peter monahan

This song is part of the script of Oh, What A Lovely War! but I believe it is a genuine WWI song Hush, here comes a Whizzbang. Hush, here comes a Whizzbang. Now you soldiermen get down those stairs, Down in your dugouts and say your prayers. Hush, here comes a Whizzbang, And it's making right for you. And you'll see all the wonders of No-Man's-Land, If a Whizzbang, hits you.

A number of years ago I read and have been haunted by the novel Regeneration, written in 1991 by Pat Barker and a Booker Prize winner. It deals with the effects of and treatments for shell shock and is based on the writings of Dr. W.H.R. Rivers, a military doctor who specialized in nerve damage and shell shock. The follow-up novel, The Eye in the Door, deals with the persecution of gays and conscientious objectors in GB during the war. It is set in a prison - hence the 'eye' and in the Scottish military hospital where sigfried Sassoon was snet, as clearly anyone who wrote the kind of poetry he did about the war was not sane! Both are superbly written and very informative as to the social and military mind set around anyone not 100% 'behind the war effort'. In one of the two is a truly horrific scene with a British patient who is literally starving himself to death because of an incident in which he threw himself into a shell hole and landed face down in a German corpse, some of which went into his mouth. He has been unable to ingest food since and is being forcibly fed to preserve his life. An image which will stick in my head forever! Well worth the read, both od them, and I understand there is a third volume.

I believe that. I suspect that if you put a rat in a steel drum and pounded on it with a pipe for 2-3 days the rat would not emerge 'normal', for whatever normal means to a rat. I've owned two adopted small dogs, each with mild 'neuroses' from their earlier lives. Nothing serious and neither was systematically abused, but I've seen animals who were and they're never fully 'normal' again. And the longer I live the more I believe that we are products of our cumulative life experience and that our intellect is often a poor tool for overcoming the emotional and psychological 'scars', large and small, of life. I didn't know there were shell shock cases still in treatment that late but, on reflection, it doesn't really surprise me. What a morbid topic for what is, here, a lovely sunny day!

I'm with Don! At the very least there had to have been the German equivalent of 'the little buggers' and 'the big bastards'. Front line soldiers of very period and nationality, right back to the Greeks and Trojans, had colloquial, usually unprintable, nicknames for everything important in their lives: food, booze, women, officers and weapons, their own and the enemies'. The Brits also used 'dust bins', I think, for one of the bigger shells. Or was it 'coal scuttles'? And was 'Moaning Minnie' a WWI or a WWII term?

How Soviet! I wonder, would there have been specific awards for other industries? I've always loved the Mongolian concept: "Exceptional Goatherd, 3rd Class"

Civilian awardee? ARP, medical volunteer or someone on war work? I don't know enough about the SA requirements to know how common that would be but a lack of any rank or unit affiliation on British medals often indicated a civilian recipient, at least in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Only that the whole thought of having to depend on those to protect me from gas scares the willies out of me! I've worn the 'small box respirator' - a reproduction - for brief periods on a smoke filled mock battlefield and its almost impossible to do anything useful with it on because you really can't see! And the official instructions for the PH hoods if you were sweating was 'rub the hood against your forehead with your free hand' and carry on! Yikes! I suppose the only thing worse would be what happened to you in a gas attack without one!

"J" for |"Junior"? Doesn't seem too likely, but you never know. Just looking in box of ribbon bits for some ISM ribbon, but sadly none appeared. You should be able to find it though. Maybe try OMSA? Peter

Not a telly watcher, I'm afraid. Is it a documentary?

Fascinating! Yes, please do keep sleuthing if you can.

They shouldn't be, but even some collectors [of medals] undervalue the 'other stuff' - badges, 'non-issue' awards and especially paper work, and a lot of it gets separated and/or thrown out over the years. Even the silver 'Services Rendered' badges are nowhere near as common on the market as one would expect, given that they went to anyone who was invalided out with sickness or wounds, and I suspect a lot were melted down for the silver because there is no name on them. Distressing!

Very! Just wading through the badly edited - by his son - account of a sniper from Northern Ontario who served 4 years in France. He set up a sniper/scout/observer section in his own battalion, which idea was stolen and used by the whole division and corps, though he got no credit. He sounds like a cross between John Wayne and Alvin York for his sniping exploits and even calims authorship of some of the verses from 'Mademoisell from Armeniteres'. His account also claims credit for his section inventing the plotting table and sound ranging gear. All that aside, he speaks with great honesty of his own breakdown, after 18 months of non-stop nightly raids and patrols. He says he would wake up in 'convulsions' of shivering which lasted 30-40 minutes, that while on patrol he's have to 'sit down' [read 'take cover'] periodically and so on. He caps it by saying that his old CO, who he loved, returned to the unit and asked this guy to take on a dangerous scout, which the author refused. The CO later did the same in another unit and when no one would go went himself and was shot dead, after telling the others that 'No one in my old unit ever said no.' Clearly this haunted the author, though despite his obvious bragging he had done enough that he had no need to feel he was slacking. And what percentage of the poor buggers who got shot for desertion were PTSD cases? I found the figure in the article of 1 in 7 casualties being shell shock to be surprising but quite believable. Thanks for sharing, Chris.

Even likely. Now you just need to find out whether there is a listing of serial numbers for the RSC for that period. I know for WWI there are lists of blocks of numbers assigned to various regiments but not sure how detailed they get and whether or not the same is true for WWII - I suspect not. Perhaps the Signal Corps museum could shed some light if you were to write them.

Strapper I misspoke or misremembered on Jack's 'disability'. It was, I'm sure you're right, vision problems. And I agree, both on the importance of 'duty' to both fathers and sons and, of course, on how the outcome retroactively influenced their feelings about it all. People quote Kipling's "The White Man's Burden" derisively, as an apologia for colonialism but he, and generations of Europeans really believed it. They had a moral duty to help civilize the world, they felt and while many got rich from the empires - the two things are not necessarily incompatible - the young men dying of black water fever in Nigeria or of a jezzail bullet in the gut on the NWF of India weren't doing it for the money! In their own peculiar way, the Victorians were onto something: the same people who invented 'humane' prisons, free public museums and libraries and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals!

Gee, sounds like the place my forebears came from: Northern Ireland! But, no, lets not go down that road except to note, perhaps, that in an age when most people actually took religion seriously it was inevitable, I think, that God and religion would get co-opted for political ends. We won't even go to the Crusades!

The largest [i think] seller of repro. WWI gear in the US uses originals for his patterns but regularly mentions in his advertising that straps have been lengthened on web gear 'for modern figures'. Remember that the British recruited entire 'Bantam' battalions and eventually two Bantam divisions of men 4'10"-5'3", that later being the usual minimum height for enlistment. Interestingly, the chest size was apparently one inch bigger than the usual minimum: they were looking for men like miners who had muscle if not height. And of course there were many fully employed men, like miners and factory hands, in the UK in the years before the War who could rarely afford meat or a healthy diet and produced children as stunted as themselves. As to the 'dress up' thing, that was a cultural product: men with any pretentions of class at all wore tailored cloth, ties and waistcoats even in the heat and so on. Kipling even has a story in which young officers under enemy fire on the North West Frontier are told to walk up in down in front of their [sensibly] prone private soldiers to keep up morale. And if hit to roll back through the line of men so the rankers wouldn't have to watch them thrashing and moaning! 'Mustn't let the side down, old boy.' Still looking for a photo of a WWI officer who hasn't shaved or is tie-less! But you're right about the material: first time I wore a coarse wool tunic and cap [re-enacting] I was too busy scratching to shoot!

Good call, Dave! I think that's exactly what it is. [thumbs up] I am afraid 'MP OY' doesn't suggest anything in English to me, but that style of cross was used by many many European nations for various orders, decorations, medals and so on. Perhaps something Slavic?

Fabulous slide show with it. Thanks for sharing!

Wow! I killed that thread, didn't I?

I have had the honour of speaking to a number of concentration camp survivors - all Jews - from WWII and one of the questions I asked, when I could, was 'Did you have religious faith when you went in and did the experience change that?' That because, on my first visit to the Holocaust remembrance Centre in Toronto I went in the exit door in error and so the very first thing I saw was the guest book, in which someone had written 'Where was God?' I have also read and taught 'Night' by Elie Wiesel, one chapter of which recounts the guards hanging a twelve year old boy. Wiesel's comment is to the effect that 'that was the day they killed God.' On the other hand, a quote by Wiesel from other writings say "I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in 'Night.' I questioned God's silence. So I questioned. I don't have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it. I can see the trenches killing all faith in God, as the Holocaust did for many. But not all, perhaps not even most. One aspect of faith is that it is, by definition, not based on fact or evidence, so fact and evidence don't necessarily change or weaken it. BTW, the answer from most of the camp survivors was that they were atheists but all knew others who had kept their faith and in at least one case even believed that Gosd had helped her survive. Sorry, a bit 'heavy' but I felt the topic deserved it. Peter

Ouch! I came across something in a WWI document put out by or about the RAMC. A drawing of the effect of a fast moving projectile, a slower one and a bullet which had been deliberately turned base forward in the cartridge. It was accompanied by the account of a RAMC doctor who said that British troops had brought him clips of GERMAN ammo in which the bullets had been turned end for end, presumably to do the damage illustrated. Not sure I believe it - how did the Tommies get the ammo. in the first place? - but an interesting bit of progoganda and/ or ballistic science.

The first item has a bugle horn often associated with hunters or light infantry/chasseur regiments in the military and looks, perhaps, French or Belgian or Italian in style. The fittings are odd - perhaps meant to be sewn to a piece of clothing, with the hook to be used as a fastener? No idea on the middle one. Any chance of a better shot so we can make out the letters and device? I think Steve is spot on about number 3. Peter

George Doesn't sound immediately familiar but many of us are 'visual learners'. Any chance you might post a photo of the patch? Peter

As a discussion starter - here and elsewhere - the article is great. As evidenced by the posts which precede this one. I went into it expecting generalities - anything with a title like that is almost sure to be a generalist, populist view, full of highly debatable points, almost be definition IMHO. As Brian says, not a bad starting place for non-specialists; then we can read the books and make up our own minds. OTOH, Spasm's quote sums up my reactions very well. 'Enjoyable'? Pleeese! 'Not so bad' - compared to what? Armageddon? We do need to keep in mind that for those of the world's population not interested in/obsessed by military matters, WWI is largely as real and clear to them as Narnia or Mordor. I hope that if they read this article they'll at least ask 'What are the myths and what are the facts' and be inspired to go read something else. If this turns out to be their only read on WWI, oh, dear!

Oops! You've fallen into a den of enthusiasts, Ursala! And that's the polite term. Some would go so far as to say 'fanatics... obsessive compulsive... addicts.' Seriously, there is a wealth of knowledge here on almost any military topic, and some not so military ones, that you can imagine and, as the name says, we try to be gentlemen and ladies. So, as you can see, Irish is waiting with tongue hanging out to help ID your postcards. We photo shopped the drool out of that emoticon! Welcome to the GMIC! Peter