Just so we're clear here? Francois is a resident of this forum.

So on the subject of the Germans finally getting their decisive battle of annihilation at Tannenberg. Had Von-Francois 'followed ' orders the germans would certainly have spanked the Russians hard and driven their army back. The beauty of the general staff system and its manner of education is that it allowed folks like this to be winnowed out and risen up. They knew the "intent" of the order and the desire to annihilate. So Von-Francois was 'dis-obeying' orders but acting within overall intent.

---

Steve

Your recall of course that H&L basically inherited the entire plan for Tannenberg--from the Chief of the General Staff who was in place there at the time, COL Max Hoffman. Not near as sexy as Francois is it? Hoffman is a real piece of work but he was professional and knew his business. Still, it took vonFrancois out there on the southern wing (on his own) to exercise the initiative as the local commander on the scene to 'disobay' orders and do what he did. That's what brought about the modern Cannae that the Prussian so sought.

---

Steve

Noted. Von-francois.

The over-arching perception, is from the rhein land, alsace through the North Sea to the Falklands thousands died and to what end. What a miserable experience. (I'm sure wars generally are miserable but this seems relentless.)

Anyway, off to the Russian front

Just finish before midnight when we roll the course up and take the speakers and finish line down---eh?

---

Steve

Unfortunately that's unlikely....... But I'm on it....

you know I'm speaking metaphorically here right? All y'all take as long as you need to finish the book and I will answer questions as best i can or give you best historical "this is what we think" answers. Sometimes there's just no answer?


sometimes I feel like on the second lap in IMFL down in St Andrews State Park in the dark. Just my feet slapping the pavement and i think "why the fuck am i doing this?"


*for years i had a article i posted on the wall of what ever office i occupied. i think it was from S. Molina. I know it was from the old "Inside Triathlon" and it was about you & the inner argument you have with yourself and to just press on.*

Triathlon has served me well as a person and it served to make me a better light infantry airborne ranger guy.


respectfully

---

Steve

still working my way through -- loved the section on how airplane technology evolved -- still can't fathom the mechanics of a Fokker but super impressive all the same. Bet the guys in the zeppelins were very ill at ease once planes could get high enough to take their shots.

Two years ago my husbands' cousins and their families got together in Chateau-Thierry to retrace the steps of their grandfather, who enlisted in the US army (Pennsylvania reserves?) as a young immigrant from Greece who saw an opportunity to learn English and get three squares a day. He was wounded but not very badly, and sang songs about his French nurse till the end of his days.

We hired an excellent guide to the battlefield who moved us through their manoeuvres. The best part (apart from the monument itself, stunning) was going down to the creek below the treeline and hunting for balls and shrapnel, of which there was plenty.

It's incredible country (all the great champagne houses are in nearby Eperney), a quick and easy trip from Paris. Recommend it highly when we can travel again.

Great pics and input!

You recall reading about the totally senseless back and forth along the Isonzo River on the Italian Front right? Well, a young Italian air power enthusiast saw that too and was convinced that Air Power offered a "solution" to the senselessness of trench warfare.

Giulo Douhet became the father of modern air power theory. Victory thru air power. No need to send you sons off to fight and die in the slime and mud. You just send your bomber fleet over your opponents city and firebomb and gas them from above.

Victory thru Air Power baby!

One of his leading disciples was a guy name of Billy Mitchell. and the rest, as they say, is history.

**growing up i recall reading one of the books my Dad had on his bookshelf. Eddy Rickenbacker's Fighting the Flying Circus. Memoirs of one of America's first aces and how he went up against the Fockers of von Richtoffen's flying circus. Going after artillery spotting balloons or zeppelins was a good way to get killed apparently. A few guys made a specialty of it but a lot of guys got killed going after what looked like a easy target.**

---

Steve

As Jane has made plain---I am out of my depth when treading upon English literature. Yet here I go. Probing with my old bayonet as i advance into this minefield

The Dead

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
the Larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce hear amid the guns below
McCrae, 1915

So a romantic view of sacrifice and a romantic view of the dead. Versus a new perspective of poppies and nature and a unromantic dead

Break of Day in the Trenches

What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurried through still heavens?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are every dropping:
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.


Issac Rosenberg, 1918

and as we approach Veterans Day here in the States let us take a look at the transition of the view of Sacrifice

The Dead

Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead!
There's none of these so lonely and poor of old,
But dying, has made us rarer gifts of gold.
These laid the world away; poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be
Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene
That men call age; and those who would have been
Their sons, they game, their immortality
Rupert Brooke in 1914

versus

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the the suttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisions.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from their sad shires

Wilfred Owen, 1917

Lastly let us look at "Home" since it is what we all seek in time of trouble

The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of of foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her wasy to roam,
A body of Englands, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by sones of home

Rupert Brooke, 1914


yet this romantic view of home shifts to a growing hatred of those at home!?

Fight to a Finish

The boys came back, Bands played an flags were flying,
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit streets
To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying
And hear the music of returning feet.
"Of all the thrills and ardous War has brought.
This moment is the finest * (So they thought)


Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
At last the boys had found a cushy job


I heard the Yellow Pressman grunt and squeal,
And with my trusty bombers turned and went
To clear those Junkers out of Parliament

Seigried Sasson, 1917


Wilfred Owen is the most poignant of these poets for me. What a command of the language. He was wounded and could have convalesced and lasted the war like J.R.R. Tolkien. But Owen was a man of his convictions so he went back to the front to serve. And for his honor and sense of duty---he was shot dead in one of the last months of a senseless war.



take good care

---

Steve

 
Fight to a Finish

The boys came back, Bands played an flags were flying,
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit streets
To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying
And hear the music of returning feet.
"Of all the thrills and ardous War has brought.
This moment is the finest * (So they thought)


Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
At last the boys had found a cushy job


I heard the Yellow Pressman grunt and squeal,
And with my trusty bombers turned and went
To clear those Junkers out of Parliament

Seigried Sasson, 1917

savage.


Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the the suttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisions.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from their sad shires

Wilfred Owen, 1917

I didn't understand "mockeries" here and looked it up. The archaic meaning is "ludicrously futile action." As if to say the usual funeral prayers and bells are insufficient to mourn these dead men walking. They die to something grander in sound and scope, stuttering guns and wailing shells and bugles. This poem feels on a knife edge of being in awe of these sounds and horrified by them. It's a good place for a poem to be.

The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of of foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her wasy to roam,
A body of Englands, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by sones of home

Rupert Brooke, 1914

Brooke's pulling a fast one -- that little corner of England in a foreign field is some poor guy's corpse. But the language is so beautiful and fluent that you don't dwell on that but on the images of them in life. I suppose this would give great comfort to those at home who lost sons, but I think I like the savage stuff better.

Break of Day in the Trenches

What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurried through still heavens?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in men's veins
Drop, and are every dropping:
But mine in my ear is safe,
Just a little white with the dust.

Issac Rosenberg, 1918

this one is most interesting because I feel like I understand it the least. I think the first poppies are drops of blood, but the second one? hmm quite creepy actually


thanks Steve for the chance to think about these poems, especially in the lead up to the 11th. I can totally see how Tolkein got his imagery of torn up trees and evil forges from these landscapes. The shire as a sweet protective earthwork . . . may have to read it again, that would be another good book for the forum. Would love to hear what others think about the poems.

=

---

Steve

Ms K

One can certainly 'see' how Tolkien got his view of things from The Great War and how industrialization was grinding that part of England under that he most cherished.

In terms of mockeries. I've always taken that to be something akin to what you often read on here. "Thoughts and Prayers" kind of assertion. It's meant kindly but is really a mockery of the prayers and hopes of those that are doing the fighting and dieing--and those waiting home for them.


take good care

---

Steve