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Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states since the end of the First World War to remember those who have died in the line of duty. It is observed by a two-minute silence on the ’11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month’, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente on 11 November, 1918. The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919. In the UK, Remembrance Sunday occurs on the Sunday closest to the 11th November, and is marked by ceremonies at local war memorials in most villages, towns, and cities. The red poppy has become a symbol for Remembrance Day due to the poem In Flanders Fields, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.

You can discover more about the history behind the First World War by exploring the free resources included in the interactive image above.

Feature image credit: Poppy Field, by Martin LaBar. CC-BY-NC-2.0 via Flickr.

The post Remembrance Day appeared first on OUPblog.

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Today is both Remembrance Day and the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. 11th November - 'real' Remembrance Day, would also have been the 116th birthday of my granny, who died in 1970. War and the wall were defining icons of my childhood, and she was my favourite relative.

I was born closer to the First World War than my children were to the Second, though of course it was the Second that people talked about most. My parents' characters were forged by the Second World War - by rationing and evacuation and air raids and watching the planes fly over.

Imperial War Museum

But my mother was born eight years after the end of the First World War and that also shaped her childhood. It also produced that generation of women teachers who had never married, or had been early widowed. The First World War was in my classroom. I knew nothing about my father's family in the First World War - it was never mentioned. My mother's father, an ARP warden in the Second World War, was in the merchant navy in the First and so had an easier time than most. He had three brothers, and I think one was in the 'proper' navy, and one was too young to serve. No one died.


It's easy to think that everyone who went to war was slaughtered, but in fact 90% came back. Fairly obviously, most of us are not descended from those who died, or even who were horribly wounded or traumatised. Those young men were not the ones to marry and have families. They were people like the old man who ran the shop at the end of the lane where I grew up: partly blind, scarily angrily for no apparent reason (not apparent if you're six and just wanted to buy sweets), living alone with a dog and a limp. We remember those who died, but we should also remember those who survived, as it wasn't always the better alternative. And, of course, the families who survived, their lives rent apart by loss or by the return of destroyed young men. We should remember them.

'Lyricmac', 1982 - creative commons licence

The Wall existed from soon after I was born until the time I was pregnant with my own first child. As my father made frequent trips to Germany on business, the East/West split was something I was aware of in a shadowy way. When I began to travel in Eastern Europe as a teenager, it was unpopular - seen as fraternising with the enemy. But it was more a keen desire to understand what this 'other' was like that was presented as the enemy.

I was in Budapest when the Wall fell. I went to the railway station to get a ticket to Berlin. It was packed. I realised it wasn't my fight. The people around me wanted to go to Berlin to reach the West. I couldn't take their seat, so went back to the hotel and watched it on TV instead. I would have loved to have been there, but in the end it was better not to be.

My granny didn't kill anyone and was killed by a heart attack, so although I will remember her fondly, she doesn't need much of a paragraph here. Just a loving hello across the lost years. 

Mostly, today is about the First World War. The poppies at the Tower of London are an impressive and moving memorial. There will be 888,246 poppies - one for every British soldier who died. Not that there is a definite number of known casualties, but hey, you can't make an approximate number of ceramic poppies. Perhaps there could have been some way to show, though, that we don't even know how many people died. (The figure of 888,246 is the number reported by the War Graves Commission in 2010-2011 and includes names from war memorials and all named burials.) Non-British soldiers who fought for the Empire are not remembered at the Tower, even though The Mirror erroneously stated that the poppies commemorate the '888,246 British and Commonwealth servicemen' killed. The German memorial exhibition in the Deutsches Historisches Museum simply says that 15 million died, without singling out German soldiers for special note (and around twice as many German troops died as British).

It all looks more real in colour - French troops

Britain got off lightly in the First World War by comparison with some other parts of Europe. Approximately 10% of British (and Empire) troops died and a further 20+% were injured. The British (and Empire) death/casualty/missing rate was about 35% of troops mobilised. That's truly terrible. But the death/casualty/missing rate for Romania and France was over 70%, and for Russia it was 76%. A British soldier had a better-than-evens chance of surviving intact (or what passed for intact) - a Russian soldier had only a one-in-four chance. But wait: in Germany, 65% of soldiers were killed , missing or injured. In Austro-Hungary, it was 90%. Yes, 90%. OK, they started it. But not the individual young men dying on the battlefields. They didn't start it. Let's remember them all - not just the notional 888,246 who warrant a ceramic poppy. Four million people will have visited the Tower exhibition. Just look at the crowds in any photo. Imagine wiping them all out at a stroke - probably several thousand in any picture, but it would only be a tiny fraction of those represented by the poppies, and the poppies only represent a tiny fraction of those who died. It makes you think. The poppies make you think in ways that just numbers on a page don't.

Edna Gertrude Urwin

The best writing I know about the the First World War is Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (German) and Wilfred Owen's poetry (English). Perhaps some of you know of equally good writing in French or Russian or Greek or Romanian. There must be some. Maybe a good way to spend the day is in reading, remembering all the men on both sides - and the 4.5-5 million men, women and children who died of malnutrition and disease as a result of the War. And let's remember, too, the 200 or so who died trying to escape East Berlin and the millions whose lives the Iron Curtain ruined. That's a lot of remembering to do. And I'll add my granny, too.

Anne Rooney
(Stroppy Author)
Latest book: Space Record Breakers, Carlton, 6 Nov 2014

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As we approach the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War, it’s important taking a look back at the momentous event that forever changed the course of world history. Here, Sir Hew Strachan, editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War, examines the importance of commemorating the Great War and how perspectives on the war have shifted and changed over the last 100 years.

What might we learn from the centenary commemoration of World War I?

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is the difference between commemorating the 50th anniversary and the centenary of the World War I?

Click here to view the embedded video.

What is the difference between the First and Second World Wars?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sir Hew Strachan, Chichele is a Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford, Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum. He also serves on the British, Scottish, and French national committees advising on the centenary of the First World War. He is the editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War. The first volume of his planned trilogy on the First World War, To Arms, was published in 2001, and in 2003 he was the historian behind the 10-part TV series, The First World War.

Visit the US ‘World War I: Commemorating the Centennial’ page or UK ‘First World War Centenary’ page to discover specially commissioned contributions from our expert authors, free resources from our world-class products, book lists, and exclusive archival materials that provide depth, perspective and insight into the Great War.

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The post Reflections on World War I appeared first on OUPblog.

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Yesterday I accomplished one final goal for the summer. And it didn't have anything to do with writing.

I got a tattoo. I never thought I'd be one of those people who wanted one, but the desire hit me a few months ago, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I wanted it to be meaningful, not just a random, generic picture, so I put a lot of thought into what I wanted. I had a general idea, but then one night a vision popped into my head. I sketched it out, and then went on the net and did some cut and paste to put together an example. I sized it and cut it out and wore it on my ankle to make sure it was what I really wanted.

Finally, the big day came. Yesterday, I went and did it. The hubby got a new tattoo as well. He got one right after we got married, so this was his second. Mine took about fifteen minutes...his took two hours.

Here's how mine turned out:

It's a bouquet of six tulips done in pink and blue with a purple ribbon with a cross on it. The six blooms stand for our babies. We lost three to miscarriage, donated two embryos to science when we knew we couldn't use them, and had one failed invitro attempt.

Not that we'll ever forget, but this way, others will remember too. Everyone who's seen it so far loves it. A few have cried. It means a lot that they understand what this means to me/us.

Until next time,

Happy Reading,

Debra
www.debrastjohnromance.com

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There are parts of being in this world that many parents want to shield their children from.  War, with its toll on lives, communities and countries is one of those controversial topics for children’s books that’s either hotly debated or blatantly dismissed.

For Canadians, August 19, 1942 carries even more significance because many were led to believe the British organized battle at Dieppe was an important victory, not a bloody defeat.  As we honour the 67th anniversary of Dieppe later this month, a new children’s book will be published that explores the reasons, strategy, horror and incredible survival that are part of this Canadian tale.

On this edition of Just One More Book!!, Mark speaks with author and historian Hugh Brewster about his new book Dieppe: Canada’s Darkest Day of World War II, and the importance of sharing the stories of the events and the people in war and remembrance.

Other books by Hugh Brewster:

• At Vimy Ridge: Canada’s Greatest World War I Victory
• On Juno Beach: Canada’s D-Day Heroes

More about war and remembrance on Just One More Book:

• A Bear in War
• A New Coat for Anna
• The Unknown Soldier
• The Diary of Laura’s Twin
• The Donkey of Gallipoli
• Janusz Korczak’s Children
• One Thousand Tracings
• A Poppy is to Remember
• Gleam and Glow
• The Cello of Mr. O
• What We Remember

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Leslie Coulson (1889-1916), a Reuters correspondent for London's Morning Post, volunteered for the Royal Fusiliers within a month of the outbreak of World War I. On Christmas Eve, 1914, he sailed for Malta on a troop ship, never to return to England. He survived a bout of the mumps (which inspired his first war poem, A Soldier in Hospital) and then the Battle of Gallipoli, where he was injured

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I was going through One Hundred Years of Poetry for Children the other week, and in the section on "War", I came across the old Rudyard Kipling poem "My Boy Jack", which I thought I would use this week, about his heartbreaking search for his only son who was lost in action at the age of 18, after only two days at the front, at the Battle of Loos on September 27, 1915. And then in checking to

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Our beautiful, loyal 12-year-old German Shepherd, mistress of all she surveyed on the farm, died last week. While she was older and ailing, she was nevertheless coping wonderfully and enjoying all the usual summer activities -- chasing chickens, getting to know the new bull, playing and dozing with the cats, gulping down treats left over from barbecues -- until she was hit by a neighbor's truck

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I can't tell if my rendition of this 1920 something home or the home itself evokes the memory. I never lived there but have been fascinated for as long as i can remember by this stucco home setting as it does today on a hillside. It represents to me a simpler time I would have loved to visit. So my contribution to this week's theme REMEMBER.
Enjoy.

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Author: Lesley Anne Airth
Illustrator: Mervyn Finch
Published: 2005 General Store Publishing House
ISBN: 1897113218 Chapters.ca

Six simple, stirring stories help us slip into the shoes of real children as they deal with the impacts of war.

Listen to Electric Sky’s 2005 Remembrance Day Tribute.

Tags:book, boy, Canada, children, family, generosity, girl, gratitude, hardship, history, kidlit, non fiction, peace, photo, podcast, remembrance, resilience, respect, review, veteran, warbook, boy, Canada, children, family, generosity, girl, gratitude, hardship, history, kidlit, non fiction, peace, photo, podcast, remembrance, resilience, respect, review, veteran, war

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