For a person who has two children who have studied film extensively in college, I’ve really seen remarkably few movies. I’m sure there were quite a few years where I may have only seen one or two. I’m trying to catch up via Netflix, but it’s a slow process when there are books to read and music to listen to as well.
My favorite World War I film so far is one I will blog about later on, in December, as it has a seasonal theme.
Lawrence of Arabia takes place during World War I and shows, at least from one point of view, how that conflict affected the Middle East in ways that continue to plague us today. I wish I had seen it on the big screen, but even on a television screen it is a stunning film.
I reviewed King of Hearts last year on my shamefully-dormant film blog, Queuing Up. It’s a rather ‘60s perspective on the war, but worth seeing.
My parents’ favorite movie was The African Queen, and it’s one of mine as well. I think perhaps my father saw himself as Humphrey Bogart and my mother as Katherine Hepburn. Set in German East Africa, the war at first takes a back seat to Bogart and Hepburn’s romance, but the scenes at the end where the African Queen engages a German warship are as tense and thrilling as any more traditional war movie.
I found several lists of World War I films, none of which seem to be definitive. So many books and films on World War I have come to my attention this week that I think I’ll take a couple of weeks and try to read and see as many as possible. I’ve already got Paul Gross’s film Passchendaele (I had to buy it as it wasn’t readily available otherwise) but haven’t yet watched it. A few others I’m planning to see, pending availability: A Farewell to Arms (I think I’ll go for Gary Cooper over Rock Hudson), All Quiet on the Western Front, Regeneration, Gallipoli, and All the King’s Men (not the Robert Penn Warren book, but a BBC production about the Sandringham Unit in WWI). I’m definitely going to read The Ghost Road and probably at least a couple more novels from the Guardian’s 1000 Novels list, as well as the John Keegan history when it arrives in the mail. Any suggestions for more?
This week I’m blogging on Armistice Day and the Great War. Today, a few book suggestions for anyone who wants to read more about that war and its after-effects.
To begin with, you must read Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. In this far-from-dull history of the war’s beginnings, Tuchman paints a picture of Europe on the eve of war which includes not only the salient political facts, but the atmosphere of the times. I’ve read this book two or three times at least in the last 45 years, and may do so again, although I rarely re-read books.
For a straight-out history of the entire war, I’m departing from my usual practice and recommending a book I haven’t yet read, John Keegan’s The First World War. Having read other works of Keegan’s, notably The Face of Battle, I feel confident in recommending it, and have just ordered a copy for myself.
Why should we read about this war? Well, you can get in ahead of everyone else who’ll be reading about it about four years from now when the centennial comes along. Seriously, Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory shows us why. Fussell describes how the experience of the war influenced much of British, European and American writing for decades afterwards. I don’t read a lot of literary criticism these days, but I believe I will also re-read this book before long.
But perhaps you prefer fiction? When I looked at the Guardian’s list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read, Fussell’s thesis was borne out by the large number of these books (chosen by a group of British critics/reviewers) which dealt with the Great War. One of the classics, which I had not read until last year, is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. Here’s a link to my Goodreads review. This book has been filmed several times, but I have not seen any of the films yet.
Two American classics that I read so long ago I can’t really write coherently about them now are A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway of course) and John Dos Passos’ Three Soldiers. Perhaps less well-known here is Englishwoman Pat Barker’s excellent Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road. I haven’t yet read the third book, which won the Man Booker Prize, but the titles will link you to my reviews of the first two. Wilfred Owen, one of the poets I posted about yesterday, is a character in Regeneration.
I must confess that much of my reading these days consists of mystery novels, but there is much to be learned from them as well. Anne Perry, famous for her Victorian mysteries, has written a five-volume mystery-espionage series set during World War I, beginning with No Graves as Yet. Charles Todd, Jacqueline Winspear, and Carola Dunn all have series that take place in the aftermath of the war – Todd’s and Dunn’s in the late ‘teens and early twenties, Winspear’s in the late twenties and early thirties but harking back to events of the war. Todd also has a new series featuring Bess Crawford, a nurse, which is set during the war. The series are all quite different from each other, so I’d advise trying one of each to see if you like it. I’ve enjoyed all three, but your results may differ.
Tomorrow: a few films of World War I.
Continuing this week’s theme, here are some songs from and about World War I that I think everyone should hear.
It may seem odd that two of the greatest songs about this long-ago war were written many years after it ended. Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle’s songs, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda and No Man’s Land (Green Fields of France) have been recorded by many other people. In the first video he sings And the Band…, which was written to commemorate the Australian troops who died at Gallipoli – NOT Winston Churchill’s finest hour. It’s often forgotten that the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary in WWI (hence Lawrence of Arabia). Note, however, that the number of Australians who died is vastly inflated in this video – it was more like 8,000, which was plenty.
This version of No Man’s Land is unusual in that it’s sung in both English and German by Bogle and another singer named Wachol, about whom I couldn’t find any information. No embedding, click the title for a link. You can try one of the other videos for the complete English song.
If you are not familiar with the tunes mentioned in this song, The Flowers of the Forest and Last Post, here they are. Don’t play the first one if you hate bagpipes, though.
And I guess if you don’t like bugle calls, don’t listen to this one.
Well. That was really sad. But, going off to war, marching, and so forth, people often sing much more cheerful songs. One of the favorites of British troops in WWI was It’s a Long Way to Tipperary. Here’s the famous Irish tenor John McCormack, singing a song written by a British music-hall entertainer, Jack Judge. (You’ll see though, his grandparents did come from Tipperary.)
It seems to me I spent many happy hours as a child watching the James Cagney film Yankee Doodle Dandy, the biopic of George M. Cohan. One of Cohan’s most famous songs was Over There, celebrating America’s entrance into the war in April 1917. “Lafayette, nous sommes arrivé!”
And now, strictly for fun, one of the songs the soldiers really sang. As the singer notes, the many verses have “various degrees of suitability for family listening.” In other words, there’s something here to offend almost everybody. I love this Australian guy who has a lot of songs on YouTube.
I hope you have enjoyed these songs. Comments welcome, and do you have any favorite songs from or about the Great War?
As we prepare to celebrate Veterans’ Day on Thursday here in the U.S., it occurred to me that nowadays, the holiday’s original name, Armistice Day, is all but forgotten. (I think my British, Canadian, and Down Under friends still term it Remembrance Day.) This is not totally surprising, as World War I (also The Great War) did not affect the U.S. as much as it did Great Britain, Europe, and countries connected to them. Although over 320,000 Americans were killed or wounded in World War I, that’s a small number compared to over a million killed or wounded in World War II. In my own family, I can count on the fingers of one hand the relatives, some fairly distant, who served in World War I. In World War II, my father and several uncles served, as well as many uncles and cousins of my husband’s; my mother worked in a defense plant. I have seen the World War I draft registrations of my two grandfathers; my maternal grandfather was a married farmer with three children at the time he registered, and my paternal grandfather was 35 years old and had a tracheotomy, so both were exempt. I do have a photograph of Uncle George in his doughboy uniform. He was (Great-)Aunt Maude’s first husband and never made it to France, as he died of the flu epidemic at Camp Devens. 
had Canadian connections and joined the Canadian forces. Here’s a photo of him wearing his uniform, with my grandparents, aunt and uncle.
So what I know of World War I I know, not from family stories, but from history classes, books, music, films and poetry. Today (in lieu of Monday, when I didn’t manage to post), I have some World War I poetry to share.
I think my first experience of World War I was reading the poetry that sprang from it. Four poets in particular caught my youthful imagination – one Canadian, one American, and two British. All died during the war.
John McCrae was a Canadian doctor serving in Flanders (Belgium) when he wrote “In Flanders Fields’ in 1915 as a memorial to a friend and former student who was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres. He himself died of pneumonia in the field in January, 1918. This poem was almost immediately popular and is probably responsible for the custom of wearing a red poppy for Armistice Day.
American Alan Seeger was leading a Bohemian life in Paris when, on August 24, 1914, he joined the French Foreign Legion so that he could fight for France. He died in battle on July 4, 1916. His most famous poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” was published posthumously. It is read here by his nephew, Pete Seeger.
Rupert Brooke’s poems often speak of home, reflecting what must have been the thoughts of many British soldiers away from England for the first time (although Brooke had actually traveled quite a bit). His most famous poem, “The Soldier,” was sadly prophetic; he is buried on the island of Skyros in Greece. His death was hardly heroic (sepsis from an infected mosquito bite) but his poem stands as a song of love and gratitude to England.
Wilfred Owen (who is a character in the Regeneration Trilogy, about which I’ll talk tomorrow) was treated for shell-shock (what we now know as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and could have escaped further service in the trenches, but returned out of a sense of duty to the young men he led. He was killed one week before the Armistice was signed. His poems are shocking even today in their vivid imagery of the horror of war. ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is one of the best anti-war poems to come from this or any war.
On Wednesday I will talk a bit about some books on World War I.
