History Lesson: World War I and Britain

I feel like I use my journalism degree all the time, but my history degree less often. I chose it as my major in high school and never wavered from it. Always a passion, it was also going to help me get into law school, but in the end just made me happy. Now, on occasion, and maybe only just for me, I want to use it.

In the course of my history education, from grade school through college, more time was always spent on America's role in, and the general impact of, World War II than on World War I. In my experience it was just never discussed and analyzed as much. And by comparison's sake, I don't really think we were impacted the same way in terms of resources and personnel. Why we were fighting WWII was also more clear: in the simplest form, it was because of Pearl Harbor. While WWI, in its simplest form, began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And in 1914, and even today, not sure how much effect the death of an Austrian has on America.

The memorial to the residents of D.C. who fought in WWI.
The only WWI memorial on the Mall.

I began thinking of all this because the last British combat veteran of WWI recently died. Just several months after the last American veteran died. My knowledge of WWI finally went beyond what I learned from "All Quiet on the Western Front" and that awful scene in "Legends of the Fall," when I took a British history course my junior year of college. (Which was actually not a good class in large part due to a sub par professor, who happened to be a Duke grad. I'm not saying that was the reason he wasn't a good professor.)

But the one thing -- literally the one thing -- I remember from the course textbook was the effect the Great War had on Great Britain. They gave so many of their young men to The Cause that they effectively lost the equivalent of a generation's worth of leaders. Potential leaders in science, industry, literature, business, and politics -- gone. That still astounds me. Now, they've managed to do pretty well since then and not to be obvious, but it did let some females step up to the plate, too. (Hello, Margaret Thatcher.) But who knows what may have been achieved. What disease cured? What groundbreaking business formed? What literary masterpiece written? What world leader launched?

The summer after taking the course I went to London for summer school. The scars of the Second World War are everywhere, from the singed dome of St. Paul's to a plaque on a building explaining how it was rebuilt after the Blitz. But WWI and its effects are still seen, too, like in the Imperial War Museum.

I loved this museum not just because I love history, but because it was the first museum I visited where "home front" wasn't in reference to America. It presented the view of wars I thought I knew so much about, from a completely different perspective. And through each floor of exhibits, my earth shifted a little each time I saw the word "home," and knew it wasn't the home I knew. At one point you can step through a mock up of a trench. (Trench warfare is one of the most lasting legacies of the conflict.) While I'm sure the mock trench was nothing like the real thing, it still made its point: dark, tight, loud, and even smelly. An entire generation lost in these trenches, so far from their own home fronts? It is still unfathomable.

Today in Britain, veterans of all conflicts are remembered each November with remembrance poppies, which began as a way to honor the Great War's fallen. When I moved back to England after college, I was there for Remembrance Day and felt like the city was awash in paper poppies, including these outside Westminster Abbey. Resiliency, recovery, and remembrance, that's the British way.

One of my most favorite scenese from an episode of "Doctor Who" covers a lot of these points. (What could be more British than that?) It beautifully shows the sacrifices asked of the young men of Britain at that time, the hell they went through, and how they came out on the other side. (And the young man happens to be Sam from "Love Actually.")

It was to be "the war to end all wars." Oh how we all wish that were the case, that the 20th and 21st centuries weren't riddled with conflict after conflict after conflict. Especially as we've been fighting our own wars for a decade now. When all is said and done we don't yet know the final death toll, the final footprint on history. 100 years from now there will be an obituary on the last surviving member of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and who knows what his or her legacy will entail.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;

They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

-Laurence Binyon

"I'm the Doctor. Doctor...Fun."

Today was not a good day. Just awful. But instead of listing all the reasons why, from way over-sleeping to spilled soda on my clothes, I'm focusing on the happy. I'm putting it behind me and moving on. Besides, it got infinitely better when Jan reminded me that there was a new Doctor Who special out, at last!
So that's what I'm doing. Curling up in bed with my laptop and YouTube and the Doctor and Mars.

NaBloPoMo

I was reminded in an article yesterday that November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). From their web site:
National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30...Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

I'd love to be inspired enough to write a novel in a month. Even a crappy one. However, seeing as how I've been working on a "novel" for the past seven years, I'm not so sure how good of a NaNoWriMo-er I'd be. (Besides, I much prefer re-writing the first two pages over and over again.)

Also, "lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly." What do those words even mean? No, really, there's a reason this blog is called "Learning to Fly — it's because I don't. I plan, I agonize, I complain. (I've considered changing the title to "Kicking and Screaming into Adulthood.")

However, since this is the Internet and there's always something being made up, November is also National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). A much more manageable goal for the commitment-phobe in me of writing one measly and mundane blog post a day for a month. (In light of how I posted every day last year, this shouldn't be a problem. Of course, if you followed my blog at all last year, you know I tended to post once a week, seven posts at a time.)

So here I go. Work is about to get crazy and I need something else to keep it from consuming me. Plus, nablopomo is fun to say. Or at least it was until Doctor Who invaded my brain, as it is apt to do, and now I can't get this out of my head:

Repeat after me: I never said I was normal.

Day 282: Title

Another trip home, another train ride. Finally I got a window seat, and finally I had no one sitting beside me. Though I did have one little boy that kept staring at me, and three people with the need to comment on the "Doctor Who" episode I was watching. Note to self, maybe not watch the one with a very large and scary Satan-like creature next time, as everyone behind you can see.

Anyway, that doesn't matter. I always get the cheese tray when I'm on the train, because I love cheese and crackers and it's cheap and good. But as I was quite hungry I also got a hot dog, microwaved to perfection for 45 seconds, on a train.

Day 166: New new things

With every desire to stay in bed today and do nothing, I instead forced myself out of bed and into Ballston. Still planning on taking it easy and being lazy, but at least out of my pajamas and bed.

Wearing new earrings from Eastern Market, and my new Beatles Abbey Road t-shirt, I decided to do several, little new things.

First, lunch at Noodles and Company, a new-ish restaurant at Ballston Mall I've been wanting to try, which was very good. (Made with Jing, a screen capture program I came across. Pointing to my fave ingredients.)
Then, my first Adam Sandler movie in a theatre by myself. Awful. I should have taken a closer look at the movie poster, and seen the clues as to how awful it would be.

Trying to get the travesty of a "film" out of my mind, I went to Macy's and bought some sheets, the first nice, non-Target, non-twin size sheets I've bought for myself.

I then pondered further how I could go about getting those two hours of my life back, with a Mojito lemonade at Cosi. They've been advertising these for awhile but I decided today to finally try one.
Finally, I made it back to my apartment, where I did crash on the bed with the latest episode of "Doctor Who," seeing a new episode only hours after it aired in the UK, instead of days or years later.

And that was Saturday. Whew.