How to use this Page

On November 11th, Remembrance Day, at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we remember them.

"Old Soldiers" which started out as a short story, came about as a result of an interview with some old soldiers/veterans for a newspaper column that I was writing at the time. Was drawn back to the story over time and as is my habit, tweaked it over the years and somehow the main focus of the story, Joe McKenna, seemed to take on a life of his own, along with his service buddies. One of my many (big on this aspect) re-writes resulted in an attempt to turn it as a radio play that was  entered in the BBC International Playwriting Competition.  Needless to say it didn't win but thought I'd share the second scene in this blog. It's still in the editing process (so what else is new). Formatting went askew in places during cut-and-paste.

To set the stage so to speak, JOE MCKENNA is a disillusioned old veteran who saw action and is angry with the world. He and his buddies are relics from another era who are afflicted with a variety of debilitating conditions, and the death of one of them hits Joe particularly hard. He decides to make a personal statement to make his views known at a remembrance day service in a park and along the way fate steps in when he meets up with a young boy (TIM) and his mother.


SCENE: A PARK.

AT RISE: Joe McKenna is slowly making his way to where the Remembrance Day service is taking place in a park. His body racked with pain, he stops to sit down on a bench. A military band can be heard in the distance playing band music and the voice speaking through a loud speaker system.


JOE:                           Look at ‘em all! Sheep – a bunch of bloody sheep!

Add a Comment

There aren't many first hand accounts of men who fought as soldiers in the German army during World War II, particularly not for young adult readers, which makes Unlikely Warrior so much more compelling and interesting to read.  Georg Rauch really takes the reader inside this relatively unknown world and give us an opportunity to see what life was like on German side of things.  Georg divides his story into three distinct parts.

The first part deals with Rauch's training for the army and his family history.  In February 1943, 18 years old Vienna-born Georg doesn't really want to be a soldier in Hitler's army , but when his draft notice arrives, he has no choice.  Reporting for training, his radio building and Morse Code hobby skills means he can train as a radio operator and telegraphist.

Now, for most Germans being in the army wasn't anything special - every able bodied male was conscripted, especially after the heavy losses they suffered on the Eastern Front at Stalingrad - expect for one thing: in Hitler's German Reich, Georg Rauch was consider to be Jewish in Hitler's Reich: Georg's maternal grandmother was Jewish, which meant his mother was Jewish, and so was he.

Sent to train in Brno, Czechoslovakia, the now Funker (radio operator) Rauch is chosen along with a few other men to be promoted to officer status.  But because he is a Mischling (a person of mixed blood), Georg believes he will not be able to serve in officer capacity and reports this to this superior officer.

Not long after, Georg finds himself at the dreaded Eastern front as a radio and telegraph operator.  Ironically, Hitler's Jewish soldier is awarded the Iron Cross in August 1944.

The second part of Rauch's story covers the time he spent in Russian labor camps as a POW and this is the most difficult  section to read.  Shortly after receiving his medal,  Rauch is captured by the Russians and spends the rest of the war as a POW.  The details of being a prisoner of war are harrowing, but despite many close calls, starvation, illness and injury, Rauch manages to survive the war and the Russian POW camps, unlike many of his fellow soldiers.

Part Three covers the end of the war and Rauch's long trek home to find his hopefully still living family.  Each part of Rauch's wartime journey is an intriguing window into the life of a German soldier.  Being 1/4 Jewish doesn't really seem to impact his time at the front or as a POW, as much as his refusal to serve as an officer does.  On the other hand, it doesn't make Rauch feel like an enemy, and one certainly would not think of him as a Nazi, not if he is 1/4 Jewish, nor does he (or any of the German soldiers he writes about) ever behave with the kind of cruelty we associate with Hitler's soldiers and so it becomes easy to read his story and emphasize with it.

Georg Rauch's easy writing style pulls the readers right into his life and his open honesty about his himself and how he feels about everything is refreshing.  He has penned a fascinating memoir is based in part on his own recollections and in part on letters he had written to his mother while in the army, letters she carefully numbered and tucked away.  Because the letters were written in situ, they make Rauch's experiences sound much more immediate and realistic than had he written his story complete from memory.  To add to the authenticity of his story, photographs of Rauch and his family are included.  Rauch's wife Phyllis has done an excellent readable translation of Unlikely Warrior from the German, perhaps so well done because it was a labor of love.

After the war, Rauch went on to fulfill his dream of being an artist, living in Mexico with his wife, who translated his memoir.  Sadly, Georg Rauch passed away in 2006 and never saw this wonderful Young Adult version of his story in print.

This book is recommended for readers age 12+
This book was an EARC received from NetGalley

Add a Comment

In honor of Remembrance Day or Memorial Day or whatever and however its remembered, the first eight pages of yet anther rewrite of "Old Soldiers." I'm adapting parts of it from other versions to make it into what I hope to be, a new play. As always, comments always welcome - and appreciated.

Add a Comment

Hadrian’s Wall has been in the news again recently for all the wrong reasons. Occasional wits have pondered on its significance in the Scottish Referendum, neglecting the fact that it has never marked the Anglo-Scottish border, and was certainly not constructed to keep the Scots out. Others have mistakenly insinuated that it is closed for business, following the widely reported demise of the Hadrian’s Wall Trust. And then of course there is the Game of Thrones angle, best-selling writer George R R Martin has spoken of the Wall as an inspiration for the great wall of ice that features in his books.

Media coverage of both Hadrian’s Wall Trust’s demise and Game of Thrones’ rise has sometimes played upon and propagated the notion that the Hadrian’s Wall was manned by shivering Italian legionaries guarding the fringes civilisation – irrespective of the fact that the empire actually trusted the security of the frontier to its non-citizen soldiers, the auxilia rather than to its legionaries. The tendency to overemphasise the Italian aspect reflects confusion about what the Roman Empire and its British frontier was about. But Martin, who made no claims to be speaking as a historian when he spoke of how he took the idea of legionaries from Italy, North Africa, and Greece guarding the Wall as a source of inspiration, did at least get one thing right about the Romano-British frontier.

There were indeed Africans on the Wall during the Roman period. In fact, at times there were probably more North Africans than Italians and Greeks. While all these groups were outnumbered by north-west Europeans, who tend to get discussed more often, the North African community was substantial, and its stories warrant telling.

Perhaps the most remarkable tale to survive is an episode in the Historia Augusta (Life of Severus 22) concerning the inspection of the Wall by the emperor Septimius Severus. The emperor, who was himself born in Libya, was confronted by a black soldier, part of the Wall garrison and a noted practical joker. According to the account the notoriously superstitious emperor saw in the soldier’s black skin and his brandishing of a wreath of Cyprus branches, an omen of death. And his mood was not further improved when the soldier shouted the macabre double entendre iam deus esto victor (now victor/conqueror, become a god). For of course properly speaking a Roman emperor should first die before being divinized. The late Nigerian classicist, Lloyd Thompson, made a powerful point about this intriguing passage in his seminal work Romans and Blacks, ‘the whole anecdote attributes to this man a disposition to make fun of the superstitious beliefs about black strangers’. In fact we might go further, and note just how much cultural knowledge and confidence this frontier soldier needed to play the joke – he needed to be aware of Roman funerary practices, superstitions, and the indeed the practice of emperor worship itself.

Why is this illuminating episode not better known? Perhaps it is because there is something deeply uncomfortable about what could be termed Britain’s first ‘racist joke’, or perhaps the problem lies with the source itself, the notoriously unreliable Historia Augusta. And yet as a properly forensic reading of this part of the text by Professor Tony Birley has shown, the detail included around the encounter is utterly credible, and we can identify places alluded to in it at the western end of the Wall. So it is quite reasonable to believe that this encounter took place.

Not only this, but according to the restoration of the text preferred by Birley and myself, there is a reference to a third African in this passage. The restoration post Maurum apud vallum missum in Britannia indicates that this episode took place after Severus has granted discharge to a soldier of the Mauri (the term from which ‘Moors’ derives). And has Birley has noted, we know that there was a unit of Moors stationed at Burgh-by-Sands on the Solway at this time.

Sadly, Burgh is one of the least explored forts on Hadrian’s Wall, but some sense of what may one day await an extensive campaign of excavation there comes from Transylvania in Romania, where investigations at the home of another Moorish regiment of the Roman army have revealed a temple dedicated to the gods of their homelands. Perhaps too, evidence of different North African legacies would emerge. The late Vivian Swann, a leading expert in the pottery of the Wall has presented an attractive case that the appearance of new forms of ceramics indicates the introduction of North African cuisine in northern Britain in the second and third centuries AD.

What is clear is that the Mauri of Burgh-by-Sands were not the only North Africans on the Wall. We have an African legionary’s tombstone from Birdoswald, and from the East Coast the glorious funerary stela set up to commemorate Victor, a freedman (former slave) by his former master, a trooper in a Spanish cavalry regiment. Victor’s monument now stands on display in Arbeia Museum at South Shields next to the fine, and rather better known, memorial to the Catuvellunian Regina, freedwoman and wife of Barates from Palmyra in Syria. Together these individuals, and the many other ethnic groups commemorated on the Wall, remind us of just how cosmopolitan the people of Roman frontier society were, and of how a society that stretched from the Solway and the Tyne to the Euphrates was held together.

The post African encounters in Roman Britain appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

There can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. Jon Stallworthy’s celebrated anthology The New Oxford Book of War Poetry spans from Homer’s Iliad, through the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the wars fought since. The new edition, published to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, includes a new introduction and additional poems from David Harsent and Peter Wyton amongst others. In the three videos below Jon Stallworthy discusses the significance and endurance of war poetry. He also talks through his updated selection of poems for the second edition, thirty years after the first.

Jon Stallworthy examines why Britain and America responded very differently through poetry to the outbreak of the Iraq War.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stallworthy on his favourite war poems, from Thomas Hardy to John Balaban.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As The New Oxford Book of War Poetry enters its second edition, editor Jon Stallworthy talks about his reasons for updating it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jon Stallworthy is a poet and Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Oxford University. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author of many distinguished works of poetry, criticism, and translation. Among his books are critical studies of Yeats’s poetry, and prize-winning biographies of Louis MacNiece and Wilfred Owen (hailed by Graham Greene as ‘one of the finest biographies of our time’). He has edited and co-edited numerous anthologies, including the second edition of The New Oxford Book of War Poetry.

 

The post What can poetry teach us about war? appeared first on OUPblog.

Add a Comment

I have always meant to read Willy Vlautin. My old sales rep practically begged me for years to read him (I still have two books in my to read pile). One of my favourite authors, George Pelecanos, ranks him as one of his favourite writers (which should have been enough for me). But what finally got to me read Willy Vlautin was the Ann Patchett quote (alongs side a Pelecanos) quote on the front of his new novel, because quite frankly Ann Patchett has done me no wrong lately.

This is not a war novel but it does deal with the aftereffects of war. It is not a political novel but it does look at health care in America. It is a novel about the wounded. Those wounded by what life throws at them and what they do with those wounds. It is a dazzling original novel, profound and full of hope. And it will stay with you long after you finish reading it.

The Free reminded me of two things. The first was one of the best books I’ve read about war, Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien is best known for his Vietnam War novel The Things They Carried. Going After Cacciato was very different. It was experimental, it played with the boundaries of reality and went to that place inside a soldier’s head where he tries to hide from the horrors of war. Willy Vlautin takes this even further with the character of Leroy Kervin.

Leroy is a wounded veteran of Iraq. He has suffered a horrific brain injury and has spent years in a home for the disabled, barely functional. As the book opens Leroy has a moment of clarity and tries to take his own life. We then follow Leroy as he dips in and out of consciousness and into the dream world he creates to escape to somewhere better, to come to terms to what has happened to him.

Around these dreams we meet the people around Leroy; his mother who sits by his bedside reading science fiction novels to him, his girlfriend Jeanette who is also a huge part of Leroy’s dreamscape. Leroy’s dream world reminded me a lot of George Saunders’ short stories. Influenced by the books Leroy used to read, and now listens to, his dreams take on a slight science fiction bend. But as hard as Leroy tries he can’t out run his own consciousness and he wounds and memories creep into his dreams.

We also follow Pauline, the nurse who cares for Leroy in the hospital and Freddy, the caretaker at the home who found Leroy. These are the other wounded, the ones who soldier on. Who bare the brunt of a hard and uncompromising world. Freddy is drowning in debt trying to pay off a huge hospital bill. He works two jobs and as a consequence his wife and kids have left him. Pauline looks after her mentally ill father while at the same time trying to care for her patients at the hospital. But both Pauline and Leroy find hope in their lives and this drives them toward something better.

Willy Vlautin is an amazing writer who I should have read long before now and I can’t wait to get stuck into his previous books I have sitting in my pile.

Buy the book here…

Add a Comment

A gloomy reflection of oppression in dictatorial countries.

Available as an art print.

Add a Comment

Teachers- Looking for a way to talk to your students about war this Memorial Day?

Parents- Trying to make your kids understand the importance of remembering those who gave their lives for our country?

Lee & Low has some great titles that will get your kids interested and help them understand the great sacrifices made by our men and women at arms, what really makes someone a hero, and the impact of war on a level they can relate to.

Heroes by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee

Set during the ’60s with the Vietnam war going on and World War II popular in the media, Japanese American Donnie Okada always has to be the “bad guy” when he and his friends play war because he looks like the enemy portrayed in the media. When he finally has had enough, Donnie enlists the aid of his 442nd veteran father and Korean War veteran uncle to prove to his friends and schoolmates that those of Asian descent did serve in the U.S. military.

Check out the Teacher’s Guide for additional discussion ideas!

Quiet Hero: The Ira Hayes Story written and illustrated by S.D. Nelson

A biography of Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six soldiers to raise the United States flag on Iwo Jima during World War II, an event immortalized by Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph.

Don’t miss out on the BookTalk with S.D. Nelson, or the accompanying Teacher’s Guide.

When the Horses Ride By: Children in the Times of War by Eloise Greenfield, illustrated by Jan Spivey Gilchrist

Through rhythmic words, photos, and original art, this collection of poems about children throughout history focuses on their perceptions of war and how war affects their lives. A great way to introduce the topic of war into discussion with your children and the ramifications they may not have considered.

For some insight from the author, take a look at this BookTalk with Eloise Greenfield.

Be sure to leave comments below on how discussions about war went in your classroom or with your own children; we’d love to hear from you!

Filed under: Musings & Ponderings Tagged: memorial day, soldiers, talking about war, war Add a Comment

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

Yes, but (and here's where I'm cheating) only because the MC is their kid. I don't think I've written from a parent's perspective. Scratch that, it has to be a lie. I'm sure I have, but it's not something I set out intentionally to do.

22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you’ve never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.

Meg is definitely going to get frisky with her co-star (name subject to change), and yet they won't be revealing any skin in the book. I think.

23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to submitting?

Differs. For short stories it can be anything from a few hours to weeks depending on whether I think it's good to go or not. Most times, I hang my stories on the jingle bell line I've attached to my memo board and leave them to ferment. Then I redraft, then I hang them back up, then I edit, then I edit, then I edit, then they go.

24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What’s the most interesting way you’ve killed someone?

Oh, I'll kill any of my characters off in a heartbeat. Although for, 'The Midnight Motel' I may have resurrected a few.

Most interesting ways - I've drowned a soldier in a lake full of dead angels, I've sent men plummeting to earth after vengeful birds burst their balloon, and I'm thinking I need to come up with some more inventive murder plans.


Today's Word Count: 2187 + 545 (other projects)
Total Word Count: 48,703 + 5789 (other projects)

I am so hitting 50,000 words tomorrow. Or, I have so just jinxed myself.

Display Comments Add a Comment

The publisher of the Forts series, CANONBRIDGE LLC is working alongside the SOLDIERS' ANGELS charity and has reduced the cost of the book in hopes that you'll purchase, donate, and get it in the hands of the soldiers overseas. This is not only for Forts, but some of their other titles as well.

If you're interested, click the words CANONBRIDGE LLC for more details.

See how easy I made that for you?

Go me!

Steven

Add a Comment

A beautiful story for Veterans Day

Nubs: The True Story of a Mutt, a Marine & a Miracle by Major Brian Dennis, Kirby Larson, Mary Nethery, Little, Brown, 2009

What a terrific story! So happy Major Brian Dennis and Nubs appeared on the Tonight Show this week. Conan gave him a nice block of time.

I really loved this part of the story. (Not an exact transcript)

An Iraqi came up and he asked me why we were so interested in the dog...
[when Major Dennis speculated about what had happened to the dog's ears the man said--]
"Yeah, I cut his ears off."
"You're the one who cut his ears off?"
"Yeah, I cut his ears off

"I had my battle gear on me and my big KABAR knife and I asked him, through my translator, how would he feel if I cut his ears off?"

...and the tonight Show audience applauded.

Me too.

Add a Comment

A coincidental and fitting day to post the next extract from my NaNoWriMo novel as it is Remembrance Sunday and almost 90 years since the end of World War One.

Part Two: PAPER DRAGONS

(i)

The Show

1918

Silence.

Ever since the guns had ceased their tirade across the western front, Daniel Cole had sought solace in silence. He would wake in the early hours, the night ink blank, the stars concealed behind the weight of clouds that refused to release the ghosts from the earth, and he would sit on the worn chair in the corner of his bedroom, look out at the emptied world, and remember all the lost men.

Their ghosts brushed past him when he entered the bakers where Eddie Tarpey dusted loaves and dreamed of Mabel Normand; when he rode his bicycle past Newsham School where Norman Bulmer instructed children in physical education; and down by the lake where the twins spent their summers fishing. In this very room, where prior to 1914 Walter James Cole had wept, snored and dreamed of glory in the bed next to his.

Sometimes, in the silence of three a.m., he heard his dead brother snore. Sometimes he remembered Walter had been as young as the century. Fifteen when an enemy shell found his heart. When its shrapnel crossed the channel, embedded in the walls of their old terrace, and stole their parents.

Sometimes the silence broke him.

His uniform hung on a wire hanger over the back of the door. It formed ghost of its own in the dark, and one month since quiet had fallen over blood red fields its shoulders slumped, its legs baggy over emaciated thighs, its collar bent beneath the weight of a bowed head. He had that morning decided he would never put it on again. He wondered if Swan, George, Ken and Harvey would wear theirs when they met the following day at the White Horse Inn.

Swan Ecklund would, of that Daniel had no doubt.

The curtains dragged along the yellowing wire as he pulled them open and looked out at what he considered a ghost town. The cobbled streets glistened with rain. Gas lamps washed the streets with pools of light. He lifted the sash window. The gas lamp located outside his terraced house hissed, in his darkest hours Daniel imagined that hiss was for him alone.

Display Comments Add a Comment

War is only started by fools, when does the bloodshed stop?

Display Comments Add a Comment

NOTE TO SELF: WEAR A POPPY


At the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, people take a minute out of their busy lives to stop and remember.

For the past week I've been wearing a poppy in my coat lapel. My father fought in WWII and he seldom spoke about it. Whatever his experiences, they died with him. I wear the poppy as a symbol of remembrance for his sacrifice and all the other soldiers who fought along side him. It's the least I could do.

Every year at the beginning of November one day is set aside to pay homage to Canadian soldiers who went forth to defend their country. Although their numbers are decreasing while their ages increase, still they show up every November 11th in shopping malls to sell felt poppies and make their presence felt and seen. "They" are the Canadian veterans who served overseas in World War I, World War II and the Korean War. In fact Canada deployed more than 25,000 troops to fight in Korea, frequently described as "The Forgotten War" and sustained 1,588 Canadian casualties including 516 dead.

Our country is known for its peacekeeping presence with Canada participating in every UN peacekeeping effort from its beginning until 1989 and continues to play a significant role. In excess of 125,000 Canadians have served in 50 UN peacekeeping missions since 1949.

On Remembrance Day we wear a symbolic representation of the poppy, also known as the "Flower of Remembrance", in our lapels as a gesture of respect. The poppy as most people are aware was immortalized in John McCrae's famous and moving poem, "In Flanders Fields" honouring the war dead of Britain, France, the United States and Canada. The annual Poppy Campaign is a very important fundraising program for the Royal Canadian Legion and the monies raised offer financial aid for ex-service people experiencing financial problems, in addition to funding for medical appliances and research, home services, care facilities and other purposes.

"We must remember. If we do not, the sacrifice of those one hundred thousand Canadian lives will be meaningless. They died for us, for their homes and families and friends, for a collection of traditions they cherished and a future they believed in; they died for Canada. The meaning of their sacrifice rests with our collective national consciousness; our future is their monument." (Veterans Affairs Canada)

One minute out of our otherwise busy day is not a lot to ask.

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Sunday
http://198.103.134.2/remembers/sub.cfm?source=teach_resources/poppy

Add a Comment

Covers by Dick Bruna from http://www.utrecht.jp/person/?s=0&p=49 and The World Of Kane

Thank you http://martinklasch.blogspot.com/

Add a Comment