"I have a rendezvous with Death
…
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous."
World War I was the poets war.
Poetry was the fashionable mode of expression by the soulful, whether in the arts, the trenches, or the centers of power.
The summer of 1914 was remembered as a notably sublime time, a golden time. And then...a wrong turn down a street... the gunman by chance there, and an assassination that rent the intricately woven fabric of all of Europe.
For all of Europe, and beyond, the summer of 1914 was the divide.
America was involved in World War I of course, my grandfather among those involved. One hundred seventeen thousand American soldiers were killed, 206,000 wounded, my grandfather not among them fortunately. But America was not involved in World War I until 1917. Grievous as those losses were Americans do not remember World War I as does Europe. Passchendaele, Ypres, the Somme--I doubt that one American in one hundred knows of them. "Armistice Day" is no longer celebrated alone, it is grouped into a remembrance of all veterans on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
France still has Armistice Day.
One million four hundred thousand French military deaths, 1,700,000 total deaths, 4.29% of the population, over 4,000,000 wounded.
World War I killed the soul of France.
I think of France.
More people in France read this blog than all but six other nations.
I think of them.
