By clicking here, you can sign up for a LIVE virtual tour of the project site on Friday April 3rd. Architect Joseph Weishaar, sculptor Sabin Howard and the project managers will be the guides.
Even though they’re are observing the distancing protocols in place in DC, construction hasn’t stopped.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
attributed to Mark Twain
We now find ourselves in a quandary similar to that of 1918. Of course, there is no one left who went through the Great Influenza Pandemic, but there are still some of us who knew someone who did. One such person was my mother-in-law, Priscilla Hicks (1908-2004). Her stories as told to her daughter resonate today.
One hundred three years ago in France, the German Army performed Operation Alberich, a withdrawal to their newly constructed defenses known as the Siegfried Stellung or, to the British, the Hindenburg Line. This new fortress work was a masterpiece of military engineering that made the British positions in the Loos sector that were discussed in the previous article look rather ordinary. Read the Wikipedia entry on The Hindenburg Line by clicking here.
The Durand Group was founded by two Royal Engineers, Lt Col Philip Robinson and Lt Col Mike Watkins, following their experience removing several undetonated mines at Vimy Ridge. The group continues to be the premier engineering firm regarding for this kind of work, and with its charitable foundation has also undertaken extensive underground archeological exploration. You can visit their website by clicking here.
U.S. Army Signal Corps photographers and cameramen were very active on the Western Front. We’ve all seen many examples of their works – the photographs all have the ‘crossed flags’ logo and a file number in the lower left hand corner. Now the National Archives and Records Administration has completed the digitization of ALL of the U.S. Army Signal Corps films from World War One that they’ve got. You can read more about this by clicking here.
The Eli Lilly Foundation has pledged $5 million towards the National WW1 Memorial project in recognition of the service of Capt. J. K. Lilly, Jr., who was a medical supply officer on the Western Front. A grandson of the founder, he later headed up the pharmaceutical giant.
When this site went dark this film had just been released. Since then it was nominated for ten Academy Awards and received three of them, for Cinematography, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects. There have been several reviews published, mostly favorable, although historical nit-pickers like myself have questioned the scene with the Sikh soldiers, as all Indian troops had been withdrawn from the Western Front in 1916. Following are links to two reviews by British historians. Click here and here.
Some of the ‘battlefield poets’ of the First World War are well-known: Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Alan Seeger, Francis Ledwidge, Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Julian Grenfell, Guillaume Apollinaire, August Stramm, John McRae and A. Joyce Kilmer among others. You can read more about some of these by clicking here.
With the new big-screen production “1917” now playing in theaters (click here to read the previous post about the movie), it seems appropriate to put up this list, compiled by the movie critic website Rotten Tomatoes (click here).
Click here to view a dramatization of the start of the well-known 1914 Christmas Truce. This scene is from the 2005 French movie entitled Joyeux Noël, which, although historically inaccurate, is nevertheless poignant. The film was rated 3 ½ stars by Rotten Tomatoes, 4 stars by IMDB and also 4 stars by Roger Ebert. It was also nominated for an Oscar as the Best Foreign Film of 2005.
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