A New Book on The Ceylonese Volunteers in World War I and W
orld War II
Category Archives: World War One
Applauding Professor Trevor Wilson, Historian …. His Memorial Service
Trevor Wilson Eulogies, 24 June 2022
Jenny Wilson [00:00:24] Emeritus Professor Trevor Gordon Wilson, AM. Known as Trevor to Mum and his colleagues, as Gordon to his daughters and granddaughters, as ‘Trevors’ to his grandson Ben, was born on Christmas Eve in 1928 in Auckland, New Zealand. Sara and my existence depended on a crowded train from Oxford to Manchester and a custard tart. A story that will be told shortly. But Dad’s existence depended on the war that became his great area of research, writing and teaching. The First World War. Trevor’s dad, Andrew Gordon Kingsley Wilson, was fighting as an ANZAC in the trenches in France.
Filed under Australian culture, education, foreign policy, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, mass conscription, military strategy, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, teaching profession, trauma, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes, World War One
The Modern Nation States’ Victims
Adam Henry Hughes, whose original title runs thus “Hiding the Body Bags: The Nation-State, Killing and Death”
During a lecture [in 2010], the famous news correspondent Robert Fisk told a story of the reaction of a Reuter’s news agency (London) to receiving graphic pictures of civilian death and destruction caused in Iraq by British forces. Reuter’s called the pictures “obscene” and therefore not fit to be shown back home.(1)
We learn about the abstract war, the war of nationalist or ideological sacrifice and endurance, the achievement of some military objective or another; the war that is remembered in one national cemetery or memorial museum. But we must not see the broken and mutilated bodies—the final state of the human being once steel, bomb, bullet or blade meets flesh.(2)
Many died in the Battle at LONE PINE
Filed under accountability, Australian culture, australian media, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, European history, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, life stories, military strategy, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, trauma, truth as casualty of war, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes, World War II, World War One
A Medical Duo’s Forensic Study of Death in War
“Mortality associated with use of weapons in armed conflicts, wartime atrocities, and civilian mass shootings: literature review,”
9 Aug 14;31999(7207):407-10.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.319.7207.407.
- PMID: 10445920
- PMCID: PMC28193
- DOI: 10.1136/bmj.319.7207.407
Free PMC article
Today’s Strongmen cast in the Shadow of Yesterday’s Fascists
Olivia B Waxman, in TIME, interviewing Ruth Ben-Giat …. https://time.com/5908244/strongman-fascism-history/
Critics of President Donald Trump have been calling him a fascist ever since he was running for President in 2016, and those characterizations continued in the aftermath of Election Day, as Trump repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud and baselessly accused President-elect Biden of trying to steal the election. “Donald Trump is a fascist,” Late Show host Stephen Colbert argued in an emotional monologue on Nov. 5.
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, European history, governance, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, world events & processes, World War One
The Horrors at Gallipoli: Killing One’s “Whaler”
The “Whaler” is the shorten-form Aussie term for a breed of horses in New South Wales that served as the stead for the famed Lighthorsemen Brigades in Egypt, the Middle East and Gallipoli during World War One. I thank Brigadier Sri Mudannayake** for bringing this somebe dimension of the disastrous Gallipoli and other Middle Eastern campaign to our attention.
Honouring ALL the Dead in War. Somasiri Devendra’s Ecumenical Epitaph
Somasiri Devendra
It’s a hundred years since the World War One ended.
It was called “the war to end all wars”, a war “to preserve Democracy”. It was, in fact, fought for nothing more than the needs of a handful of European countries wanting yet bigger pieces of the global pie, fighting each other for it or to deny it to others.
a war cemetery in Europe
British Garrison Cemetery Kandy
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, charitable outreach, historical interpretation, insurrections, landscape wondrous, life stories, politIcal discourse, reconciliation, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, trauma, unusual people, world events & processes, World War II, World War One
Holy War Unmasked
Brian Victoria …… Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. John Donne
Introduction: Is religion a force for peace or war? Or to borrow a phrase from the title of Christopher Hitchen’s book, God Is Not Great, does religion really poison everything, including the possibility of living in a peaceful world?
The answer is much like posing the question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. That is to say, for every example cited to prove that religion has supported warfare and violence, other examples can be presented to show ways in which religion has contributed to peace and the avoidance of war, reconciliation between bitter enemies and the general betterment of humanity and the world. When the question is posed in this way, the debate is as endless as it is futile unless the “winner” is the side that amasses the greatest number of examples.
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, meditations, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, Taliban, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, war reportage, world events & processes, World War II, World War One, zealotry, Zen at war
War: Its Stark Truths
Richard Koenigsberg
Wars are fought–soldiers die–to testify to the truth of a society’s sacred ideal. If so many people die for an ideology—it must be real.
Filed under accountability, Al Qaeda, american imperialism, fundamentalism, life stories, LTTE, mass conscription, meditations, military strategy, nationalism, patriotism, power politics, prabhakaran, propaganda, psychological urges, security, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, Tamil Tiger fighters, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes, World War II, World War One, zealotry, Zen at war
Lessons from Napoleon’s Army for Today’s Military
Fred Reed, courtesy of the unZ Review, 3 March 2016 … http://www.unz.com/freed/reviving-napoleons-army/ .. where the title is “Reviving Napoleon’s Army – “Cry havoc, and Let Slip the Frogs of Yore”
It is curious how little military men know about war. You would think they would think about it more. Yet, oddly, they regularly misjudge practically everything concerning the dismal trade. Their errors are not the sort that inevitably must occur in a contest, as when a quarterback doesn’t pick up a blitz. They are fundamental misappreciations of war itself. The foregoing sounds both arrogant and improbable, like saying that dentists do not understand teeth. Actually it is neither.
The reasons are several. First, the military attracts certain kinds of men—authoritarian, hierarchical, conformist—who are not imaginative and do not think independently. Second, the appeal of the military is visceral, emotional, hormonal. Neither of these things is true of dentists. 
SEE https://www.google.com.au/search?tbm=isch&q=trench+warfare+photos+World+war+I&gws_rd=cr,ssl&ei=uRnhVoLBDcjujwOc_K3wAg#tbs=simg%3Am00&tbnid=Bf7qrmahwyhL2M%3A&docid=zJIqjHIqZHvxTM&tbm=isch&imgrc=JIqheGROOQLZvM%3A
