

  14. 14.

    Viva BrisVegas

    That’s a sound ranging recording used to remotely pinpoint the location and type of artillery pieces.

    Developed by Australian Lawrence Bragg, who also received the 1915 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on X-Ray crystallography while in service as an Army Engineer. Youngest ever Nobel laureate at 25.

  15. 15.

    WaterGirl

    @bluefoot: And of course the video automatically plays again when it finishes, which is a really annoying setup, but perhaps it is also a metaphor for war and the human race.

    We have the shooting and fighting, then some silence, then the birds, and then the shooting starts all over again.

  18. 18.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Not to trivialize it, but the artilleryman in me heard the couple of guns that fired late and thought how much I pitied those gun chiefs.  If there ever was a you wanted to get the IMO game right, that would be it.

  21. 21.

    There go two miscreants

    A few years ago I read Aftermath: The Remnants of War, by Donovan Webster. The chapter on France made my jaw drop: 16 million acres are off-limits because of unexploded munitions, most from WW1. This was written in 1998, so the situation has improved somewhat, I imagine, because they are working on it continually. There are as well injuries and deaths every year from munitions outside the forbidden zone.

  22. 22.

    CaseyL

    WWI started and kept going for many reasons, all of them idiotic.  Its most important legacy was that the peace terms were so ruinous for Germany that it led directly to WWII.

    My favorite books to read about that era are both by Barbara Tuchman, “The Proud Tower” (pre-WWI), and “The Guns of August.”  Excellent accounts, with a you-are-there immediacy.

  23. 23.

    jl

    When I think about WWI, I keep forgetting that the national leaderships, and generals, thought it would be a quick thing. The generals studied Napoleon, some of the generals who lead the splendid little European wars of the late nineteenth century (I forget the wars and the generals). I think there were actually plans to use cavalry for flanking movements that would hem in the enemy and end it all by the Fall. Some actual cavalry charges too, and maybe Poland did the last one. A BJ military historian will probably correct me if I’m wrong.

    They had no clue what they were getting into. Like all wars. No one learns the lesson.

  24. 24.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @maeve:

    On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month – it always sends a chill through me that it was so calculated – but hearing that tape is even more chilling

    From Wiki:

    …on the last day of World War I, between the beginning of the armistice negotiations in the railroad cars encampment at the Compiegne Forest, French commander-in-chief Marshal Foch refused to accede to the German negotiators’ immediate request to declare a ceasefire or truce so that there would be no more useless waste of lives among the common soldiers. By not declaring a truce even between the signing of the documents for the Armistice and its entry into force, “at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”, about 11,000 additional men were wounded or killed – far more than usual, according to the military statistics.

  25. 25.

    Mike in NC

    Hard to pick one book on the conclusion of WW1 but I really liked “Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour:  Armistice Day, 1918 – World War I and its Violent Climax” by Joseph E. Persico. Basically, most of the Allied brass wanted to grab as much real estate as possible before the guns fell silent, no matter how many soldiers were thrown into the meat grinder on the Western Front.

  28. 28.

    Lapassionara

    @CaseyL: I agree re the Tuchman books. Some recent scholars are questioning her thesis re the start of WWI, but her account of the events is mesmerizing. And the Dreyfus chapter in the
    Proud Tower Is an infuriating read.

  31. 31.

    jl

    Reading about the civilian populations in France and Germany is pretty grim too, since they had to put up with frequent random death due to bombardments even miles from the front lines. First, enthusiastic about the war effort since their side would be victorious soon, then stoic, then cracking under the strain. People muttering and cursing under their breath, condemning the war and their leaders in code with each other. I think both countries sanctioned civilians who sapped morale with fines and loss of benefits, reduced rations, etc.

    Edit: and maybe criminal charges too? I forget.

  32. 32.

    Ruckus

    @jl:

    Mostly leaders of the time were  of the aristocratic class. People who suffered less than everyone else. And life expectancy was a lot less, lots of people never made middle age. As well, a country only did as well as it’s military and natural resources allowed. It really wasn’t till WWII and the next 15-20 years where  the level of innovation advanced so much. So some of it was just the timing.

  33. 33.

    LuciaMia

    @neldob: And the time frame-four years.

    Civil War-four years.

    WWII-four years.

    Is four years the limit for when exhaustion and sanity sink in?

  35. 35.

    jl

    @Ruckus: I’ve read that the massive siege and trench warfare at the end of the US Civil War should have been a warning. But Europeans dismissed that as undisciplined mobs, lead by stupid primitive generalship. Little more than a huge deadly riot by the rustics.

    Edit: and I guess Grant’s huge and endless flanking movements that ate up huge tracts of land that produced endless trenches and sieges should have been a warning too.

  36. 36.

    Tom Levenson

    @CaseyL: Not to toot my own horn,  or rather to do so, but tugging my forelock as I blow, my book Einstein in Berlin (currently only in “print” as in e-book) goes into this in some detail from the Berlin side of the question.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @WaterGirl: No, they were soldiers whose watches were wrong and in the spirit of armies everywhere, they were immediately screamed at by their superiors.  Perfect timing is always prized by the artillery and never more so than when everyone is watching.  Which everyone was.

  38. 38.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @geg6: I honestly don’t understand this, surely to God his staff impressed on him the need to be there at 11am?  Does he have no comprehension of history?  Of tradition, of honour? Good God.

  44. 44.

    Tony Jay

    @neldob: 

    I never really understood why WW1 was fought.

    Political traditions from a previous century + changes in the underlying balance of power + the destructive potential of industrialised warfare + a host of very human frailties.

    The German Empire was simply too powerful and its ruling elite too insecure and ambitious to remain a big fish in the shrinking Middle-European pond, while virtually every one of its founding traditions revolved around using force to get what it wanted. Added to that, there simply wasn’t a conceptual framework available for anyone to work out how to peacefully accommodate a new World Power in the zero-sum world of Imperial expansion, which is why people who lived through the slaughter worked so incredibly hard to create those concepts and establish a global framework to stop it happening again. Arguably they (we) haven’t succeeded yet, and the modern day wannabe ‘Big Men’ are working overtime to dismantle what progress we have made.

    How gloomy. Let’s concentrate on the pluses, eh? We have got better. We’ll have to be.

  45. 45.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I only learned recently about the Gallipoli disaster and Winston Churchill’s involvement in it. Not just involvement, it was pretty much at his instigation.

    I’m embarrassed to admit that the only reason I learned about Gallipoli came from hearing a performance of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by a musical acquaintance of ours.

  49. 49.

    jl

    @Omnes Omnibus: We are getting soft. Used to able to put on a damn good hundred years war. We are losing the pluck of our stolid, sensible, and obedient ancestors. Would make a good David Brooks column, but I think he retired.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    They probably did, all but certainly; but Trump feels no more respect for his staff and their work than for the families of the “losers” and “suckers” who gave their lives for their country.

  52. 52.

    prostratedragon

    @jl:  Anyone arguing for war by saying, “We’ll wrap this up quickly” should be immediately smitten down with a heavy rod, the more so if they’re a tackticle jenious.

  53. 53.

    Calouste

    @LuciaMia: WWII was only 4 years for the US. For Britain it was closer to 6.

    But European wars in the 19th century tended to be shortish, maybe a year, some of them a lot shorter. Definitely compared to wars before that, that lasted years and sometimes decades.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Those of you who are, like me, Lord Peter Wimsey admirers (and we are legion in these parts!) will know that the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month plays an important — nay, critical — role in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. All of Dorothy L. Sayers’ LPW stories are set in the interwar years, and even when the Great War isn’t a major “character,” as it is in Unpleasantness, the lasting impact of the War is a running theme and shows up one way or another in all the novels and a great many of the short stories. I probably should have saved this comment for an appropriate “Medium Cool” thread, but it seems to fit here. (Hint hint to BGinCHI: I, for one, would enjoy this as an organising theme in some future thread.)

  55. 55.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @jl: To be fair, we can kill a lot faster now.  Get it done quicker.*

    *For those concerned that was bitter, bitter snark and I was not accusing anyone of sympathy for mass slaughter.

  56. 56.

    patrick II

    In the spirit of man’s inhumanity in war:

    Bullets with hard exteriors but lead interiors began being used in the late 19th century because to smooth out automatic feed of bullets in what was then more modern guns.  However, the hard case often did not always cover the front portion of the bullet, which were soft tip or later hollow-point bullets, which expanded when they hit the human body leaving big holes.

    At the Hague Convention of 1899 a treaty was signed calling for full metal (or hard shell) jackets for military use, including covering the tip, so the bullet would punch through the victim without expanding, wounding but not necessarily killing.

    The U.S. did not sign that portion of the treaty, but still lived under those rules through the Korean War.

    Then came the AR-15, (military version m-16) a rifle which was designed with a light, high speed bullet and a low spin rate in the barrel.  The idea was that, although having a full metal jacket, the light, high-speed low-spin bullet would not punch through but tumble inside the body causing massive destruction.

    Technically, we were following the rules, but they found legalistic way to pervert the intention of the treaty and do as much damage as possible to other human beings.  It just seems so perverse to me to have a rule and then make it meaningless in the real world.

    Anyhow, as an add on, the twist rate of the rifle barrels have gone up for fighting at longer distance than the jungles of Vietnam.

  57. 57.

    prostratedragon

    @There go two miscreants:  I should read that. Often I’ve wondered about the impact of wars on nature, which I’d think would be near an extreme in France or Vietnam, say, as well as on the surrounding society.

  59. 59.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @jl: I’ve read that the massive siege and trench warfare at the end of the US Civil War should have been a warning. But Europeans dismissed that as undisciplined mobs, lead by stupid primitive generalship. Little more than a huge deadly riot by the rustics.

    There’s a 1903 story by H. G. Wells called The Land Ironclads, where he envisions a conflict between a traditional army of big mean soldier types, and iron vehicles designed, built and operated by clerks and technicians who get in their vehicles, wipe out the traditional army, and go back home to their day jobs. [*]

    I think it was meant as kind of a hopeful suggestion that if war became more technological, perhaps there wouldn’t be war any more. It didn’t work out that way.

    [*] At least this is the way I remember it. I only read it once and it was some years ago.

  62. 62.

    Tom Levenson

    @Omnes Omnibus: @SiubhanDuinne: For a non-fiction account (through a literary lens) of the impact of the war on “sensitive” men like Wimsey, Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory” is excellent. As are Sassoon’s and Graves’ memoirs.

  63. 63.

    Mike in NC

    Possibly the best WW1 documentary series was The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, a 1996 production that was shown on PBS. Eight episodes.

  64. 64.

    SFBayAreaGal

    Wow. Hearing a couple of artillery shots after the other gun shots had gone silent gave me the chills. Then hearing the birds singing after the silence of the guns shows that nature still goes on.

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yes, that’s the most obvious. But there are also references throughout the canon to the impact of the war on society in general — classism, labour and the economy, and the role of women, to mention but a few.

  69. 69.

    C. Isaac

    @Calouste: 

    The reason for this is the opening act on the 19th century was the Napoleonic Era which was near 20 years of constant warfare and revolution and cost the lives of some 3.25 – 6.5 million dead (records are much less exacting than those of WW1) and trillions of dollars (in today’s money) in damages and losses — all of Moscow, for example.

    Wellington reportedly said: “If you had seen one day of war, you would pray to God that you would never see another.” Waterloo was a charnel house, even for the victors, and one of his fellow generals had a leg blown off by a cannonball right next to him during the battle.

    By the beginning of the 20th century, no one was left that remembered the horrors, and it all started up again.

    I think the Crimean War (about 3 years) was the only multiyear European war that happened until WW1.

  70. 70.

    Original Lee

    @LuciaMia: Indirectly relevant, but while working in the archives of an educational institution, I came across a file of War Department memos to the academic dean that included estimates of how long they thought WWII would last. IIRC the memos in late 1943 were telling the dean to plan on the war ending around 1950.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    @Viva BrisVegas: 
    Interesting. Was wondering why it was a stereo recording, decades before the technology made it to consumers.

    It would be chilling even without knowing the backstory.

  72. 72.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JeanneT:

    Oh, wonderful! I came close to mentioning a couple of spoilers but thought better of it and deleted them before posting. Now I’m especially glad I did!

  74. 74.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Hey, the Dardenelles attack was a good idea. It came close to working. The problem was that no-one was willing to admit “OK, we’ve lost the initiative… they’re dug in now… time to pull back”.

    Full disclosure: my grandfather was at Gallipoli. His battalion lost enough numbers that they folded the survivors into the Cameron Highlanders, who were also somewhat depleted from the Western Front. The positive outcome of that is that my family feel entitled to wear the Cameron of Erracht tartan. The downside is that my grandfather also got to experience the joys of Ypres.

  79. 79.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Churchill was a cunning, if at times self-destructive, politician and a terrible military stategist.

    His great achievement in WW2 was to be the leader of that part of the Conservative Party (i.e. the English aristocracy) that did not want to surrender to the Nazis, and had a willingness to compromise with the Labour Party to further the war.

    Outside of that he was essentially worthless.

  81. 81.

    bluefoot

    @SiubhanDuinne: I am just working my way through all the Wimsey books again.  I always found it interesting, and validating, how much the war affected both Wimsey specifically (PTSD and how it informed his views) and the milieu in the books more generally.  I know a couple of people who were refugees during Partition who experienced and witnessed horrific things walking from their homes in what became Pakistan to India.  It’s similar, how matter of fact they are about it all.

    For those who like the Anne of Green Gables books, Rilla of Ingleside really struck me in the depth of the propaganda for the war, the pressure to join up if you were able-bodied.  As a kid in the 70s/80s, when we were dealing with the aftermath of Vietnam, it was so alien.

  82. 82.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Wimsey explicitly had PTSD

    IIRC, Sayers looked after her boyfriend when he couldn’t cope with the shell-shock. She knew exactly whereof she wrote.

  85. 85.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     

    But there are also references throughout the canon to the impact of the war on society in general — classism, labour and the economy, and the role of women, to mention but a few.

    Molly Pitcher!

    Oh, CANON not CANNON. Never mind!

  86. 86.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @LuciaMia: When I was growing up I too thought wars, in general, were all 4 years long, because of what you noted.  Of course, a quick review of even just modern wars would show the folly of that belief.  WWI was 4 years long for Europe, but much shorter for America (1917-1918).  And WWII was about 3 1/2 years long for the U.S., and more like 6 years for Europe (starting in 1939), as two obvious examples.

  87. 87.

    trollhattan

    @jl:

    If the US Civil War was not the first convincing demonstration of the Industrial Age’s impact on warfare I can’t guess what other major conflict might be.

    The Great War turbocharged it, adding tools like barbed wire and the machine gun, airships and airplanes, and so very much artillery. Poison gas? Sure! Back home, industrial ag tools meant the boys need not come home for planting and harvest.

    What a lovely war.

  91. 91.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @jl: I think the example of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 was probably more in the mind of the German General Staff than the US Civil War.

  94. 94.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

     

    I’m embarrassed to admit that the only reason I learned about Gallipoli came from hearing a performance of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by a musical acquaintance of ours.

    The movie “Gallipolli” is well worth watching. Though I had trouble suspending disbelief enough to accept that the guy didn’t know how to ride a horse. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t know how to ride a horse?

    Anyway, “Gallipolli” and “The Road Warrior” are the apex of the cinematic oeuvre of the execrable Mel Gibson.

  95. 95.

    Croaker

    @jl:  Poland did not exist as Country.  The three major empires: German, Austrian-Hungarian and Russian claimed all the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Common-Wealth.

  96. 96.

    Tony Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Absolutely! How’s Brexit going?

    Ha! It’s great, totally under control and smooth as a caramel suppository. We’re expecting the Hun to start waving the while flag any day now, just as soon as they recognise the stiffness of our upper lip and the all around Greatness of our Britain.

    No, seriously, it’s a filled pasta of vomit in a sauce of bubbling dog-shit. Come this time next year the living will envy the dead and the dead will rise, if only to shamble quick as you like to the coast, because even necrotised brains will want out by then.

  100. 100.

    patroclus

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well, Churchill’s original “idea” was for a naval forcing of the Bospurus and Dardanelles and a “landing” at Gallipoli wasn’t really in the cards.  But he was only at the admiralty and once it got considered and amended by the entire Cabinet, it had expanded into something different.  And, at least according to his memoirs, the naval portion was never really tried – after the first rebuff, the naval forces never attempted to force their way past the Turkish guns again.  And then, the whole thing descended into a fiasco and Churchill was removed from influence (he got to be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for awhile) and it became an utter disaster.

    But I have to disagree with the premise a little – the U.S. participation in WWI (which lasted only a year and a half) probably was justified.  If we hadn’t have joined the Allies, they might still be fighting and we would have lost a lot of shipping and people (and money) and all sorts of other things.  It’s certainly debatable though…

  104. 104.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Tony Jay: at least your Scousers are only a point away from the top of the table!

    Also, I hear that there are deals to be had on great country estates, at least up to the £20MM level.

  107. 107.

    trollhattan

    @L85NJGT:

    Yeah, and the practice of sending out the cavalry out to rip up rails showed the value the generals placed on trying to disrupt supply. Grant had experience as a quartermaster and was also very iventested in canal-digging to bypass river fortress defenses.

    The scale of the undertaking, by men still riding horses, boggles.

  108. 108.

    raven

    Have you news of my boy Jack?”
    Not this tide.
    “When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

    “Has any one else had word of him?”
    Not this tide.
    For what is sunk will hardly swim,
    Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

    “Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
    None this tide,
    Nor any tide,
    Except he did not shame his kind—
    Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

    Then hold your head up all the more,
    This tide,
    And every tide;
    Because he was the son you bore,
    And gave to that wind blowing and that tide![3]

  110. 110.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @geg6:

    He was supposed to arrive at Arlington at 10:55 am. He didn’t even leave the White House until 11:00, FFS.

    It is beyond my poor abilities as a writer to express how very much I detest this sorry excuse for a man.

  112. 112.

    Mary G

    @geg6: He is such an asshole. I can’t wait for him to be gone. I was getting my postcards organized for Georgia and I wrote one to Twitler on impulse = THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN, YOU’RE FIRED, let Biden do his job and GET OUT.

  114. 114.

    Ksmiami

    @jl: fighting over Colonial dominance in Africa, fighting to maintain the power of royalty in Continental Europe- and it wasn’t supposed to be a big war…

  115. 115.

    raven

    @prostratedragon: At the Atlanta History Museum Civil War exhibit they have these “mess kit” that are really these huge picnic baskets with table servings and all the trimmings. They thought the war was going to last a few weeks and wanted to have nice dinners.

  116. 116.

    Tony Jay

    @Steve in the ATL:

    We’re just letting the energetic minor teams pace-set for us while we try to figure out how to field a defence while our entire defensive contingent appears to have been cursed by a vindictive shaman.

    And hey, give it a couple of years and you’ll be able to claim as much British land as you like straight off the boat because even the scattered cannibal bands should be dying off by then.

  119. 119.

    debbie

    Thank god for birds! Imagine, all that death and destruction because of a snit between cousins.  ?

    (I have to add that if there was a similar arrangement to end a war today, that deadline would never be honored. A moment or two of silence, maybe, but then right back at it.)

  122. 122.

    Geminid

    Aside from the United States, which entered the war late, the First World War basically crippled the victors as much as the vanquished.

  124. 124.

    Roger Moore

    @Lapassionara:

    Some recent scholars are questioning her thesis re the start of WWI, but her account of the events is mesmerizing.

    My general feeling is that the recounting of the details misses the big picture.  WWI happened because Europe was a powder keg and people kept making sparks.  The diplomats did their best to keep the sparks from igniting a general conflagration, but they were doomed to fail eventually as long as the underlying situation remained unchanged.

  125. 125.

    debbie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    How many cease fires have lasted as long as they were supposed to? Certainly not in Syria. I know there have been many others, but I have trouble keeping regional conflicts straight, there have been so many.

  128. 128.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @debbie: How many wars have been as devastating to everyone involved?  It ended because everyone was too exhausted to continue.

  129. 129.

    misterpuff

    @trollhattan:  I think Wells and Verne would take these in stride, because they had vision. They could extrapolate and dream. Their temporal cohort? Not so much.

  131. 131.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    I grew up listening to my grandparents read Kipling aloud (not that poem, though) and of course since it was long before I reached years of any kind of discernment, I simply sponged up the rhymes and the language and the stories and the humour, and never gave the first thought to the crimes of colonialism, the arrogance of imperialism, or the sheer stupidity and bullheadedness of war.

    Kipling is a most uncomfy mixed bag for me.

  132. 132.

    Roger Moore

    @jl:

    I’ve read that the massive siege and trench warfare at the end of the US Civil War should have been a warning. But Europeans dismissed that as undisciplined mobs, lead by stupid primitive generalship.

    Even if they could write off the trench warfare at the end of the American Civil War, they shouldn’t have been able to do the same for the trench warfare that broke out in Crimea and at the end of the Franco-Prussian war.  They ignored it because they wanted to believe in the possibility of a fast, decisive war, not because the facts pointed that way.

  133. 133.

    Croaker

    Expecting to come home heroes, black soldiers received a rude awakening upon their return. Back home, many whites feared that African Americans would return demanding equality and would try to attain it by employing their military training. As the troops returned, there was an increase of racial tension. During the summer and fall of 1919, anti-black race riots erupted in twenty-six cities across America. The lynching of blacks also increased from fifty-eight in 1918 to seventy-seven in 1919. At least ten of those victims were war veterans, and some were lynched while in uniform. Despite this treatment, African American men continued to enlist in the military, including veterans of World War I that came home to such violence and ingratitude.

  134. 134.

    debbie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I would never belittle WWI. It was horrible, a failure of everything civilized. I must say, though, that I’d bet the generals, Haig especially, weren’t exhausted in the least. He still had plenty of bodies to sacrifice to his genius strategy.

    I do belittle Wilhelm’s getting his nose out of joint over unimportant things.

  135. 135.

    Viva BrisVegas

    @patroclus: Slight disagreement there. The influence of US troops on the outcome of the war was more in their potential than in their presence.

    After their Spring Offensive of March 1918 the Germans made advances but were too weakened to sustain any further major operations. As a result the Allied Hundred Days Offensive beginning August was able to force the German Army into retreat though to the end of the war. The Germans were at this stage beaten.

    While US troops were a welcome addition to the forces available for the Allied offensive they were not an indispensable part of it.

    The main American contribution to the result of the war was to force the Germans to mount a premature offensive to improve their position before the advent of serious numbers of American troops.

  136. 136.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @SiubhanDuinne:  LOL. I am also decended from a Cannon (my great-grandmother). Pun intended, but also true, she was known for having an explosive temper.

  140. 140.

    sigaba

    So the audio in this tweet is a re-creation— the tweets in reply note this, I recognize some of the explosions from a sound effects library. I’m sure they tried to recover some kind of audio signal from this filmstrip but you can see it simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to pick up any sound past a few hundred hertz (film soundtracks run about 12 times faster than the 6 perfs a second here) than and it’s a displacement-mode record (lines not waves) so any signal it does have will be very distorted and very low signal to noise.

  142. 142.

    Roger Moore

    @Geminid:

    Aside from the United States, which entered the war late, the First World War basically crippled the victors as much as the vanquished.

    It was actually worse for the French than for the Germans, at least in terms of the direct damage from the war.  The western front was fought almost entirely on French territory and did enormous damage to those parts of the country.  The main reason the French insisted on ruinous terms in the Treaty of Versailles was their well justified fear that without them Germany would recover and be able to attack again long before France was able to effectively defend itself.

  143. 143.

    debbie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Right. Those without any real power. I don’t disagree with you, though you did say “everyone.”

    I’ve read a number of diaries of participants in the war, and even all this time later, it’s hard to read their absolute dispiritedness at the end.

  144. 144.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I suppose everyone here knows Arthur Guiterman’s “Pershing at the Front.”  I first read it in fourth or fifth grade:

    The General came in a new tin hat
    To the shell-torn front where the war was at;
    With a faithful Aide at his good right hand
    He made his way toward No Man’s Land,
    And a tough Top Sergeant there they found,
    And a Captain, too, to show them round.

    Threading the ditch, their heads bent low,
    Toward the lines of the watchful foe
    They came through the murk and the powder stench
    Till the Sergeant whispered, “Third-line trench!”
    And the Captain whispered, “Third-line trench!”
    And the Aide repeated, “Third-line trench!”
    And Pershing answered – not in French –
    “Yes, I see it. Third-line trench.”

    Again they marched with wary tread,
    Following on where the Sergeant led
    Through the wet and the muck as well,
    Till they came to another parallel.
    They halted there in the mud and drench,
    And the Sergeant whispered, “Second-line trench!”
    And the Captain whispered, “Second-line trench!”
    And the Aide repeated, “Second-line trench!”
    And Pershing nodded: “Second-line trench!”

    Yet on they went through mire like pitch
    Till they came to a fine and spacious ditch
    Well camouflaged from planes and Zeps
    Where soldiers stood on firing steps
    And a Major sat on a wooden bench;
    And the Sergeant whispered, “First-line trench!”
    And the Captain whispered, “First-line trench!”
    And the Aide repeated, “First-line trench!”

    And Pershing whispered, “Yes, I see.
    How far off is the enemy?”
    And the faithful Aide he asked, asked he,
    “How far off is the enemy?”
    And the Captain breathed in a softer key,
    “How far off is the enemy?”
    The silence lay in heaps and piles
    And the Sergeant whispered, “Just three miles.”
    And the Captain whispered, “Just three miles.”
    And the Aide repeated, “Just three miles.”
    “Just three miles!” the General swore,
    “What in the heck are we whispering for?”
    And the faithful Aide the message bore,“What in the heck are we whispering for?”

    And the Captain said in a gentle roar,
    “What in the heck are we whispering for?”
    “Whispering for?” the echo rolled;
    And the Sergeant whispered, “I have a cold.”

  146. 146.

    HumboldtBlue

    We’re still dealing — politically and socially — from the impacts of WW1. We saw the end of the monarchies, the upheaval from the working class, the explosion of Communism in Russia, of Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy and the Anglo-American takeover of oil fields in the Middle East.

    There are a thousand other details not mentioned about how the war still impacts us today, none so more than the Demineur project in France.

    It was mentioned above about the millions of acres of French land that to this day are mortally dangerous due to unexploded ordnance from WW1 and added to by WW2.

  148. 148.

    Tony Jay

    @Viva BrisVegas:

    The main American contribution to the result of the war was to force the Germans to mount a premature offensive to improve their position before the advent of serious numbers of American troops.

    It’s often glossed over or forgotten that the Germans had – won – their war in the east the previous year. Russia had been forced to cede huge areas of its most productive land at Brest-Litovsk and without the threat of American reinforcement on the Western Front the Germans could theoretically have just held fast while they looted Ukraine and the Baltic states to feed the home front.

    Chances are the French Army would have refused to attack, and then it would only have been a matter of time before exhaustion and the very real threat of social collapse forced the Western Allies to seek terms. American entry changed all that.

  149. 149.

    J R in WV

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    I honestly don’t understand this, surely to God his staff impressed on him the need to be there at 11am? Does he have no comprehension of history? Of tradition, of honour? Good God.

    Surely to God his staff doesn’t dare to tell Trump he Must Do anything, ever. And he has no comprehension of history or tradition. None whatsoever!

    And Honour has never been part of Drumpf’s makeup, ever. He can’t spell it either in the British style or the American style, and can’t define it if asked.

  152. 152.

    There go two miscreants

    @SiubhanDuinne: I suppose everyone here knows Arthur Guiterman’s “Pershing at the Front.” I first read it in fourth or fifth grade:

    LOL. I was in high school before I had a History class that went past the Civil War. They started every year with the Pilgrims and there was never enough time. (1950s/early 1960s).

  153. 153.

    Ruckus

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    shitforbrains has hisself and hisself alone. In his tiny, addled, very diseased brain there is no one in any way higher, smarter, better, more handsome, richer. Obviously he is massively mistaken on all counts. And as every thing he does, says, thinks is done using said brain, every thing is wrong,  and massively so.

  160. 160.

    J R in WV

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    November 11, 2020 at 4:55 pm

    @SiubhanDuinne: Wimsey explicitly had PTSD and much of his mindset is heavily influenced by the War.

    I think nearly everyone who crossed the Channel from Britain to the Continent for WW I had PTSD when they came home. And so many Americans, especially after WW II had PTSD, and Korea vets.

    My uncle was a turret gunner on heavy bombers in the South Pacific from Guam to Burma, and woke up at 2 or 3 am screaming the rest of his life. His wife and my cousin took him to the local ER some nights, fearing he was having a heart attack. Lung cancer got him in the end. He was my favorite uncle.

    War is hell, and we are in it!

  161. 161.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @There go two miscreants:

    I was in high school before I had a History class that went past the Civil War.

    “And that was the end of slavery, and everyone lived happily ever after, The End. Have a good summer, kids!”

    (FTR, we studied “Pershing at the Front” in English class, not American History.)

  163. 163.

    Gvg

    @Litlebritdifrnt: He picked his staff. They are a lot like him. No sign that they understand any norms or respect….anyone. Multiple examples throughout his term. They just ignore the shocked reporters.

  164. 164.

    Sloane Ranger

    @jl:

     

    Some actual cavalry charges too, and maybe Poland did the last one.

    There were a few cavalry charges in the opening weeks of WWI before the armies stalled and began to dig in, but what I think you’ve got in mind is a Polish cavalry charge during the German invasion of Poland at the start of WWII, which is believed to be the last ever cavalry charge by a unit of a national army ever.

    Talking about WWI, one of my grandfathers was with the Machine Gun Corps. He was taken prisoner at the Battle of Cambrai and spent the last year as a POW in Germany. He only spoke about his war experiences to me once but I remember him talking about the constant hunger he and the others felt. They lived off a diet of hard bread, black potatoes and coffee made from acorns because the Royal Navy was blockading Germany preventing food being imported into the country and the German Army wasn’t going to waste what food there was on enemy prisoners when they and their families were starving.

  166. 166.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    I think we talked about it in a downstairs thread. Maybe. I know it was much discussed this morning in a small group of former Canadian Consulate colleagues, in which I am a feisty participant.

  168. 168.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne:

     
    Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan
    brown,
    For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the
    Christian down;
    And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of
    the late deceased,
    And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the
    East.”

  170. 170.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Tony Jay:

    Assume you have read Miranda Carter’s George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I.

    There’s a somewhat similar triple biography called something like Crowned Cousins in Conflict, but I can recall neither title nor author at the moment

     

  173. 173.

    HumboldtBlue

    @J R in WV:

    I remember having a discussion with my mother about this in mid-80s when we were first really getting a grip on how war fucks people up.

    Her father was gone for four years during the war and she once asked “why didn’t the WW2 vets suffer like the Vietnam vets have post-war” and I responded by telling her they did, we just ignored it.

  175. 175.

    Zelma

    I remember when I was a kid that the sirens would go off at 11:00 on November 11 and, wherever we were, we would stop dead. I remember being on the playground and nobody would move until the siren went off again. This was in the late 40s and early 50s. I’m pretty sure that the same thing happened in offices and factories and stores throughout the country. And Trump couldn’t even get to Arlington on time.

  176. 176.

    Roger Moore

    @Sloane Ranger:

    what I think you’ve got in mind is a Polish cavalry charge during the German invasion of Poland at the start of WWII, which is believed to be the last ever cavalry charge by a unit of a national army ever.

    IIRC, there was a cavalry charge by some US troops in the Philippines during the Japanese invasion, which was a couple of years later.  Still, horse cavalry was clearly on the way out as a serious combat arm as far back as the US Civil War; it just took people way too long to acknowledge it.

  179. 179.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Amir Khalid: 

    They named a unit after a hill resort in Malaya?

    Hadn’t realised there was a place in Malaya called the Cameron Highlands. That’s what I love about this blog, you learn new stuff!!

    In this case though the reference is to a Scottish infantry Regiment originally raised by a chief of Clan Cameron from his own clansman. (Being a clansman in Scotland is not scary or a cause for concern. )

  180. 180.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Roger Moore:

    Still, horse cavalry was clearly on the way out as a serious combat arm as far back as the US Civil War; it just took people way too long to acknowledge it.

    I think that’s taking just a tad far. Cavalry lost a primary combat role in the Civil War but it was still an effective unit for scouting, screening, hit-and-run guerilla warfare (think Indian Wars, Crimea) but I think it was by the time of the Second Boer War it had become obsolete as weaponry and tactics changed and the development of the internal combustion engine.

  181. 181.

    Tony Jay

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m ashamed to say my reading on WWI and its causes has been pretty light, most of the stuff I’ve picked up in passing and from anecdotes. I’ll really have to correct that someday.

    Just think, we’re about as far away from the end of WWI as people at the time were from the end of Napoleon’s Empire.

  182. 182.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: My grandfather had a “good” war.  Nothing too dangerous but enough that he had four battle stars on his European Campaign medal.  But when he came back, he told me, he used to have to go down to some trails by a river bank after work and run until he was exhausted before he could go home to his wife and kids.  Every day.

  186. 186.

    different-church-lady

    @Connor: Yeah, you did the bubble bursting before I had a chance. I record things for a living, and I can tell you all there isn’t a single recording technology that was available in 1918 with that kind of fidelity, and stereo to boot.

  187. 187.

    VOR

    My grandfather was a doughboy in WW1. He went through training and was shipped over to Europe. Story is the ship arrived just after the armistice so they had to get right back on the ship and return to the US, never saw any combat.

  189. 189.

    raven

    From my buddy, 101st Airborne, multiple gunshots from an AK

     

    had a good time killing Vietnamese to help an Imperialist Superpower install a puppet government in a Third World Country against the will of the locals who were only defending their country against foreign invaders. Do not thank me for my service to our country.

  190. 190.

    Sally

    I highly recommend the book by Chris Hill called The Sleepwalkers for a detailed development of the lead up to WW1. Politics, media, military, all mixed in to make this a slow steady march to madness. As someone mentioned earlier, all believed it would be short and sharp, and many young men were keen to join up quickly as they feared missing out! I have several relatives buries in France. Tragedy.

  191. 191.

    Mike G

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7696021.stm

    BBC: The Last Soldiers to Die in WW1

    Pvt Henry Gunther, US Army, killed at 10:59.

    The respected American author Joseph E Persico has calculated a shocking figure that the final day of WWI would produce nearly 11,000 casualties…what is worse is that hundreds of these soldiers would lose their lives thrown into action by generals who knew that the Armistice had already been signed.

    Seeing his troops were exhausted and dirty, and hearing there were bathing facilities available in the nearby town of Stenay, General Wright of the 89th American Division decided to take the town so his men could refresh themselves.

    “That lunatic decision cost something like 300 casualties, many of them battle deaths, for an inconceivable reason,” says Mr Persico.

  193. 193.

    TomatoQueen

    @Tom Levenson: Evil Corp beginning with A lists a bunch of copies in the “used” section, I just found one in “used–very good condition–one tiny flaw”. I am spozed to stick with eBooks owing to the not-enough-shelves v too many books dilemma, but in this case I want to give Newton a companion.

  194. 194.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Roger Moore: It appalls me the number of horses killed in the Civil War.  They were used for everything (pulling wagons, pulling cannons, being ridden by cavalry and officers) and killed in immense numbers in every battle, or so it seems.

  195. 195.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    @Amir Khalid:

    They named a unit after a hill resort in Malaya?

    [Something insulting in Scots Gaelic]

    @HumboldtBlue:

    “why didn’t the WW2 vets suffer like the Vietnam vets have post-war”

    The Pacific theatre was a great boon for the NZ alcohol industry for many decades afterwards.

  196. 196.

    Mike G

    @Sm*t Cl*de:

    The Hell’s Angels are a product of PTSD, formed by 82nd Airborne combat veterans who couldn’t readjust to “normal” civilian life after the war.

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