Armistice Day One Hundred Years Later

Welcome Home Our Gallant Boys

Loretta reports:

Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I—known as the Great War and the War to End War, until only a couple of decades later, when another great war broke out.

World War I was a horrendous war, even by war’s horrendous standards, as Wilfred Owen’s poetry makes more than clear. His war isn’t heroic or romantic. It’s ghastly and heartbreaking. For a time, his work fell out of favor for this reason. But only for a time.

An English professor introduced me to "Anthem for Doomed Youth" fifty or so years after it was written, at a time when it struck a chord with those protesting the Vietnam War. Owen’s and others’ poetry led me, some years later, to Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That, which offered insights into both the war and that generation of Englishmen. Unlike Owen, Graves survived.

For me, these works and others began an education that continues. Visits to English and Scottish churches, stately homes, and memorials have given me a powerful sense of the toll this particular war took on the other side of the Atlantic.

Anthem for Doomed Youth 1917

We keep hoping, but so far, no war has ended war. All we seem to be able to do is mourn and remember. The Tower of London remembers, beautifully and movingly, again this year, as you will discover if you search “Beyond the Deepening Shadow,” for images from the centenary commemoration.

Wilfred Owen

Images: Welcome Home Our Gallant Boys, 1918 poster, courtesy courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA; "Anthem for Doomed Youth" and photograph of Wilfred Owen from Poems by Wilfred Owen, 1920.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption link will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed. And, just so you know, if you order a book through one of my posts, I might get a small share of the sale.

Friday Video: Getting Dressed during World War One: A VAD Nurse

Susan reporting,

Our friends at Crow's Eye Productions have ventured into the 20thc for this video. Featured in this video are the nurses who served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) run by the British Red Cross Society during World War One. The VAD was a voluntary unit of civilians who provided nursing care to British military personnel; the majority of the volunteers were women and girls from the middle and upper classes who wished to contribute to the war effort. While most of these volunteers (over 60,000 by 1918) lacked the medical training of professional nurses, by the war's end many had proven that they were not mere "society ladies."  They served bravely and competently not only in auxiliary hospitals at home and in the field, but as ambulance drivers and cooks as well.

The accomplishments of the VAD are especially impressive in light of their uniforms - no easy-care scrubs here! This video shows the staggering amount of clothing that these women were expected to wear as they performed their duties. In time the war would mark a dramatic shift in the role of modern women and how they dressed, but these uniforms clearly belong more to the Edwardian era than to the 1920s flappers.

An additional note: the video was filmed on location at Stanhope Hall, Horncastle, the site of a former VAD Hospital.

Many thanks to producer and costumer Pauline Loven for sharing this video with us!

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Remembering Lieutenant Davitt

1st Lt William F. Davitt

Loretta reports;

On Saturday we’ll be commemorating the 99th anniversary of the end of World War I. At 11 AM on 11 November 1918, an Armistice was in effect, ending the Great War with Germany.

Initially, the annual commemoration was called Armistice Day. Sadly, that armistice didn’t mark an end to all wars, and after WWII, the name, in the U.S., changed to Veterans Day, to recognize all war veterans. Elsewhere, the name of the holiday is different, but the theme of remembrance remains.

Our local newspaper called my attention to one of the last men to be killed in action in WWI—minutes before the 11AM ceasefire.  First Lt. William F. Davitt, the Chaplain of the 125th Infantry, was a graduate of Worcester’s Holy Cross College. An extraordinarily brave man, he earned a Distinguished Service Medal, a Croix de Guerre with palm, and a Silver Star Citation.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Worcester has squares, with memorial markers, dedicated to its veterans.* Lt. Davitt’s is one I pass nearly every day during my walk. I didn’t know his story, though, until I saw this newspaper article, and recognized the name—because, yes, I often pause at these memorial markers and re-read the inscriptions, as a kind of remembrance.

There’s more about him at this website of the VFW post named in his honor.

His foot locker is here.

And there’s a detailed picture of the last months of battle as well as his particular story at the 32nd “Red Arrow Veteran” Association site (please scroll down to “FINIS LA GUERRE!”). If you take the time to find and read it, you'll understand how he earned those medals.

*At one point you could find photographs of all the memorial squares at this website, but the links do not seem to be working. You can see two examples on the home page, though.

Photograph: 1st Lt. William F. Davitt, photo credit: State Library of Massachusetts
Photograph: Davitt Square memorial plaque is by me.

Friday Video: The Belle Époque—A Beautiful Life Once Upon a Time

Loretta reports:

Many of us are aware that WWI was the end of an era. Life changed everywhere, and it was, among so many other things, the beginning of the end of the great aristocratic houses with their armies of servants. While the houses remained, at least for a time, the way of life was gone, as were millions of young men.

This beautiful video uses paintings to show something of what was lost and why the era has been called the Belle Époque. But let’s remember that Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age, referring to surface beauty. Like other eras, it had a dark side.

For now, though, let’s focus on the beauty of these paintings, so seamlessly brought together in a panorama.

You can see the individual paintings here.

And here you’ll find, along with the video, more pictures as well as a summary.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Armistice Day - Veterans Day - Remembrance Day

Welcome Home

Loretta reports:

THE SCHOOLS AND ARMISTICE DAY

THE schools are asked to give special attention to the celebration of Armistice Day, in an appeal issued by J. J. Tigert, United States commissioner of education. Dr. Tigert says:

November 11, Armistice Day,* will become more historic as the years pass, and it will take its place with the Fourth of July, the Twenty-second of February and other epochal days in American history.‘ This day marked the hour of democracy’s triumph over autocracy and the end of a war that many hoped might end wars. It marked the opening of a great conference in the city of Washington last year which made much progress toward limitation of armaments and toward the substitution of reason for force in the settlement of international disputes.

Wars and destruction spread rapidly. Peace and constructive enterprises require time for consummation. Years of education, gradual development of better understanding, the slow substitution of sympathy for suspicion, the eradication of selfishness and lust for power—all these and more must be brought into the hearts and minds of the peoples of the world before we can have enduring peace.

The schools are the great mills through which we must grind the grist of peace and where those qualities of human character which will bring about the sway of righteousness, justice and reason can best be developed. It seems well, therefore, for our schools to put emphasis upon armistice day as a day of special observance, not only in memory of those heroic soldiers who defended our liberty, but as a day for fostering sentiments of peace.—School & Society, Volume 16, Society for the Advancement of Education, 1922

*At 11AM on 11 November  1918 the Allied Powers and Germany signed a ceasefire agreement, which brought the Great War to an end. Since, sadly, it turned out not to be the only Great War of the century, its name changed to World War I.

Image above: Welcome home our gallant boys  (1918), courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Image below: Photo of a veterans square memorial in Worcester, MA. The plaques (not actually blue, as you can see here—but this is the way my new camera photographed it) appear on granite pedestals at intersections throughout the city. 

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

From the Archives: Helen Vincent, Viscountess D'Abernon, an Intrepid Woman

Isabella reporting,

Dipping one more time into our archives....The current exhibition of John Singer Sargent portraits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art reminded me of this post about one of his more fascinating - and beautiful - sitters. 

I've always been intrigued by the elegant fin-de-siecle portraits of John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). While it's easy to dismiss his sitters as empty Edwardian society ladies, not all of them fall into this category. One of the most beautiful was also one of the more interesting: Helen Venetia Duncombe Vincent, Vicountess D'Abernon (1866-1954).

Daughter of the Earl of Feversham, Helen's beauty was extraordinary, and when she married the equally handsome financier and diplomat Sir Edgar Vincent (1857-1941) in 1890, she soon became a celebrated London hostess. To some she was "by reason of her outstanding beauty, intelligence and charm, one of the most resplendent figures" of her age; a far less flattering description by architect Edwin Lutyens called her "a lovely Easter egg with nothing inside, terribly dilettante and altogether superficial."

The truth must have been somewhere in between. As Sir Edgar rose both in the financial world as an international banker and as an ambassador in diplomatic corps, Helen helped further his position by serving as his hostess and as a patroness to English artists and museums. She also welcomed the leading intellectual figures to her salon, including American writers Henry James and Edith Wharton and prominent statesmen George Curzon and Arthur Balfour. She was also drawn to the romantic history of her namesake Venice, and at her urging the Vincents purchased the Palazzo Giustiniani on the Grand Canal. It was here, during an extended visit, that Sargent painted the bravura portrait, above left, in 1904, and made the sketch, right. As isn't always the case, the beauty in the portraits was real, as seen in the stylish photograph of Helen from 1906, lower right.

But when the glory days of Edwardian England collapsed with the onset of the First World War, Helen didn't retreat to the safety of her country estates. Instead she took the unusual step for an aristocratic lady of training as a nurse anaesthetist (anesthesiologist), and served with the Red Cross in Europe, often in risky makeshift circumstances close to the front. She acquired a reputation as the fearless, unflinching lady in the operating room, and treated thousands of patients.

Although she returned to civilian life at Sir Edgar's side after the war, traveling with him through Germany while he was the British Ambassador to the Weimar Republic, it was her own wartime contribution that she believed was her greatest personal accomplishment. In 1946, she published a book of her experiences drawn from her diary, Red Cross and Berlin Embassy, 1915-1926: Extracts from the Diaries of Viscountess D'Abernon. Fascinating reading!

Above left: Lady Helen Vincent, Viscountess D'Abernon, John Singer Sargent, 1904, Birmingham Museum of Art
Right: Lady Helen Vincent, John Singer Sargent, 1905, York City Art Gallery
Lower left: Lady Helen Vincent, photograph by Lionel de Rothschild, c. 1906, copyright Solent News & Photo Agency

Memorial Day Peace Day

The Colors

Loretta reports:

From The Stars and Stripes, a Memorial Day poem* inspired by Siegfried Sassoon’s “Together.”

~~~

Friday, May 30, 1919

Memorial Day

“I shall forget him in the morning light;
And while we gallop on he will not speak;
But at the stable door he’ll say good-night.”—Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-attack: And Other Poems

It isn’t quite the same as it used to be; the dark stallions, the pale faces, the black pomp of despair of civilian days. There’s a new feeling toward death, a better understanding. It is not longer strange and mysterious; it has moved among us; it has struck suddenly, mercifully, often.

We left him perhaps without a handshake when he piled into a camion and rolled away, or when we crawled out of the fox-hole he was just gone; or maybe we didn’t hear about it at all until long afterward because, Armywise, he had been transferred and we hadn’t.

And while we didn’t think about it then—things were happening mercifully fast and furious and we couldn’t think at all—now we have assembled our thoughts and decided what we were really fighting for, and so it all seems a part of the plan, loss as well as victory, death as sure as discharge.

So he will be with us, not in the busy rush of the life we’ll take up again, but quietly at the day’s end—living and real; for his going from us was unmarred by the harsh convention of civilian death, and quite cheerily, across the golden shadows, we’ll answer his good-night.
—The Stars and Stripes, Friday, May 30, 1919

*Author unknown—unless you have some info on this.

Image: The Colors, from Memorial Day Peace Day Circular (Illinois. Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction), Department of Public Instruction, 1920

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Do English Gentlemen Make Good Husbands?

General George S. Patton

Loretta reports:

General George S. Patton was a complicated, controversial man.  His military career, however, is not our topic.  The Two Nerdy History Girls focus on social history—people and their everyday lives, mainly—rather than politics and wars.  If you want more information about his triumphs and his not-so-stellar moments, you’ll find an abundance of material online, along with the many thousands of pages written about him.

Instead, I present him here between the wars (during the 1920s) as a father, explaining his reasons for declining a position in London in the office of the military attaché:

“We have two marriageable daughters who ... will be rich someday.  If we go to London it stands to reason that one or both of them will marry an Englishman.  Englishmen, well-bred Englishmen, are the most attractive bastards in the world, and they always need all the money they can lay their hands on to keep up the castle, or the grouse moor, or the stud farm, or whatever it is they have inherited.  I served with the British in the war*, and I heard their talk.  They are men’s men, and they are totally inconsiderate of their wives and daughters; everything goes to their sons, nothing to the girls.  I just can’t see Little Bee, or Ruth Ellie in that role.  Someday, just tell them what I did for them and maybe they won’t think I’m such an old bastard after all.”—Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War
*The Great War/WWI

Image:  George S. Patton signed photo by U.S. Army. Scanned from a file in Patton's personnel record available at the Military Personnel Records Center

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday video: Aristocrats of the Downton Abbey era

Alken, In and Out Clever

Loretta reports:

This short piece, part of a series exploring the changes the aristocracy underwent in the period between the wars, offer a glimpse of the reality behind the world of Downton Abbey.

Image: Henry Alken, In and out Clever, Courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection, Gift of Francis P. Garvan, B.A. 1897 (for Whitney Sporting Art Collection in memory of Harry Payne Whitney, B.A. 1894.


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Memorial Day Poem: The Volunteer

View at source here

Loretta reports:

Many U.S. holidays have become associated with long weekends, sales, and parties.  This is not necessarily a bad thing—in the case of Memorial Day, for instance. Men and women died fighting to keep the USA going.  As well as remembering the dead, we’re celebrating what they fought for, and the commercialism is part of who we are, warts & all.

However, the holiday commenced, originally not as an excuse for sales or barbecues or the date after which white shoes may be donned.  It started out as Decoration Day, a day of remembrance for the Civil War dead.

In 1920, when this poem was published, the Civil War was vividly within people’s direct experience as well as their memories.  The poetry in the book is of its time, and bound to be sentimental and sad, not so appealing to the ironic 21st century sensibility.

Read at source here

But our blog’s about offering insights into social history, and poetic recitations were still part of everyday life in the early 20th century.

This one’s more restrained than the average, and all the more moving, perhaps, for that reason.

Read at source here

You can read our other posts about Memorial Day here, here, here, here, and here.









The poems are from  
Holiday selections for readings and recitations, compiled by Sara Sigourney Rice, 1920

A Newpaper for the Doughboys: The Stars and Stripes 1918-1919

More info here

Loretta reports:

Today is Veterans Day in the U.S. (a video here) and Remembrance Day elsewhere.  As Downton Abbey aficionados and others will know, the signing of an armistice on 11 November 1918 marked the end of the Great War.  11 November became the commemoration day, known for many years as Armistice Day.

Looking for a social history angle (we Nerdy History Girls generally leave politics and war to others) I ended up at one of my favorite sites, the Library of Congress, where I came upon the newspaper created for the U.S. Army during WWI.  Intended to unify the U.S. forces, which were spread over Europe and mixed with troops of other countries, The Stars and Stripes ran from 8 February 1918 to 13 June 1919.

I discovered that soldiers created a significant amount of its material, and the original staff included enlisted men Alexander Woollcott (later of of The New Yorker and Algonquin Round Table fame) and Harold W. Ross, (a co-founder of The New Yorker).

If you’d like to see what the soldiers were reading, you can take a closer look at individual issues on this list.  Downloading the PDF-Entire Issue offers the easiest viewing of whole pages, but you will probably want to zoom in quite a bit.

More info here

Here’s what a U.S. soldier found in its first issue. It includes illustrations by Charles Dana Gibson, along with satire and satirical prints and a fascinating array of advertisements for U.S., British, and French companies and products.

Posters courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Casual Friday Horrible Histories explain WWI

View online here

Loretta reports:

With Russia looming large again in a debate about military action in the Mideast, I thought this Horrible Histories explanation of the origins of WWI offered an opportunity to compare and contrast alliances and the complications they create.

Or, you can ignore current politics and just enjoy the clip on its own merits.*

Image: British Navy at War (1915) courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

*Readers who receive our blog via email might see only a rectangle or blank where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

What is Memorial Day, really?

Honor the Brave

Loretta reports:

In 1971 the U.S. moved Memorial Day to create a long weekend.  This one kicks off summer for those of us living in the colder parts of the country.  (In my part of New England, for instance, tomato planting may begin.) Originally observances took place on 30 May, on what was called Decoration Day.  Since the sales and barbecues can obscure the real story, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to offer some photos and information about the holiday's origins and meaning.

The photo below right is titled Celebration of the first official Decoration Day at Arlington Cemetery, 1868 May 30.  One of the tiny heads in the photo belongs to then-U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.  While the date may change, the president still shows up, and Arlington National Cemetery is still the focal point of observances.

You can read more about the holiday and its history here at the Library of Congress. And here at the Smithsonian blog.

Last year, I offered some photos of the American Cemetery in Florence, Italy in two blogs, here and here.

This panoramic photo (please scroll horizontally for the full effect) shows another American Cemetery.  This one is at Suresnes, near Paris.  The photo was taken at the Memorial Day ceremony on 30 May 1920.  I found it very moving.

Images courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.

The Flu Then & Now

Loretta reports:

Trying to collect a prescription last week, I entered a pharmacy whose counter was heaped with bags of medication awaiting pick up, and whose pharmacists were all frantically busy.  The current raging flu season was the reason.

A Central Massachusetts columnist reminded me that, bad as it is, the current flu epidemic is small potatoes compared to the one that struck at the end of WWI.  The flu pandemic of 1918-20 affected ¼ of the U.S. population, yet the country’s death rate of 675,000 was lower than in many other places.  It was the worst pandemic since the Black Plague, to which it bore some resemblance: The symptoms of Spanish Flu (aka Purple Death) were gruesome, it killed very quickly, and it was undiscriminating, affecting young adults as much as—and in some cases more than—the elderly, ill, and small children. 

“No figures exist for many parts of the world, but the pandemic is estimated to have infected 50% of the world’s population, 25% suffered a clinical infection and the total mortality was 40–50 million: the often quoted figure of 20 million deaths is palpably too low (Crosby 1976).”
—C.W. Potter, A History of Influenza

The 19th century, though, was by no means flu-free.  Several epidemics occurred (IIRC, I killed some characters in the 1826 epidemic), including a pandemic in 1830-33 comparable to the 1918 plague, but with a somewhat lower death rate.

Here, as in so many other cases, physicians disagreed about whether or not it was contagious.  The Lancet of 1837 insisted it wasn’t. 

The preferred treatment, as you might expect, was bloodletting.

Illustration at top: St. Louis Red Cross Motor Corps on duty Oct. 1918 Influenza epidemic.  Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.
Illustration at bottom from The London Medical and Physical Journal, Volume 10, 1803