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1914 Evening
Fig.1 Screen grab from a news report style presentation on why Britain went to war 100 years ago / at midnight tonight.
I stumbled upon all of this by chance. Who’d imagine the BBC Parliamentary Channel would produce an evening of documentaries, talks and lectures. Former foreign secretaries reflect on the important role Edward Grey in 1914 took to keep Britain out of a continental conflict. I hope it’s all on the iPlayer as every word is worth sharing.
How to wake the dead – pinning the past – the lost generation of World War One remembered in the Sussex market town of Lewes
Fig. 1. The War Memorial, Lewes High Street, Lewes
An extraordinary way to impress upon those living today, the terrible price and undoubted anguish and trauma caused by the death of one or more member of a family during World War One.
Steve George took the names of those featured on the Lewes War Memorial from the First World War. His research gave him an address which he pinned on a Google Map.
And where the war dead lived:
The men from Lewes who died in the First World War
Fig. 2. Where the WW1 War Dead lived in Lewes : remembered on the Town’s War Memorial.
Some grabs using Google Maps and Google World:
Fig. 3. Where the WW1 War Dead lived in Lewes : remembered on the Town’s War Memorial. (Satellite view)
- Lots of the pins represent addresses with multiple fatalities
- Approximately a third aren’t represented by individual pins.
Fig. 4. Where the WW1 War Dead lived in Lewes : remembered on the Town’s War Memorial.
One corner of the town. Every 3rd or 4th house marking a soldier missing or known to be dead never to return.
“The more you zoom in “, says Steve, ” the more clusters open out and the more shocking it gets”.
Fig. 5. The War Memorial, Lewes High Street, Lewes
On the War Memorial there are two, sometimes three names from the same family: brothers, husbands, fathers and sons. The loss in some families was higher still.
THE NEXT STEP:
- Other towns, cities, associations and corporations to do something similar.
- Do the same in all nations that suffered losses during the War.
- Feature photographs of those named.
- Link their home to where they fell (or where they lie).
Fig.6 The Tynecot Cemetry near Passchendaele.
Fig 7. International Corner, Belgium. The 75th Anniversary of Passchendaele
Jack Wilson with Lyn Macdonald in 1992, marking the spot near International Corner, north west of Ypres where on 22nd October 1917 Jack burried Dick Piper and Harry Gartenfeld in shallow graves (their bodies were never recovered)
Fig. 8 John Arthur Wilson in 1916. A studio photograph taken in Consett, Co. Durham the week before he was transferred to the ‘suicide squad’ and sent for training on the Vicker’s Machine Gun in Grantham
Jack was from Benfieldside, Shotley Bridge. Those who died from his commmunity are featured in the Church. Where did the Lewes men fall? Where are else are they remembered? Do their relations or ancestors know their story? What do we tell future generations?
Fig. 9. Lyn Macdoland, author of ‘They called it Passchendaele’ at the Tynecot Memorial with veteran
Jack Wilson MM in front of the names of fallen comrades Dick Piper and Harry Gartenfeld June 1992
Fig. 10. The Ypres Salient, Passchendaele : The Western Front autumn 1917
Fig. 11. The dead around Tyne Cot as a result of the October-November push known as Third Ypres, 1917
Fig. 12. What they fought for and where many of them died. A set of concrete German pill-boxes in the mud of Passchendaele, late 1917
Fig. 13. How it ended for tens of thousands in the cratered morass of the Ypres Salient in 1917
Fig. 14. Third Ypres. August – November 1917
Fig. 15. They Called it Passchendale. Vivid narrative from Lyn Macdonald supported by the voices of many veterans in their own words.
The war to end war – but it didn’t
‘The scale and range and power of human activities have been altered by a complicated development of inventions and discoveries, and this has made it imperative to adjust the methods of human association and government to new requirements’. Wells (1936:4)
H G Wells wrote this in his introduction to the part work ‘World War’ published in November 1936.
On 22nd August just two weeks into the ‘Great War’ he had remarked that it would be ‘the war to end war’.
Wishful thinking.
The son of a domestic servant, the housekeeper in a grand house in Kent (a single mother by all accounts), he was largely self-educated and driven. His mind got the better of him. He had a voice and found an education.
Why do we listen to commentators such as H G Wells?
Why do we wheel out the likes of Will Self? Why do we even ask the likes of Boy George for an opinion on world affairs? Can we not make up our own minds? Must we refer to commentators, to those with an opinion, people who have a point of view regarding breaking news?
‘The Great War … the opening phase of a process of convulsive adjustment which will ultimately abolish war’. Wells (1936:5)
Further wishful thinking on Wells’ count. He hasn’t understand human psychology, nor how the fight to survive, to press home a point of view, or to protect it, ‘man’ will fight to the death. We’re an odd lot. Whatever advances we have made in computing in the last decade, imagine the swift advances that would be achieved during war giving the track record of the First and Second Wars to advance aeronautics, tanks, communications …
Not that I wish it upon us at all
I’m dwelling on all of this as we approach the centenary of the First War, the ‘Great War’ while reading a publication from that era, ‘World War’.
The opportunity to use the period of the centenary to ‘educate’ through museums, events, publications, online, on TV, through films and games is immense. But what impact will it have? As long as people consider violence to be the answer to their problems there will be war.
Read in a period of history until you can hear its people speak. Then sleep on it and see their world too.
I am reading a 52 piece part work ‘World War’ edited by Sir John Hammerton and published between 1936 and 1937 with occasional contributions from H G Wells, this alongside various staple and new reads on World War One.
As a piece of learning design what could be simpler? A magazine delivered each week, chapters deliberately left unfinished between parts, photos offering points of interest explained and developed in later issues.
Perspectives shift of course, just as they had a view on the Napoleonic Wars. However, in many cases 1914 was not dissimilar to a battle of 1814, or 1870.
‘Read in a period until you hear its people speak’ E H Carr.
I play this trick of falling asleep with an event in mind and courtesy of the painkillers I am currently taking I enter a vivid dream world much of which I can recall.
The problem with WW1 is the clammer of voices, not just what you can read, but the voices you can listen to on DVD or podcasts, indeed I have several hours of my own grandfather in a County Durham accent that those not familiar with the North East would call Geordie and find, at times, incomprehensible.
How does an historian deal with history when the record is everything? Had a soldier gone into battle in 1914 with a video headset what would we do today with years of material? My grandfather, for example, had no leave from the day he left England in early 1916 to his transfer to the Royal Flying Corps at the very end of 1917.
Would the reality be a huge amount of sitting around dealing with the boredom, discomfort and fear?
This is a map I drew with my grandfather in his 97th year. This and his visit to the trenches the previous year would allow me to retrace his steps, almost by the day between September and end of December 1917.
But why?
A researcher from UCL quizzed me on this some years ago and I had to conclude that for me it was less an obsession with WW1, but rather reminding me of a dearly loved grandparent. I can’t see drawing up maps of my grandmother’s trips into Newcastle on the tram having the same appeal (or historical record or value).
Gradually online I am connecting with grandchildren of veterans and others interested in WW1 so that there is a component of ‘Social Learn’ between blogs and Facebook. All the books I read I share on Twitter, which may help promote the book, but is also attracting many like-minds.
At what point do I become so well informed that I could sit an exam without sitting for the qualification?
Can I short-circuit the steps to an MA in History? There are two parts to the degree, but it is the second part, the elective, that takes me into WW1 territory.
How we learn?
Fig.1. How you learn!
I set out with the idea of doing nothing more than making a face out of time, effort and motivation.
Then 28 months of the MAODE kicked in, as well as experience. How we learn is a rather complex affair. The influencing factors given above carry different weightings and change through time as events play out.
(This should be interactive so that you can adjust the size of each factor to suit your current circumstance, or circumstances you recall from past experience, at school say … or that you hope for in the future. With this in mind I’ll give the above a second shot in Bubbl.us)
Do we define ‘success’ as individual happiness or achievement through the education process and beyond?
SH1T happens.
To study learning we rock and roll between simplification and complication, in an effort to understand we create models, but the reality is always as messy as the individual, their mind and circumstances, when and where they were born and so on.
- An uncle takes the kids to a show, and one of them take as shine to performance.
- A child breaks an arm and goes to hospital and takes an interest in working in a hospital.
- A teacher makes and illustrates and interesting point about landforms and calls one an isthmus and another a peninsula and the idea of naming forms and understanding how they take place takes root.
- Then along comes World War 1, or you are hit by a bus and hospitalized or fall in love
And in all of this, some of us to respond to many of these external stimuli while other of us take a focus and lasting interested, whether as a hobby or career.
A work in progress!
I rather like the idea of trying to create the kinds of infographics produced by David Mcandless illustrated in ‘Information is Beautiful’.
Please suggest factors and weightings!
If you are studying education or learning is there research on these factors, surveys that give weightings and importance to the different factors, or is everything a subset of something else?
H800-11B / EMA Tutor Group Forum / h800 overview framework Janet Gray Post 1. 26 August 2011, 16:01h800 overview framework (accessed 6SEPT2011) http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/forumng/discuss.php?d=624853
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Mind Bursts 