Despite working on them most of the weekend, I burned out a few rows before the finish of the Weasley Homestead socks. I'll probably finish them before break, just not today.
I also re-started reading "Guns of August," a highly-lauded Barbara Tuchman history of the beginning days of World War I. I started this last year and stalled out. I admit it, I have some difficulties with the history of World War I. It was not well-taught, I think, in grade school American history. I know much more about World War II, though that may be in part because one of my history teachers was a WWII buff, and also possibly it was more heavily taught. I suppose the "narrative" of WWII as a "just" war for the US to have participated in makes more sense, especially when you're teaching a grade-school crowd. And also, they may have emphasized WWII, knowing pretty well that some of the kids likely had grandparents who had served. (In my family - my parents were about 10 years older than most of my peers' parents, having chosen to start a family later, and their parents were older than many of their own peers' parents - I had a great-uncle who served in WWI (my grandfather on that side would already have been close to the upper limit for conscription) and on the other side, my grandfather had been an experimental Army Air Corps pilot, but he never saw overseas service.
(and as an aside: now how I wish I had paid better attention - or he had been more forthcoming with stories of his service. He died when I was eight and now I wish I knew more about his time as a pilot. I do think my one uncle has his diaries and is trying to put them in a more-readable narrative format, so maybe someday I will get a chance to read them)
Anyway, I knew relatively little of WWI other than some isolated facts. For example, I remember one teacher commenting on how the Germans had perfected some kind of synchronization device so they could forward-mount the guns on their planes and fire *through* the propellor blades mid-spin, rather than the rear or wing-mounts of the British planes. And I remember that was the war of the Red Baron, though frankly, the Red Baron makes me think more of Snoopy pretending to be a WWI flying ace than anything.
And I knew that it was trench warfare, and from the sense I got from the history classes it was mostly brutal and miserable, and it seemed a lot of the men didn't really understand what they were fighting for and why - it seemed that it was more a war for the glory of the officers than anything. (Though perhaps in any war, a lot of the enlisted men get to the point where they either don't know or have forgotten what they're fighting for, and it just becomes a matter of marking off days until the next leave or until they can muster out).
And I remember hearing about the poison gas, how inhumane it was, how much suffering it caused.
(And on a more humane side: I've read of the Christmas Truce, when German and British troops briefly ceased hostilities to celebrate the holiday - a game of soccer was played, and carols sung....and yet, the next day, they went back to shooting each other.)
And I read a lot of the poetry - WWI produced a lot of poetry, most of what is in the anthologies today seems to underlie the idea that the ordinary fighting man didn't really understand - the Irish Airman foreseeing his death, for example, or that Wilfred Owen poem that ends with a mention of "...that old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori" (And of course, many of the poets saw service themselves; some, like Owen, never actually returned.)
And I read "All Quiet on the Western Front" in high school, and saw the old movie (I think it was called "Grand Illusion"?) about the two deserters. And the interesting thing is, in none of those cases do you really come to understand - or at least, did I really come to understand - the reason why the war was fought.
And I think the way a lot of history is taught in the schools maybe affects this. It's hard - or maybe educators just think it's hard, and so don't try - to teach nuance to schoolkids. I always remember that "WWI started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand" but it seems much more - from what I've read of the Tuchman book - to be the Germans wanting too expand, and violating Belgium's neutrality on their way to try marching into Paris.
(I think of the old episode of the Simpsons, where Apu was trying to earn US citizenship. He had very nearly passed the test when the examiner asked him about the cause of the Civil War. He started into a discussion of states' rights, and the bored examiner looks at him and says, "Say 'slavery.'" That's also kind of how it's taught in the schools...)
So anyway, I'm trying to fill in that gap in my education. I admit it is slow and sometimes difficult going - almost none of the names are familiar (the way the names from WWII would be) and also, there are names that sound German but are actually of French generals or other officers, and likewise, French-sounding names of Germans.
But because I'm maybe too good at trying to see the connections between things, I feel the need to go on - to understand. Because it's the war my Great-Uncle Burt (even though I never met him) was an infantryman in (and he was one of the lucky ones; he got to come home) and was the war my grandfather was training for, even if it ended before he saw service.
And also, though I understand that I really CAN'T learn everything, still, I'd like to try. So I'm trying to set aside goodly chunks of time to read on the book (it seems to get more traction on my brain that way), and I'm going to take it with me on break and try to actually finish it this time.
3 comments:
There is, I think, a definite tendency in History As She Is Taught these days to fuzz up the origins of conflicts, since today's modern and sophisticated thinker realizes that there is only one cause of war - an imbalance of power - and once everybody is on the same playing field there won't be any problems like this anymore.
This is, of course, several bagsful of hooey, but it's a religion with some people, and mocking people's religion is simply Not Done, unless it involves something weird like, oh, believing in God.
You might also be interested in another book where WWI figures prominently: *Goodbye to All That*--an autobiographical book by the poet Robert Graves.
What actually helped me get WWI, the War to End All Wars, was a Time-Life series of documentaries I found at the library.
And regrettably for the schoolkids, WWI is rather a war of "you can't to THAT to my little brother" on a level of nations. The causes are subtle and polemic; built around pacts and treaties.
Archduke Ferdie was iced, which made Germany mad, who marched through Belgium which stepped on France's toes . . . and then the posturing sort of blew up. The pushing and shoving match on the playground escalated into zip guns in the hallways, as it were.
And maybe if it were taught that way, kids could get it. We can relate at fairly early ages to how you don't do THAT to my friend, and how cliques get into pissing matches over things that could be resolved with much less bloodshed.
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