Monday 17 November 2014

The Other Side of the Medal: how Germany saw the First World War

I'm not sure what I really think (thought) about medals.
I've never won one.
I did, perhaps naively, think that they were awarded for achievement,
like for coming first or for an act of bravery.

 I had these preconceptions challenged at the British Museum when I saw the exhibition,

This is an exhibition of medals.
These medals were made by artists,
most of whom lived and worked in Germany during the war.
Medals made to tell stories of and tell how they felt about the conflict.

Shown below is the enemy, wounded in defeat.
Russia, the bear with bandaged paws.
Britain, a bulldog, head and leg bandaged.
France, the cockerel limping with strapped up claw.
France, Russia and Britain. Hans Lindl, Germany, 1914

 Refugees displaced during the invasion of East Prussia by the Russians.
The seven month invasion displaced one million people.
Refugees, Ludwig Gies, Germany, 1915

This medal was made to commemorate a mistaken claim by a German airship commander
that he had bombed London, west of Tower Bridge.
The reality was, mistaking reservoirs for the River Thames, he had bombed the Lea Valley.
Nevertheless, lives were lost in Walthamstow and Leyton.
Zeppelins over London, Fritz Eue, Germany, 1915

This medal shows the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915,
whilst travelling from New York to Liverpool,
by a German U-boat submarine, with the loss of over a thousand lives.
Lusitania, Ludwig Gies, Germany, 1915

Here a British medal commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Versailles.
For the allies, this marked peace and justice.
Treaty of Versailles, Elkington & Co, UK, 1919

The Great War ends.
Medals of 'Pax' Peace made in Germany and Victory in France.
Left; Pax (Peace), Erzsebet Esseo, Germany, 1919
Right: Victory, Louis Patriarche, France, 1919

The British Museum acquired most of these medals during the First World War.
 Copies of them were displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum during the war,
the exhibition becoming part of the propaganda against Germany.

During the war the British Museum was closed,
sand-bags out to protect the collections.

Open today.

As for my feelings about medals.
They have helped me empathise,
understand more of the impact of war on civilians on all sides.
The medal I find most powerful for its depiction of grief and loss is
'Pax' 1919
Peace.
Peace that costs, that is painful, a look of devastation.
Made at the end of the war it reflects
the experience of so many individuals on both sides, devastated by the First World War.

until 23rd November.
Details on the British Museum website here.

Friday 14 November 2014

Vimy Ridge: The Memorial

Mentioned in my last post here, we went 'en famille' to Vimy Ridge in Northern France, a First World War battlefield site. You can read that post by clicking here.
Now I bring you the memorial.


Driving into this National Historic Site of Canada the first thing you all notice is the landscape. "Is that where a bomb landed?", we heard from the back of the car. It was.
We were told that the landscape was scarred by shelling and bombing, but it doesn't really look scarred, it has a kind of beauty, holding memories and prompting questions.


One question was answered for us. The trees were all planted after the war. However, you can't go off and explore, as they can't guarantee that no explosives remain, mines and bombs. Our guide tells us that apparently, "not so far away, a mine exploded during a storm when the ground was struck by lightning".
This impresses the kids.


The monument impresses us all, young and old. It sits on a hill, Hill 145, so called because it is 145 meters above sea level, the highest point of Vimy Ridge.


Walking towards the monument, it's hard to comprehend the scale of it. Commemorating the taking of Vimy Ridge by the Canadian Corps in 1917, remembering the 3,598 Canadians who gave their lives during that battle.
"A victory, but the bloodiest day in history for the Canadians." 


The columns represent Canada and France, the sorrows and sacrifice of war.


Between the columns sits a young dying soldier.


Not sure my nephew should have been climbing the memorial, but just looking at him gave you such a sense of the scale of the monument. The living touching the dying.

The figures on top represent truth and justice, peace and knowledge.



Spirit of sacrifice and Torch Bearer.

Mourners sit at the base, grieving for their loss,
female...

...and male.

Over 11,000 names are carved on the walls, Canadian soldiers who died in France during the First World war, some of whom were never found.


I'm not quite sure who asked it first, I know I was thinking it. Perhaps it was my nephew, my husband, my sister-in-law? But how did something so huge and so white, and considering its location in Northern France, survive the Second World War? Our guide knew the answer. It can't have been the first time it had been asked.

It wasn't a case of luck, that it just happened to survive any bombing by planes flying across Northern Europe.  No, Hitler purposefully, not only spared the Canadian monument but sent SS forces to protect it. In 1940, Hitler had himself photographed at Vimy Ridge to refute the reports in Canadian newspapers that Nazi Germany had destroyed it. Apparently this was all because this is a monument to peace and not a celebration of war.

Sorrow and sacrifice. 

More about the Vimy Ridge memorial on this website here

Saturday 8 November 2014

Vimy Ridge: The Trenches

It seems fitting that for this month,
with the centenary of the beginning of the First World War,
that we visit sites that pay homage and commemorate the 'Great War'.
I began November with my last post about the poppies at the Tower of London, here.


During the half-term break,
we went to Vimy Ridge in Northern France, a National Historic Site of Canada.

Despite wondering how you should behave
when visiting places that mark very solemn events
(especially with our kids and their cousins, all eight of them, aged three to fifteen),
we were excited to find out that we were in Canada.
Well on Canadian soil anyway,
the French have given the land, this historic site, 107 hectares to Canada.

When driving into the site, the first thing that struck all of us
was the ground,
pockmarked by shells.


 Recently I have been looking at paintings by Paul and John Nash,
commissioned as official war artists during the First World war,
and have been puzzled by their paintings of the landscape, so bumpy and undulated.
But seeing this, it all made sense.
The ground at Vimy Ridge was never levelled after the war,
it still holds evidence of shell holes and bomb craters.
However after the war, it was reforested,
we were looking at trees all the same age, nearly 100 years old.


If you're interested to see how John and Paul Nash painted the landscape,

All fifteen of us booked into an English language tour by a Canadian guide
and headed underground.

Our tour guide began by making the context for the Canadian involvement
in the First World war very clear.
In 1914 Canada was still part of the British Empire,
so as our guide told us, when Britain declared war, Canada was by rights involved.
It wasn't a question of asking whether or not to participate,
but of deciding what their contribution should be.
Canada sent four divisions, their soldiers all volunteers.

For me, this was a day of challenging so many preconceptions,
making me think about things that had never even struck me before.
The landscape, the Commonwealth.

Underground, "subways" (we are in Canada) were built to bring men to the front,
safely and secretly.
Fourteen miles of tunnels, one meter wide and two meters high,
were dug out by hand, by Welsh miners, through the chalk ground.

Using these...
...pick axes and shovels.
They make much less noise than using explosives to blast your way through the ground.
It took them three months, working 24 hours a day, three eight hour shifts.

The tunnels have been modified for visitors today,
widened and supported with concrete.
However the problem of flooding remains.
Soldiers often had to wade knee deep through these tunnels,
and recently they have had to close the tunnels to visitors and wait for the water to recede.
The colour of the walls shows the water line from the last flood.

Underground there were headquarters, electricity,
telecommunications and some accommodation.
You got to sleep down here if you were a runner.

Runners were a vital part of communication.
Running from the front line, wearing a white armband, back to operations with messages.
This sounded dangerous, and it was.
We were asked what we thought was the average life expectancy of a runner
on the front line.
No-one could have guessed at the answer.
Four days!
But this was a post soldiers willingly volunteered for,
the reward of six times your regular salary,
and getting to sleep in the relative safety and shelter of the tunnels,
being away from the trenches, must have perhaps made it an appealing option
despite the risks.

"Anyone know the most famous German runner?"
Hitler.
There's a story.

From the tunnels, we headed to the front line, to the trenches.
"Trenches of 1917/18, like fortresses, very well thought out defences."

These trenches once two and a half meters deep,
are now lined with replica concrete sandbags and duck boards.

In the visitor centre you get an idea of what the walls of the trenches
would have looked like,
real sandbags and barbed wire,
without the rats, wet and lice that plagued the them.

Facing the enemy, a place to put your rifle and protect your head.

Although this trench is kitted out with replica sandbags and duckboards,
its position is very real.
Here in Vimy Ridge, the front line is only thirty meters from the German trenches opposite.
We were astounded,
Apparently soldiers began to recognise each others faces across no mans land.

From the German front line, faces were easy to spot in the Canadian trench opposite.

Between front lines, bomb craters, no mans land landscaping,
exploded deliberately to make crossing it difficult.

Learning about war in the trenches,
led us to ask questions about life in the trenches.
Where did you go to the toilet?
What happened if you ran away?

The toilet facilities:
Apparently there were latrine trenches,
but if there weren't, there was a truce, the deal here was that
if you climbed over top with a white flag and your pants down (remember this is Canadian speak), you were signalling that you were going to the loo (British speak)
and you weren't shot at.
There was also a truce, an agreement, at Vimy Ridge that hand-grenades would not be used.

As for running away, a question asked by my eleven year old son,
I wondered what was going through his mind.
Deserters were, "shot by their own".
they were few in the Canadian Corp.
We were told that this was perhaps because they were volunteers.
In the words of our guide, the soldiers knew that,
"if you deserted there was a hundred percent chance you were going to die,
if you advanced (over the top), you might live".
What a way to live.

Photos in the visitor centre

It was with this visit in mind that the following weekend,
we went to see the Tower Poppies at the Tower of London,
Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red,
a poppy for each Commonwealth and British fatality.
Looking at the sea of red poppies in the moat, it wasn't too difficult to imagine those
blood swept lands.
You can read my thoughts on the Tower Poppies on a previous post, here.

Information about Vimy Ridge and visitor centre, here.

This seemed like such a long post,
that I have decided to post about the Vimy Ridge memorial separately in my next post,
coming soon.

Sunday 2 November 2014

Tower Poppies

Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red


On the first of November we went to the Tower of London to see the Tower Poppies.

I had been by myself a couple of months before, in early September, one month after they had begun installing 888,246 poppies in the moat of the Tower of London, to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Our journey walking from London Bridge station, took us past HMS Belfast with its remembrance poppy.
'HMS Belfast wasn't in the First World War, it was launched in 1939
at the beginning of the Second World War.'

Stepping off Tower Bridge these were the first Tower Poppies we saw.

Then walking up the West side, I saw how the field of poppies had grown in the last two months,
from this,

to this.




Each poppy represents a life,  a British military fatality in the First World War.

Volunteers will have planted all the poppies, in just over three months.

I wondered what kind of people had volunteered and what their reasons may have been for doing so.

Whether volunteers were perhaps planting poppies in remembrance of relatives who served and died in the First World War.


I have no family history to tell my children of lives lost in the First World War.
But I tell them about my granny, who in her seventies, once showed me a letter that her father had sent her from the trenches, with a drawing of a flower and mud on it. When she died, my mum hunted high and low, and much to all our disappointment the letter was never found.

We have spent the last few weeks building up a picture of the First World War, listening to 'Horrible Histories' in the car and during the half-term break last week we went to Vimy Ridge, a First World War battlefield in Northern France, with cousins. (I'll post about that trip soon) We were all captivated by the tunnels, trenches, bomb craters and stories of fighting, communications, living conditions and truces.

So when we met back up with the same cousins, just a week later, to see the Tower Poppies, I felt that our kids had in their minds, a little of the 'bloody' context for these flowers.

And it was difficult not to be overwhelmed at their number.
A sea of red below us!

The number of visitors coming to see Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red has made the news, with surrounding road and tube closures essential to manage the crowds, 

It was busy, very very busy.
But we all agreed, between aged ten to seventy-three, that it was worth it.


On the way home my youngest two asked whether they would do that again to mark the 200 year anniversary. "You would have to live to 111 years old to be around for the 200 year anniversary".
 We talked about how things can get forgotten and whether there would maybe be other wars in the next 100 years that we would need to remember.


This installation was designed by Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, in the words of the Tower website, 'creating not only a spectacular display visible from all around the Tower
but also a location for personal reflection'.
I think they achieved that.

The last poppy will be planted on the 11th November 2014.
Details on the website here.

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