"I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way."

I've kept a Google alert on my name for as long as there have been Google alerts, and this morning one took me to a Wisconsin Public Radio article: "New exhibit explores Wisconsin veteran contributions after military service/'Traditions: Stories of Service of Country & Community' exhibit at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum showcases how veterans gave back after returning to civilian life."

See my name?

 

That's a photo I published back in 2006, and I'm glad I put a Creative Commons license and made it easy to use without needing to ask. I don't check my email that often, and I'm happy to see the photo getting some eyeballs. I photographed things that other people made, some of it art, some of it utilitarian, so it would be especially absurd to be possessive about what part of this is mine. It makes more sense to claim the sunrise. I didn't even have the power to arrange those items. They were arrayed in a glass case.

Anyway. This morning I focused on that "poster" with the vivid line "I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way." It struck me as anti-war. If you don't know where you're going, stay put. First do no harm. But I learned that the seeming poster was in fact sheet music. And I think it celebrates willingness to do whatever "Uncle Sammy" has in mind. Read the sheet music and listen:

And I'll do my duty-uty night or day/I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way....

I still don't know what Paul Simon and Julio were doing down by the school yard, but there's that line I don't know where I'm going/But I'm on my way:

Of course, it's perfectly acceptable, speaking of copyright, for Paul to lift that line from the 1917 song, but who knows if he did? I see that in 1972, Paul Simon told Rolling Stone, he "never bothered to figure out what it was" that Mama saw him and Julio do down by the schoolyard, because it "didn't make any difference to me." And in 2010, he told the NYT the song was "a bit of inscrutable doggerel." So I'm sure he'd give an obscure answer to the question whether he was inspired by that war/anti-war song.

I like that he used it, if he used it. It's the folk music tradition, something Dylan does too. You patch things together, put them in a new context. It's vital and alive. A good thing.

Meanwhile, there are places on the internet that attribute to Carl Sandburg. I suspect that's one of those misattributions. And speaking of famous names... that really is Mickey Mantle.

The sculptor Sabin Howard said he "studied many images from the war, including paintings like John Singer Sargent’s 'Gassed,' a portrait of soldiers blinded by poison gas."

"'Some of my earlier iterations showed the soldiers … traumatized and wounded by mustard gas,' Howard said. 'But I was asked to take it out because it was too much, too much pain. When I started looking at images online, historical images, I saw how the soldiers and wives and fiancées and girlfriends were human beings. The reference to those photos had a huge impact on me because I saw this was a memorial where you need to remember the humans that partook in this. I like to say it’s for humans, by humans, about humans."

From "25-ton sculpture honoring World War I soldiers comes to Washington/The sculpture will be the centerpiece and final element of Washington’s National World War I Memorial" (WaPo).

The pieces of 58-foot long high-relief sculpture arrived in Washington this past weekend. The 5 tons sections were maneuvered into the park through "hours of careful balancing, rebalancing and moving the pieces to fit just so." Black plastic covers everything now. The “first illumination” ceremony will be on September 13th. 

We will see how close or far it is from John Singer Sargent's "Gassed":

The men are walking like that because they were blinded, but apparently the new monument will not show blinded men, and it will even — or so it sounds — include women. The sculptor seems to imply that the men in Sargent's painting don't seem human. Was a decision made to show soldiers interacting with their wives and fiancées and girlfriends? Is that what makes men human — in government propaganda — the love of a woman? 

"I adore war. It is like a big picnic without the objectlessness of a picnic. I’ve never been so well or so happy."

Wrote the WWI poet Julian Grenfell, quoted in "How the Rich and Poor Once Saw War/In 'Muse of Fire,' Michael Korda depicts the lives and passions of the soldier poets whose verse provided a view into the carnage of World War I" (NYT)(free-access link).

That book review was published last April. I'm reading it today, because I wrote a post that got me researching the phrase "happy warrior."

Here's the book "Muse of Fire" (commission earned). From the book review:

I looked up the Celtic Sea, because it came up in my readings... and I was entranced....

.... by the reviews people had given it in Google Maps. To quote 4:

1. "It was wetter than I expected. Lots of fish swimming about under the surface, if you like that sort of thing."

2. "Very good sea. Compared to other seas, lakes and natural reservoirs it is undoubtedly superior. However, looking at the oceans, we need to admit that Celtic sea is slightly inferior. Nevertheless, it is a great representative of a sea.

3. "Against all the odds it does appear to be a genuine sea! I can confirm the presence of both waves and sky, with the correct one being above the other. Very tricky to get around if you don't have a boat. Minus 1 star."

4. "Lovely spot of water."

***

I was reading "Colonel Roosevelt" (commission earned). This part:

Why is this suddenly happening and hitting the top of the front page of the NYT?

Things that make me paranoid:

From the article:

"Battles went on for months, trapping the combatants in what historian Paul Fussell called a 'troglodyte world' of squalid trenches and endless artillery barrages."

"In his book 'The Great War and Modern Memory,' Fussell calculated that there were 25,000 miles of trench lines on the Western Front, enough to encircle the earth. Between the trenches was the toxic, uninhabitable 'no man’s land,' infected with putrefying corpses, rats and chemical agents, and swept by machine-gun fire.... Some soldiers, called 'Neverendians,' thought the war would go on forever and become 'the permanent condition of mankind,' Fussell wrote, 'like the telephone and the internal combustion engine, a part of the accepted atmosphere of the modern experience.'"

"The day the guns fell silent At 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, bugle calls ended the ‘war to end all wars.’ After four years of carnage, you could hear the ticking of a watch" (WaPo).

A hundred years ago.

The armistice was signed at 5:10 a.m. in a railroad car in the Forest of Compiegne, northeast of Paris, an event described in Persico’s 2004 book, “Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour.”

But it didn’t go into effect until 11 a.m.

All the soldiers had to do was stay alive until then.

“I am as nervous as a kitten,” the British sergeant Cude wrote. “If I can only last out the remainder of the time, and this is everyone’s prayer. I am awfully sorry for those of our chaps who are killed this morning and there must be a decent few of them too.”

Indeed, in some places the war went on insanely right up to 11 a.m....

"They shook hands politely and patted each other on the arm stiffly. Their tight-lipped smiles appeared strained and forced."

"No cheeks were kissed, no friendly rubs were given, none of the bonhomie of their earlier meetings was on display. So much for the bromance. After a promising start, the relationship between President Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France has soured. By the time they met in Paris on Saturday, the trans-Atlantic alliance that was to be showcased by this weekend’s commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I appeared to be fraying instead.... It did not help on Saturday that Mr. Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood was fought. Aides cited the rain; the Marines who pilot presidential helicopters often recommend against flying in bad weather. But that did not convince many in Europe who saw it as an excuse and another sign of disrespect. Ben Rhodes, who was deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, dismissed the explanation. 'I helped plan all of President Obama’s trips for 8 years,' he tweeted. 'There is always a rain option. Always.' Mr. Trump will have another chance to pay respects to the war dead on Sunday with a scheduled visit to the Suresnes American Cemetery outside Paris following the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe marking the anniversary of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. But he will not stay for a Paris peace forum that Mr. Macron is sponsoring to bring together world leaders to discuss ways to avoid conflict."

From "Bonhomie? C’est Fini as Trump and Macron Seek to Defuse Tension" (NYT).

ADDED: Presumably, "There is always a rain option" because the President could be in a dangerous situation — an attack or a health crisis — and flying under dangerous conditions would be the least bad option. You need the option worked out, but then there's a balance of risks. I don't know how the risks looked on the ground yesterday and how the pros and cons were balanced. How much weight is put on the optics of a public ceremony? How much weight was put on the discomfort and health risk of standing in the (cold?) rain for X hours? It did make me think of the President who died from standing in the cold rain.

"A copy of Lithuania’s lost declaration of independence, drawn up in 1918, has been discovered languishing in a German archive...."

"Lithuania had lost track of all copies of the independence declaration, signed on 16 February 1918, in the turmoil that engulfed the region after the end of the first world war. The Lithuanian state was announced with the approval of Germany, whose army controlled the territory at the time, following a successful offensive against the Russian empire in 1915." 

Lithuania was already planning to mark its 100th anniversary, keen to assert its independence in the face of what it sees as renewed aggression from Russia. Memories are still fresh of Lithuania’s emergence from Soviet occupation in the 1990s.

100 years ago today — the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

"The first day on the Somme (1 July) saw a serious defeat for the German Second Army, which was forced out of its first position by the French Sixth Army...."

The attack was made by five divisions of the French Sixth Army either side of the Somme, eleven British divisions of the Fourth Army north of the Somme to Serre and two divisions of the Third Army opposite Gommecourt, against the German Second Army of General Fritz von Below. The German defence south of the Albert–Bapaume road mostly collapsed and the French had "complete success" on both banks of the Somme, as did the British from the army boundary at Maricourt to the Albert–Bapaume road. On the south bank the German defence was made incapable of resisting another attack and a substantial retreat began; on the north bank the abandonment of Fricourt was ordered. The defenders on the commanding ground north of the road inflicted a huge defeat on the British infantry, who had an unprecedented number of casualties. Several truces were negotiated, to recover wounded from no man's land north of the road.

On this one day: "The Fourth Army took 57,470 casualties, of which 19,240 men were killed, the French Sixth Army had 1,590 casualties and the German 2nd Army had 10,000–12,000 losses."

I wondered why Megyn Kelly didn't probe into what Trump saw in "Citizen Kane" and "All Quiet on the Western Front."

She asked what was his favorite movie and his favorite book and never stopped to ask why. I wanted to know more. A reader sent me this, footage from an Errol Morris project that became a short at the 2002 Oscars. Various celebrities talked about film. Trump's material didn't make the final cut, but he talks quite a bit about "Citizen Kane":



He says a rich man can be unhappy — even more unhappy than his wife — because wealth can distance you and insulate you from other people. He also says the right word matters — that "Kane" wouldn't be the same without that word "rosebud." He does not take what I hear as a prod to talk about the oft-discussed sexual connotation of "rosebud."

Here's a 2002 New Yorker article about the Errol Morris project, with this about Trump:

"In the small village of Bélâbre in central France sits the room of Hubert Rochereau, untouched for nearly a century..."

"... as a memorial to the fallen solider, who died during World War I."

"The writer H. G. Wells is often credited with coining the description of the conflict as 'the war that will end war'..."

"... the title of an essay that became a jingoistic catchphrase, 'the war to end all wars.' As the conflict drew to a close, a more cynical view overtook that sentiment when David Lloyd George, the British prime minister at the time, is said to have remarked: 'This war, like the next war, is a war to end war.'"

From "On Centenary of World War I, Europe Sees Modern Parallels."

"Today, if something like that happened, the vehicles would race away from the scene as fast as they could... But not in 1914."

"This was European nobility at the turn of the century."

Nedeljko Cabrinovic... threw a bomb and missed, wounding an official in the motorcade behind the archduke. Franz Ferdinand ordered the driver to stop. He got out and walked back to inspect the damage and the wounded people....

"It is not to be supposed that the death of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand will have any immediate or salient effect on the politics of Europe."

Written 100 years ago in The Guardian.

And for The Annals of Just How Wrong You Can Be.

"Many soldiers enjoyed WW1. If they were lucky they would avoid a big offensive..."

"... and much of the time, conditions might be better than at home. For the British there was meat every day - a rare luxury back home - cigarettes, tea and rum, part of a daily diet of over 4,000 calories. Absentee rates due to sickness, an important barometer of a unit's morale were, remarkably, hardly above peacetime rates. Many young men enjoyed the guaranteed pay, the intense comradeship, the responsibility and a much greater sexual freedom than in peacetime Britain."

#10 ("Everyone hated it") from a list at BBC.com of myths about WWI.

"Sanguinary."

Writing the previous post, quoting the original Armistice Day proclamation, fixing on the word "sanguinary," I noticed that I had not looked a word up in the Oxford English Dictionary in a long time. Of course, I know that "sanguinary" means bloody, but what would motivate anyone to use the word "sanguinary," instead of "bloody"?

One reason is that "bloody" "has long had taboo status, and for many speakers constituted the strongest expletive available... Following the original use in England, Scotland, and Ireland, the sense spread to most other parts of the English-speaking world, with the notable exception of the United States, where it has apparently only ever achieved limited currency, e.g. among sailors during the 19th cent." (I'm quoting the OED, which I cannot link.)

So, "sanguinary" is a useful word for avoiding offense to those who take offense, and the OED even officially defines "sanguinary" — at definition #4, slang — as "a jocular euphemism for bloody adj., n., and adv., in reports of vulgar speech." Examples:

1800   S. T. Coleridge Coll. Lett. (1956) I. 564   This Extract breathed the spirit of the most foul & sanguinary Aristocracy—& depend upon it, Sheridan is a thorough-paced bad man!
1890   R. Kipling in Macmillan's Mag. LXI. 155/1   This is sanguinary. This is unusual sanguinary. Sort o' mad country....
1910   G. B. Shaw Lett. to Granville Barker (1956) 168   The inhabitants raise up their voices and call one another sanguinary liars.

I'm not suggesting that Woodrow Wilson, in his original Armistice Day proclamation, intended to attach the suggestion of an obscenity to "war" — the noun modified by "sanguinary" — though it is common enough to call war an obscenity.

The first meaning for "sanguinary" is "Attended by bloodshed; characterized by slaughter; bloody," and the second is "Bloodthirsty; delighting in carnage." The first meaning for "bloody" is "Containing blood; composed or consisting of blood; resembling blood," which, interestingly, is less emotive than the original meaning of "sanguinary." So "sanguinary" can be considered more apt — quite aside from any desire to avoid a frisson of obscenity.

"Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals..."

"... and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and..."

... it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.... the President of the United States is... inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

Today is Veterans Day, the original observance — based on the text — demonstrating friendly relations with all other peoples.

What would be an appropriate ceremony of friendly relations with all other peoples?

"And finally we arrive at the Italian Charnel House. Mussolini had it built in 1938 to honor the fallen Italian soldiers from the awful war..."

"... (Kobarid was in these years under Italian rule). As if there would be no other war. As if Kobarid was heading toward a peaceful era, where one could look back and reflect on the horror of past aggressions. Mussolini had moved the remains of 7014 known and unknown Italian soldiers who lost their lives in the Soca Front — taking them from local military cemeteries and honoring them here, in this house of corpses. We walk slowly around the edifice, reading the names, understanding the pain that each death caused to those left behind, feeling the irony of this Mussolini gesture and the exclusive pride in the Italian sacrifice, ignoring the pain felt, too, by Slovenian people who lost lives as well, in addition to losing pasture lands, cattle, a livelihood that had been very much centered on the mountains towering over the Soca River."

Much more here, with photographs, from the mountains of Slovenia.

"The Government is never slow to say that Hitler was to blame for the Second World War."

"I think the Government is very frightened of taking any sort of view that might suggest we upset the Germans all over again."

"On the British Government's side at the moment what they call the non-judgmental approach seems to me that they are not willing to say outright what the historians I most respect believe, which is the First World War was not morally different from the Second World War, it was an unspeakable experience for Europe and the British people but it was for a cause worth fighting."