… we will remember them. On Sunday 11 November 2018 I joined 9,999 other people from across the UK to walk past the Cenotaph in the Nation’s Thank You procession. You can see a video of the Nation’s Thank You procession, and some photos, here on this page of the armistice 100 website. I was thrilled to have … More At the Going Down of the Sun, and in the Morning ….
Wilfred Owen is probably the best know of the WWI poets and his death, which occurred during the Allied attempt to retake the Sambre-Oise Canal just 8 days before the armistice was signed has come to symbolise the dreadful waste of war. Owen wrote the majority of his poems between August 1917 and September 1918. … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 50 – Smile, Smile, Smile
This is not a post about the unidentified soldier buried in Westminster Abbey on 11 November 1920. Instead it is about a man who survived the war and whose words were lost for almost a century only to be found in an attic in Hertfordshire in 2017. Allick Ellis – who was born in Norfolk … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 49 – Unknown Soldier
I am finding more and more that the things I would speak about in these blog posts are already far more eloquently explained in posts on other, more prestigious, websites. So this month my post is a link to a most excellent article on the Poetry Foundation website. Wilfred Owen’s draft of Dulce Et Decorum Est with … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 44 –War Poems and Poets at War
I was going to write a post about each of the four Christmases during WWI. However I found that the Imperial War Museum had, unsurprisingly, got there before me, so I will instead direct you to their “Voices of the First World War: Christmas at the Front” which includes a podcast. I will also direct … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 41 – Christmas at the Front
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On May 26, 1915, in a hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, Julian Grenfell, then a Captain in the Royal Dragoons, died of the wounds he received on 13 May as he stood talking with other officers during operations near Ypres at Hooge . A splinter of shell which had landed near them hit him in the … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 22 – Death of a Poet
I don’t think I can say anything about the anniversary of this disastrous campaign, which was masterminded by Winston Churchill, that hasn’t been said many times over in the past week, and far more eloquently than I could manage. That said, I simply can’t ignore the anniversary. So, as is often my want where emotional situations … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 9 – Gallipoli
Women’s voices from WWI are often either overlooked or stereotyped – the ever cheerful VADs and Nurses at the front, the stoic, patriotic wives and mothers waiting patiently at home – or were dismissed at the time by those who fought as sentimental and lacking in understanding (Mr Sassoon, I’m looking at you here, with … More WWI: Fifty two months, fifty two posts – 2 – Scars Upon My Heart
Kizzia Mildmay 