WW1

On this day in history: German and British Navies duke it out east of England

The Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 during WWI took place in the middle of the North Sea. One month prior, the Germans had found success in conducting naval raids on the eastern British coastline. One such attack resulted in 108 dead and 525 civilians wounded. They were able to exfiltrate from the area without […]

Frames of War: ‘Peaky Blinders’ and a crushed post-WWI society

BBC (available on Netflix) has released the fourth season of “Peaky Blinders” recently, a show centered around British gangsters of the same name in 1919. We follow Tommy Shelby, played by Cillian Murphy, as he takes his small, hometown, family-run gang beyond the small pickings of local crime and into some high-risk high-reward criminal ventures. […]

On this day in history: WWI Takes a Christmas Break

Christmas Day, 1914: German and British troops are out of their trenches, playing soccer, bartering goods and singing songs. For a brief moment, the fighting has ceased. The previous night, soldiers on both sides had begun singing Christmas songs in their respective languages — but under a unified melody. Music was often a commonality between […]

Pages of War: ‘The Great Gatsby’

So I’ve done a couple of these that could be considered a bit of a stretch — the last one being Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat.” I included it because I really enjoy fiction that parallel’s an author’s personal experiences, be it in combat against man or combat against nature. There are just details and moments […]

On this day in history: ‘Shell Shock’ report is presented in 1917

The psychiatric field of Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a relatively new one. The term dates as far back as 1980s, and its predecessor, “gross stress reaction,” was coined in 1952. However, the term “shell shock” is an older one, and made its mark in the minds of the public during the first world war. […]

Pages of War: ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ by C. S. Lewis

What does a children’s book have to do with war? Most people who have read the installments of “The Chronicles of Narnia” read them as a child or read them to their children. Like “The Hobbit” or a boatload of modern Disney movies, they are highly entertaining to most adults too, but are generally geared […]

A history of Veterans Day and where we are now

November 11 is a yearly holiday in the United States that honors our veterans of the Armed Forces. It’s a day where your Facebook feeds will likely be filled with BBQs, beer, American flags and old military pictures. Posts will surely explain the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day, and people will share stories […]

Pages of War: T. S. Eliot and ‘The Waste Land’

Read part one of this series here.  Part two. T. S. Eliot has often been criticized for his poetry’s inaccessibility to the average person, and “The Waste Land” is no exception.  It’s easy to read and think, “this guy is really just showing off how smart he is”–his Latin inserts, obscure Shakespeare and ancient Greek […]

On this day in history: The United Nations is born

Today is United Nations day. 1945 brought about the close of WWII and the dawn of the United Nations. They hoped that such an alliance would prevent a war like that from ever happening again. After WWI, a group called the League of Nations was born.  Like the United Nations, its purpose was to stop […]

Pages of War: ‘In Our Time’ by Ernest Hemingway

One of my favorite aspects of Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down was the departure from unrealistically long machine gun bursts and grenades erupting into ridiculous fireballs, and a distinct lack of overly-dramatic crying and shaking of fists to the sky.  It has a visceral, primal tone to it as the quiet protagonists are firing single […]