Tag: WWI

Tales of War

~ Meg ~ 44 Comments

Gathering dust and clinging webs
The attic cache lies in wait
Trunks and boxes long untouched
The time has come to investigate

Sepia photos, cracked and faded
Sticking pages, broken binding
Letters home, bound with twine
The tales of war, I am finding

Peruse the pictures, study the faces
So full of youthful determination
His postures straight, those twinkling eyes
Would soon be witness to an extermination

Ravaged, disfigured, lungs burned by gas
Returned to England, the war barely survived
Haunted by nightmares, wracked by cough
This broken man came home to die

War upon his sweetheart, laid the burden
Tore away the chance for a happy life
For the babe that quickened in 1914
Was all that he left his beloved wife

(Header image: The Ypres Salient at Night – Paul Nash, artist)

Y is for Ypres #atozchallenge

~ Meg ~ 28 Comments

In Flanders’ fields, the war was staged
The trench lines dug, the barbed wire caged
At Ypres each day
The Last Post is played
To honor the missing, at Menin Gate

Every evening since 1928 the Last Post has been played under the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres at 8 o’clock sharp. Since then it has been played over 30,000 times.

 

IMG_1088
My photo:  Menin Gate, Ypres, Belgium

 

Below is Tyne Cot Cemetary, where 11,956 soldiers are buried, of which 8,369 are unnamed.

 

V is for Verdun #atozchallenge

~ Meg ~ 20 Comments

Nineteen-sixteen, The Battle of Verdun
Two vast armies, French and German
The ferocious bombardment
Buried men in the trenches
The bleakest battle of World War One

From spring to winter of 1916, the German and French armies remained locked in combat at Verdun, expending hundreds of thousands of lives in a sustained battle.  In the end, France could claim a defensive victory, but a huge price had been paid.  – The Smithsonian; Visual History of World War One

French Casualties:  315,000–542,000 (156,000–162,000 killed) February–December 1916

German Casualties:  281,000–434,000 (c. 143,000 killed) February–December 1916

“Certainly humanity has gone mad!  It must be mad to do what it’s doing.  Such slaughter! Such scenes of horror and carnage!  — Lieutenant Alfred Joubaire, diary entry at Verdun, May 22,1916

I am intensely interested in the history of the Great War.  My great-grandfather fought with the Scottish regiments in France.  He suffered from the lingering effects of the gas attacks and died early as a result.  I’ve been compiling research that will eventually go into a novel I’m working on.  Parts of it have been published here on my blog.  There is much more to come.