Armistice/Veterans' Day - What's the media pulse in your neighborhood?

I ask this question because it seems that the French media has had a particularly heavy anti-war tinge prior to tomorrow's commemorations.

One network has broadcast a mini-series based on Roger Martin du Gard's novel "Les Thibault," the fictional saga of the wealthy Thibault family. The story follows the lives of the two Thibault sons; the eldest is a doctor who dutifully volunteers for military service, the youngest--who is the real hero of the tale--is a pacifist. The doctor is gassed in combat and, knowing he is fated to die, commits suicide shortly after returning home. The pacifist hands over his inheritance to the Socialist International, writes for Jean Jaures's "Humanité," flees to Switzerland, and eventually dies in a plane crash while dropping leaflets--urging the French and German troops to desert--on the front lines.

Last night, another French network aired a long documentary on soldiers executed during World War I. Not counting summary executions by officers during combat, some 500 French troops were officially sentenced to death by military tribunals during the war. The executions by firing squad were--according to military law--carried out in front of their assembled fellow fighters. The troops were then obliged to parade past the corpses. Often, dozens of troops were arrested for refusing to obey orders or "desertion," then a handful were selected by their military superiors to die "as an example." Only about 50 of these soldiers have been rehabilitated by French courts, some--with the help of the Human Rights League--almost immediately after the war, others only decades later.

Every Armistice Day, French media revisits the horrors of World War I, in which 9 million people died, but these programs seem more pointed in their criticism of war than anything I recall from the past. Or perhaps I'm just more sensitive to the issue given events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In any case, I've never been quite as moved by a retelling of the horrific story of the "Chemins des Dames" as I was last night. The current mayor of the town where this battle was fought stood at the base of the little hill and explained how 180,000 French troops died along this short bit of combat line over a period of three weeks. It was here that several hundred French soldiers revolted against their officers, refusing to die needlessly. Some of them died soon after by firing squad.

What's the take on this barbarity in your part of the world?

ON EDIT: Oh, incidentally, two French villages had to be evacuated this past week when unexploded bombs dating from WWII were uncovered. This happens several times a year, but it's not often we hit the Daily Double. War... the gift that keeps on giving.

People my age recall the day and it ment a lot to people we knew and it was the day the old civil war men would be out. We would always be shocked their were a few left. But I do not think anyone knows a thing about WW1, or the day or anything.When I was in my 20's and 30's I would take my mother-in-law and kids out as her father was in WW1 so my children may know something of the day. To many wars since WW1 for our kids and grandchildren. These vets were still around when I was born '34. It is hair raising to read about it. Not many Am. killed as we were in such a short time but the number of Fr, Brits, Aus, Rus. and Ger. just makes a persons mind spin.40000 a day. My God just think of it.

All over 100 years old now.

The documentary I mentioned included family members of the convicted soldiers--children and grandchildren. The filmmaker took them to the sites of the battles they fought, and the sites of their execution. Their struggles to rehabilitate their ancestors have kept this history very much alive for them, particularly since many of them had to live with decades of unjustified shame.

In 1998, the French Prime Minister, Socialist Lionel Jospin, was the first to officially evoke their memory on Armistice Day.

Yes, the number of deaths is staggering. At the battle of Chemins des Dames, only one out of 1000 troops survived to reach the foot of the last, deadly hill. Almost none of the dead and wounded were evacuated; the bodies simply piled up on the barbed wire and in bomb pits.

Equally staggering is the fact that--after such carnage--it took a democracy like France almost 80 years to begin to question the criminal behavior of its military hierarchy.

Ypres dig reveals trench horror

Archaeologists excavating the route of a planned motorway near Ypres in Belgium have uncovered a series of trenches very little changed from the day they were abandoned at the end of World War I. They contained the bodies of some soldiers, together with weapons, and objects used by the troops to help pass the time. This is the first time the battlefields of Ypres have been excavated professionally, with a team of Belgian archaeologists working alongside military experts from Britain. The dig has revealed a network of trenches which were home to thousands of British, Australian, Canadian and Indian soldiers between 1914 and 1918. Excavation workers have filled a ship's container with artefacts from the period which include rifles, rum jars and newspapers.

The MoD is now trying to trace the relatives of one man who they believe died fighting with the Fifth Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers. But this important historical site is soon to be bulldozed to make way for a motorway. War graves protection groups are campaigning to get the road re-routed but historians warn that there would be nothing gained from changing the building plans. Ypres was such a significant World War I battlefield that the whole area is riddled with trenches and unmarked graves.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3256553.stm

Check this out: A collection of casts of graffiti and wall carvings by French, American and German soldiers who took shelter in underground quarries in France in WWI, the "Memory of Walls and Archaeology Museum" in Verneuil, France.



http://perso.wanadoo.fr/memoiremurs/guerre1418.html