On 11.11.11 at 11.00, this is a guest post from friend and neighbour Emma Anderson who recently went on a tour of Great War sites of conflict and remembrance.
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| Transcribed on a 1916 Corona 3 |
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| No mans land. Going over the top, Thiepval |
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| Someone's son. French German and British unknown soldiers' graves |
Thank you Emma for the words and the pictures.
Impressive. In class, I'm currently reading "Private Peaceful" in English (WW1) and "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder" (A play from Brecht, german autor, which had its premiere 1941) in German about the Thirty Years' War.
ReplyDeleteWell-written post, on an age-appropriate typewriter. It is a good day to reflect on war, and peace.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this guest post.
ReplyDeleteThat line from Julian Grenfell has always struck me as rather heartless, but it's from a letter to his mother, and I suppose, like most soldiers on active service, he was trying to allay the anxieties of his family. And it was very early in the war. What might he have written about the war if he had survived to the point where it became impossible to regard it as a picnic?
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right about All Quiet. Lots of books are said to be "anti-war", but it is one of the few that truly is, and precisely because of the scene from which you quoted: the death of a French soldier in a shell-hole. Remarque says not "War was dreadful for me" but "War was dreadful for all of us - the enemy as much as me."
" ... one of the few that truly are ... "
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