the fields of flanders

 

 

This past summer a dear friend of mine had the good fortune to vacation in France. And I, thanks to the amazing technology of our times, got to see pictures, including the one above, while she was still there.

I emailed back a copy of "In Flanders Fields," which is one of the most famous of World War I poems. (or maybe the exchange went the other way, and I sent her the poem first; we exchanged numerous pictures for poems during her trip.) When she returned, she brought me a beautiful, hand-beaded poppy broach that I am wearing this month to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War 1.

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Unlike many of the poets of World War !, the author of In Flanders Fields was not an English schoolboy with romantic ideas about going off to war. John McCrae was a Canadian surgeon who had previously served in the Boer War in South Africa. While serving with the Canadian First Artillery in Ypres, Belgium, he had to officiate at the battlefield funeral of a young Lieutenant killed by artillery fire. The next day, McCrae wrote this poem while sitting on the back bumper of an ambulance overlooking the make-shift cemetery where poppies grew among the wooded crosses. McCrae, whose lungs had always been weak, died of pneumonia the following year.

In Flanders Fields 

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.

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Today I am going to present this poem to my eighth grade language arts classes. Tomorrow we will learn about Armistice Day and make paper poppies to wear on our lapels.  We will not forget those who died, but hopefully we can find another way of dealing with conflict rather than taking up the quarrel and continuing to carry the torch of war.

African Americans in World War I

 

 

November 11 marks the 100th anniversary of when the guns fell silent and World War I, the war to end all wars, ended. There are many stories to come out of this war. One that receives less attention than it should is the role of African Americans in the Army, and their contribution to the civil-rights movement.

When war was declared in April 1917, volunteers rushed to fill the United State’s eight all-black National Guard infantry regiments. 89% of these men were assigned to noncombatant units, serving in quartermaster and engineering positions and under the leadership of white officers.

But the Black contribution to the war effort was too crucial to allow these troops to be marginalized. According to True Sons of Freedom, an article in the February 2018 edition of The American Legion, the 367,710 men who answered the call added up to 13% of the wartime Army in a time when African Americans comprised only 10% of the country’s population. The NAACP and other civil-rights organizations pressured the War Department to create two combat units: the 92nd Division, which served as part of the American Expeditionary Force, and 93rd Division, which was comprised of four infantry regiments created from the former National Guard regiments and was “loaned” to the French. The NAACP also pressured the Secretary of War, Newton E. Baker, to create a black officer training camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. The 106 captains, 329 first lieutenants and 204 second lieutenants who came out of this program and who served in the 92nd knew that white officers scrutinized their performance, hoping for proof that Blacks couldn’t lead.

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The 92nd saw little engagement during the war. When it was first put in action in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, the inexperienced 368th Infantry Regiment, like many of the inexperienced AEF units, stumbled badly causing the division’s white officers to remove them from the line. They didn’t see action again until the final days of the war.

The 93rd, however, saw a lot of action in France. They fought in the battles of Meuse-Argonne, Champagne-Marne and Aisne-Marne. One regiment, the 369th Infantry, nicknamed the Harlem Hellfighters, saw front-line duty for 191 days, the record for U.S. regiments. Their service earned these men the Croix de Guerre.
The amount of battle time was not the only difference these two Divisions experienced. Men from the 93rd frequently expressed pleasure at how the French treated them. Many wrote home about the French civilians’ kindness and respect toward them. Soldiers in the 92nd, however, suffered from daily harassment and humiliation from their white superiors. Jim Crow policy was alive and well in the United States Army.

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The shameful treatment of African American soldiers continued after the war. “Red Summer,” the name Civil-rights leader James Weldon gave to the summer of 1919 was race rioting in 25 American cities. Ten black veterans were lynched that summer. American Legion Posts were segregated, and some states, Louisiana among them, refused to sanction black posts. But African American Veterans continued to press for equal rights and equal opportunity, and in 1948 the armed forces were desegregated.

World War I ended a hundred years ago, but the battle for civil rights continues, fought by descendants of the brave men who fought with courage and determination for a country that wasn’t sure it should even allow them to fight.

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Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches middle school language arts in a rural school in central New Mexico. She is the author of several works of historical fiction for middle grade readers. You can read more about her books at her website.

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Remnants of New Mexico History

 

 

Looking down from the mesa top where Posi is.

This weekend I visited Ojo Caliente, a small town in Northern New Mexico, 50 miles north of Santa Fe. Ojo Caliente is Spanish for “warm eye,” and refers to the opening of a series of hot springs.
The valley in which Ojo Caliente lies has been inhabited a long time. The first known inhabitants emigrated from the Four Corners area in the late 1200s. They were a Tewa-speaking people, and they built a number of large pueblos, many of which had 2,000 or more rooms. The one closest to modern-day Ojo Calente is Posi-Ouinge, the 'Greenness Pueblo,' named such because of the green algae that clung to the rocks near the hot spring. The Tewas maintain that its pools provide access to the underworld. Posi-Ouinge was occupied from the 13th through the 16th century, when an epidemic caused the inhabitants to abandon the pueblo and move to Oke-onwi, also known by its Spanish name, San Juan. 

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Is this ridge a buried wall? Perhaps an archaeologist could tell you, but I can't.

Spanish settlement at Ojo Caliente began in the early 1700s, when it and other outposts were established to protect populations centers such as Santa Fe and Santa Cruz from raids by the Utes, Comanches and other tribes.  These isolated outposts were settled by Mexican Indians, mixed-blood Spaniards, and genizaros, Indians who were sold as slaves to the Spanish and became household servants. Some of the Spanish had Jewish or Muslim ancestry and continued to practice their traditional rituals in secret. Others adopted traditions from the surrounding Indians, creating a unique culture.

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  The hike to Posi-Ouige begins directly behind the resort where the hot springs are located. After a short, scrambly climb, the trail follows the top of the ridge to the edge of the mesa.  There are no walls left, and only the use of my admittedly fertile imagination gave me any sense that I was standing in a place that had once housed hundreds of people. But the ground was littered with more pottery shards than I had ever seen in one place before. Some had been laid on flat rocks, but many more pieces were underfoot. I’m no archaeologist, but the sheer number of pot shards told me that a lot of people had lived here.   

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Pottery mixed with rock and scattered all over the ground; it was hard not to step on a piece.

This is a near-by ruin. The one I visited was not anywhere near this evident.

https://www.archaeologysouthwest.org/2014/12/03/return-to-the-ojo-caliente-valley/
https://www.blm.gov/visit/posi-ouinge
http://dev.newmexicohistory.org/filedetails.php?fileID=4767

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a New Mexico native who teaches middle school English in a rural part of the state She is the author of several novels, including one set in New Mexico during the Civil War. You can learn more about her books here. 

Hunting for trees and stories

 

A little Bohnhoff in a big Bohnhoff jacket. Let me begin by asserting that, without a doubt, the Bohnhoff family is not the Anderson Family that shows up Jingle Night or Tweet Sarts, the two books currently in my series for middle grade readers called Anderson Family Chronicles. That being said, there are some similarities. Take, for instance, Christmas tree hunting, which the Andersons do in Jingle Night, and which the Bohnhoffs did this weekend. Both families went to the Jemez mountains to get their tree, and both families had mishaps. Some of the Bohnhoffs had come from out of State and needed some time to run a few essential errands before we headed out. Not knowing how long the errands would take, I packed a lunch and cocoa for us. We were finally ready to go at noon. Shouldn't we have lunch I asked? "Not until we get there," my husband, who is definitely not the stubborn, slightly OCD, over organized father of the Anderson family said.  The snowy hillside made a perfect winter wonderland. The Bohnhoffs and their trophy trees. So we drove the one hour journey to the mountains. Did we eat then? No, for fear we'd not find the right tree before the sun set. No sooner than we got out of the car did we realize that three of us had forgotten to pack jackets. We improvised, pulling apart shells and inner linings to share.  Unlike the Andersons, we managed to find our trees without tears or puppet drownings. I'm not in the "trophy" picture because although we brought a camera that had a timer and a tripod, we forgot to the put the memory card in the camera, so I took this with my phone. My husband managed to wrap the tree in plastic and tie it to the roof of the car without roping himself out - proving he's better than the Anderson dad. By the time the tree was in place we were all too cold to eat, so we finally at on the drive home. Truth may be stranger than fiction sometimes, but it's rarely as funny. The Bohnhoff's tree hunting trip is less interesting than the Anderson's one. Is our tree any better? Once it's up and decorated I'll post a picture of it and let you decide.  Jingle Night is available in ebook and paperback. Want a signed copy? Get one here. 0 Comments

The Bitter Lie that war is sweet

 

Today I continue sharing World War 1 poetry with my 8th grade students. In the past we've studied poems that, while sad for the loss of young lives, depict war as glamorous, and soldiers as heros.

We take a turn today as we study Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est." It's a turn that Owen himself took as the reality of war seeped into his soul like trench mud into his boots.

Owen was a sensitive young man who considered joining the clergy. He volunteered to help the poor and sick in his parish until the tepid response of the Church of England to the sufferings of the underprivileged and dispossessed  disillusioned him. He then taught in France for two years, returning to England and joining the army after the war began. Owen's first few letters home to his mother in the early winter of 1916 indicate that he was enamored with the glamor and excitement of war, but in less than a month reality had taken hold and he had seen enough. The events depicted in "Dulce et Decorum Est" occurred on January 12, 1917. By then, he was ready to deny Horace's Latin admonition to the Romans that it was sweet and good to die for one's country.

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Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Remembering the veterans of World War 1

  

I remember World War 1 veterans marching in the 4th of July parades of my youth. They seemed so old to me, but they were no older than today's Vietnam veterans are to my own middle school students.

My own grandfather was a World War 1 veteran. Harold Swedberg.was a farm boy and pioneering auto mechanic from Illinois. He served in France during WWI unloading cargo and transferring it to trains for the front and working in some kind of mysterious capacity, perhaps helping to develop early airplanes for war purposes. He never talked about his service with family members.

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My grandfather had a German "potato masher" hand grenade, similar to this one, which is in the National World War 1 Museum in Kansas City. He used his as a doorstop. He always warned us kids not to touch it, that it was live. I believed him then, but now I wish I had that little memento.

Will Streets, the poet of A Lark Above the Trenches, never lived to frighten his grandchildren with strange souvenirs. He died in the Somme in 1916.

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A Lark Above the Trenches 1916

​Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.

I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings

That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!

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Commemorating the End of WorlD War 1

 

 

This Veteran's Day marks the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. To observe this day, I began a very short course on World War 1 Poets for my 8th grade classes today. The first poem I present was For the Fallen, by  Laurence Binyon.

The poet was in his 40s when the war broke out, and he'd never seen battle. He wrote this poem just a month into the war, while sitting on a cliff overlooking the sea in Cornwall. Later he would sign up to be an orderly with the Red Cross, and work a brief stint in a hospital in France.

For the Fallen
By Laurence Binyon

​With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
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Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
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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.
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They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
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But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
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As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.