It seems most Americans don't understand what Veterans Day is and what other commemoration it grew out of. In the United States, Veteran's Day is observed every year on November 11. Its purpose is to honor military veterans of the United States Armed Forces. Prior to 1954, the day was called Armistice Day, and recognized the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect., ending major hostilities during World War I. In South Africa, the day is called Poppy Day. In Britain, France, Belgium and Poland.it is called Remembrance Day.
Most years I pick up a book or movie to read to commemorate Veteran's Day. This year, my choice was To Conquer Hell, by Edward G. Lengel. It seems most Americans don't understand what Veterans Day is and what other commemoration it grew out of. In the United States, Veteran's Day is observed every year on November 11. Its purpose is to honor military veterans of the United States Armed Forces. Prior to 1954, the day was called Armistice Day, and recognized the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect., ending major hostilities during World War I. In South Africa, the day is called Poppy Day. In Britain, France, Belgium and Poland.it is called Remembrance Day. Lengel's book deals with the American Expeditionary Force's role in the Meuse-Argonne offensive which came at the end of the war. The book sometimes focuses on specific soldiers, including famous ones like Alvin York and Charles Whittlesey, and lesser known ones like Ernest Wrentmore, who joined up when only 12 years old and went on to serve in WWII and Korea. . I found some of Lengel's writing quite informative and amusing. For instance, he calls George Patton "wealthy, athletic, and brilliantly insane." When explaining Patton's work establishing the First Army Tank School at Langres, France, he includes the interesting fact that there were no lights in Renault tanks, so crews had to operate in the dark when the hatches were closed. "A tank commander signaled the driver with a series of kicks: one in the back told him to go forward, a kick on the right or left shoulder meant he should turn, and a kick in the head signaled him to stop. Repeated kicks in the head meant he should turn back." For me, a New Mexican, Lengel's book was a bit of a disappointment. New Mexico hadn't been a state very long when World War I broke out, and it was a very sparsely populated place, with only 345,000 inhabitants. Despite that, more than 17,000 men stepped up to serve. All 33 counties were represented. Tiny as we were, New Mexico was ranked fifth in the nation for military service by the end of the first World War. Of especial note was Roswell's Battery A, 1st New Mexico Field Artillery. Renamed Battery A, 146th Field Artillery Brigade of the 41st Infantry Division when the National Guard was "federalized" and mixed into the regular army, this devision had served Pershing well in Mexico during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa. In France, they fought at Chateau-Theirry, St. Mihiel and in the Argonne Forest. The unit's four guns fired more than 14,000 rounds in combat, surpassing all other U.S. heavy artillery units. So why wouldn't Lengel mention them? I cringed when Lengel said that Douglas MacArthur grew up at Fort Selden, Texas; Fort Selden is in New Mexico, just north of Las Cruces. While To Conquer Hell certainly encompasses the full span of operations by the American Expeditionary Force, I found it difficult to read in parts. I wish the narrative had referenced the maps that are strewn throughout the book, so that I could have found the right map to go with each engagement. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a native New Mexican, and proud of it. A former history teacher, she now writes full time from her home in the remote mountains of central New Mexico. Her novel, A Blaze of Poppies, is set in the southern part of the state and in France in the years just before and during America's involvement in World War I. .
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See the strange, circular cluster of leaves at the bend in the road? This ring of green at the top of the trees is something I pass every time I leave home. I've been looking at it for at least six years, maybe longer because I don't remember when I first saw it. I do remember wondering what it was and why it was there. In my imagination, it became the sky ring, a portal between realms, and that became the seed of a story. I'm now writing the first draft of that story as my NaNoWriMo 2023 project. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, and that month is November! Every November, hundreds of thousands of people gather online, in libraries and coffee shops throughout the world, and attempt to write a novel in one month. A novel, by NaNo's definition, is 50,000 words. They don't have to be great words, or even in the best order. NaNo is a matter of quantity, not quality. It is a mad dash to write a first draft. After that, the NaNo people have other months set aside devoted to editing and polishing those 50,000 frenetic words into a finished manuscript. My story is tentatively named The Raven Queen, and it is a fantasy based very loosely on the history of my neighborhood, a small, isolated community at the base of the Sandia Mountains. The community, called La Madera, thrived from the 1840s to the 1880s as a timber town. Madera is Spanish for lumber, and I've been told that many of the vigas, or roofbeams, in Albuquerque's Old Town came from La Madera. Once Anglos began coming into the area in large numbers, brick and mortar structures began to replace traditional adobe ones, and La Madera became a source of limestone, which is used in making grout. The town is no longer: a few buildings and ruins are all that are left of it. Although many factors came together to doom La Madera, one crucial one was a diminished water supply. In my story, Savio is a young man who must find out why the stream that is the lifeblood of Lumbra, the town that I based on my old village of La Madera. And since this is fantasy, not historical fiction, the reason is fantastic indeed. With the help of his trusty companion, a big black dog named Panther, a squirrel guide named Abert, and a raven named Corbeau, Savio must find three stones that unite earth, water, and sky and gift them to Iyara, the Weeping Woman whose tears fill Lumbra's stream. But will Savio's gifts be enough to make the stream run again? And will I be able to create a story that holds together and makes sense? Both of those are questions that are yet to be answered. Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author who lives in the forest on the eastern side of the Sandia Mountains. She typically writes historical fiction. This is her second foray into fantasy. Her first, a silly middle grade fantasy named The Petulant Princess, remains unpublished, and should probably remain so. For more information on Jennifer and her published works, see her website here.
General John Joseph Pershing is the only person who has held the special rank of General of the Armies of the United States during his lifetime. (The only other people to have held this rank are George Washington, who was awarded it posthumously in 1976, and Ulysses S. Grant who received the honor in 2020.) His military career spanned several wars during the period when the United States was becoming a force to be reckoned with on the world stage. Through his many famous and talented protégés, his influence continued long after his retirement. Pershing was born on a farm in Laclede, Missouri on September 13, 1860. His mother was a homemaker and his father, John Fletcher Pershing, owned a general store and served as Laclede’s postmaster. During the Civil War, John Fletcher worked as a sutler, a civilian merchant who accompanied an army and sold goods to soldiers, for the Union. John Joseph was the oldest of nine children, six of which survived to adulthood. Pershing's family was not wealthy. Beginning at age 14, the oldest son was expected to contribute to the family. John began working. He also began putting aside money for his education, as his family had told him that schooling was not something they could afford. Pershing studied at Kirksville Normal School (now Truman State University), where he received his teaching degree in 1880. He taught African-American schoolchildren at Prairie Mound School, but became interested in law and went back to school to become a lawyer. When he decided that he could not get as good an education as he wanted in Missouri, he applied to the Military Academy at West Point, where cadets received a high-quality education for free in exchange for military service. At West Point, his leadership skills became apparent and he found himself in many command roles. He was the class president all four years. In 1885, when President Ulysses S. Grant’s funeral train passed West Point, Pershing commanded the honor guard. After graduating in 1886, Pershing was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. He reported for duty in 6th U.S. Cavalry Regiment in New Mexico, where he participated in several Indian War campaigns, including fighting the Apaches led by Geronimo. Next, Pershing was posted to the University of Nebraska, where he taught military science. During his four years there, Pershing earned the law degree he’d so long wished for. In 1896, he was promoted to 1st Lieutenant and assigned to a troop of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, one of the original regiments of Buffalo Soldiers, racially segregated black units. This began Pershing’s long association with black units. In 1897, Pershing was sent back to West Point, where his strict ways with the students made him an unpopular teacher. The students nicknamed him Black Jack. By World War I, the epithet that was supposed to be derogatory had lost its sting and become popular. It remained with him for the rest of his life. When the Spanish-American War broke out, Pershing was again selected to command the Tenth Cavalry, this time as their quartermaster. On July 1, 1898 he led his men in the Battle of San Juan Hill alongside Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Rough Riders. Pershing later recalled that ...the entire command moved forward as coolly as though the buzzing of bullets was the humming of bees. White regiments, black regiments, regulars and Rough Riders, representing the young manhood of the North and the South, fought shoulder to shoulder, unmindful of race or color, unmindful of whether commanded by ex-Confederate or not, and mindful of only their common duty as Americans.” After the war, Pershing was assigned to the Office of Customs and Insular Affairs, which oversaw the overseas territories the United States had taken Spain, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. In the Philippines, Pershing fought against both the Moros, an indigenous Muslim people who had previously fought for their independence from the Spanish, and a wider Filipino insurrection. Pershing studied Moro culture and dialects, read the Koran, and built relations with various Moro chiefs in an effort to win them over. From 1903 to 1905, Pershing, now a Captain, attended the War College. After his graduation, he was given a diplomatic posting as military attaché to Tokyo, where he was an official observer in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. He met and married Helen Frances Warren, the daughter of Francis E. Warren, a powerful Republican Senator from Wyoming. They had four children: Helen, Ann, Warren, and Margaret. Pershing took his family with him when he returned to the Philippines for a few years, then later posted to San Francisco. In 1906, President Roosevelt used his prerogative to promote Pershing to brigadier general. This was a controversial move, and many suggested that Pershing’s marriage had influenced the President. At the time, promotions were handed out based on seniority rather than merit, and Pershing had bypassed three ranks and skipped over 830 officers ahead of him. However, the President had the power to appoint general staff officers, but not lower-ranking ones and he chose to do this for the man he’d learned to respect in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In 1915, personal tragedy struck when his home in San Francisco’s Presidio caught fire. Pershing’s wife and his three daughters were killed in the blaze, leaving him a widower with a five-year-old son named Warren. Pershing’s sister May took charge of the boy’s care and upbringing. Instead of taking time to grieve, Pershing leapt into action, leading 10,000 men on a punitive expedition into Mexico in an attempt to capture Pancho Villa, the bandit and revolutionary who had led several raids into U.S. territory, including the March 9, 1916 raid on Columbus, New Mexico. It was the first time the U.S. Army used mechanized vehicles in war. Cars, trucks, and airplanes were tested out in the deserts of Mexico and one of Pershing’s young officers, the future General George S. Patton, led the first motorized assault in U.S. military history, and killing Villa’s second-in-command. From the very start, the Punitive Expedition was doomed to failure. President Wilson, worried that a war might start, restricted the expeditions movements. Pershing described the failed mission as “a man looking for a needle in a hay stack with an armed guard standing over the stack forbidding you to look in the hay.” Soon after the Punitive Expedition returned to American soil, the United States entered World War I. President Woodrow Wilson had intended for General Frederick Funston to lead the expeditionary force into Europe. However, Funston died of a heart attack in February 1917, Pershing was selected to take his place. Again, Pershing received a promotion, this time jumping from major general to full, four-star general, skipping over the rank of lieutenant general. Pershing oversaw the organization, training and supply of the professional army, the draft army, and the National Guard, but he was unwilling to command under the kind of restraints that had plagued the Punitive Expedition. Before he would take command, Pershing made sure that will would give him unprecedented authority to run the AEF. In exchange, Pershing agreed not to meddle in political or national policy issues. This included Wilson’s racial policies, which kept the army segregated. Although Pershing had proved that he was willing to lead colored soldiers in battle, he could not in Europe. Pershing, who wanted to keep American troops under American command instead of allowing them to become reinforcements in British and French units, allowed two black divisions to be transferred to French leadership so that they would be allowed to see combat. At the end of the war, Pershing pushed the Supreme War Council, to reject German requests for an armistice, and instead occupy Germany. He argued that German people might later feel they were never “properly” defeated and war would again break out. Woodrow Wilson, anxious to finish the war before the upcoming mid-term elections, and Britain and France, tired of war, disagreed and the armistice signed. During his own tenure as President, Franklin D. Roosevelt acknowledged that Pershing had been right. Pershing returned to the United States a hero. In 1919, Congress authorized President Wilson to promote him to the rank of General of the Armies of the United States, a rank that made him the second-highest paid government official after the President. It also allowed General Pershing to be on “active duty” for the rest of his life and continue to be available for assignments. General Pershing served as Army Chief of Staff from 1921 to 1924. During this time, he created a map of a proposed national network of military and civilian highways, which became the foundation of the Interstate Highway System. When the United States entered World War II, he served as a consultant. Many of his protégés, including George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Leslie McNair, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton led troops. His memoir, My Experiences in World War, won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1932. After suffering a stroke, John Pershing died in his sleep on July 15, 1948. His body lay in state in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. An estimated 300,000 people came to see his funeral procession He was buried with honors in Arlington National Cemetery, at a site known as Pershing Hill. The graves of Americans whom he commanded in Europe surround his. Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel A Blaze of Poppies tells the story of the Punitive Expedition and America's involvement in World War I from the point of view of two New Mexicans: a national guardsman and a female rancher. It is available in ebook and paperback through Amazon and other online booksellers. Charles Marie de Bremond is an important figure in twentieth century New Mexican military history. The de Bremond family was originally French, but migrated to Switzerland during the French revolution.Charles was born on the tenth of July in 1864 in the town of La Chatelaine, in the canton of Fribourgh, Switzerland. He served in the Swiss Army for eight years. In 1891, he and his uncle, Henry Gaullier, immigrated to the US. Three years later they bought 280 acres of ranch land northeast of Roswell, New Mexico and started a successful sheep operation. de Bremond was civic minded. He participated in Roswell's cultural and social activities and served as a Captain in New Mexico's National Guard. On March 9, 1916 Francisco “Pancho” Villa and approximately five hundred of his men raided the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. In response, President Woodrow Wilson ordered John J. “Black Jack” Pershing to lead American troops into Mexico. de Bremond's outfit, Battery “A,” First New Mexico Field Artillery, was one of the first to respond. After being ordered to Fort Bliss, Texas for training, Battery A was attached to the Sixth U.S. Field Artillery. Approximately 5,000 U.S. troops spent nearly a year in Mexico in what turned out to be an unsuccessful attempt to capture Villa. When the Expedition ended, the battery, which had received many accolades, was mustered out of federal service and returned to Roswell. The Mexican Punitive Expedition served as a training ground and prelude to World War I. When the U.S. entered WWI on April 2, 1917, many of the men who participated in in campaign in Mexico, including the men of New Mexico Battery A, went almost immediately to serve in World War I. Although many of its men had already entered service, the remainder of the battery was called up in December of 1917. They were again nationalized, this time joining the 146th Field Artillery. de Bremond taught many of his men to speak French, which came in very handy during their deployment. The training Battery A received while attached to the Sixth U.S. Field Artillery proved invaluable, and Battery “A” became one of the best known American Expeditionary Force units of WWI. The action for which New Mexico’s Battery A, 146 Field Artillery received the most praise was the destruction of a bridge at Chateau-Thierry. This bridge had served as the German’s main line of communication, and its destruction contributed to the failure of the last great German offensive of the war. In the course of the war, de Bremond was promoted three times, rising from Captain to Colonel. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, the battery's four guns had each fired over 14,000 rounds. This was more rounds fired in combat than all the other American heavy mobile field Artillery combined. None of the men in the battery died during the war, but 12 were wounded. For some, including de Bremond, their wounds proved fatal. The men of the Battery earned six battle stars for their victory medals and their commander, Lt. Colonel Charles M. DeBremond, received the Distinguished Service Medal posthumously. de Bremond inhaled poison gas during the battle of the Marne in July 1918. He was evacuated to the states, where he gave lectures on the war to help boost civilian morale and support. He also worked on the creation of the Veterans of Foreign War. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis, a direct result of the gas attack, on December 7, 1919 in Roswell, New Mexico. He was 55 years old. His funeral was one of the biggest events Roswell had ever seen. The deBremond National Guard Facility, located at the Roswell Industrial Air Center, was named in his honor. Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and author who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her novel A Blaze of Poppies, tells the story of a New Mexico couple whose lives are affected by World War I.
Ambrose Bierce was a prolific American writer and journalist, whose pioneering work in horror and in realistic war fiction inspired many, including H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen Crane, and Ernest Hemingway. Bierce was born in a log cabin at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County, Ohio, on June 24, 1842. He was the tenth of thirteen children, all of whom their father gave names beginning with the letter "A": Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus, Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. Bierce’s parents impressed on him the importance of reading and writing, and when he was only 15 years old, he left home to become a writer at a small Ohio newspaper. Ambrose enlisted in the Union Army's 9th Indiana Infantry when the Civil War began. His participation in the Battle of Shiloh became a source for several of his short stories and his memoir "What I Saw of Shiloh." In April 1863 he was commissioned a first lieutenant. He served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. He was recommended for admission to West Point, but a traumatic brain injury he received at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain stopped him from attending. He would suffer from complications, including fainting episodes and irritability attributable to traumatic brain injury, for the rest of his life. After the war, Bierce joined an expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains. He traveled by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving toward year's end in San Francisco, California, where he was awarded the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army. He worked as an editor of a San Francisco newspaper for several years, then moved to England, where he wrote for a magazine. In 1875, Bierce moved back to San Francisco and resumed working as a journalist. Bierce’s personal life was marked by tragedy. He married Mary Ellen "Mollie" Day on December 25, 1871. Two of their three children died young, his son Day by suicide after a romantic rejection and his son Leigh of pneumonia related to alcoholism. After discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer, Bierce and his wife separated. They divorced in 1904 and she died died the following year. His daughter Helen outlived them all. In October 1913, when Bierce was 71, he went on a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. By December, his traveling had taken him into Mexico, where he became an observer in Pancho Villa's army. On December 26, 1913 he wrote a letter to Blanche Partington, a close friend, which he ended with the words "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination." Bierce was never heard from again. He vanished without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. His life, and especially the mystery of his death, have been the inspiration for countless novels and movies. Bierce was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe. Some of his horror and gothic ghost tales went on to inspire H.P. Lovecraft. Click here to read one of his short stories that's perfect for the haunted, Halloween season: Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired teacher who used Bierce's Occurrence at Owl Creek when teaching American Literature. She is now a full time, award-winning writer, mostly of historical fiction for middle grade readers.
People who recognize the name Bill Mauldin most often remember him as the cartoonist who created Willie and Joe, the enlisted soldiers who showed us the human side of World War II. New Mexico is proud to claim him as one of its talented sons. Mauldin was born October 29, 1921 in Mountain Park, New Mexico, an unincorporated community in Otero County, west of Cloudcroft. His family moved to Phoenix, where he attended Union High School and joined the ROTC, and experience that served him well in the military. Mauldin should have graduated in 1939, but he lacked the credits to do so. Since the editor of the school newspaper and his art teacher recognized his talent and suggested Mauldin pursue cartooning as a profession, he moved to Chicago and took a cartooning course at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, then moved back to Phoenix, where he gained a few commissions for election cartoons and joined the Arizona National Guard, 45th Infantry Division. Two days after Mauldin was sworn in, the Guard was "federalized" and the troops moved to Oklahoma. Mauldin soon talked his way into being the cartoonist for the 45th Division News when he was off-duty. He created Willie and Joe for the 45th Division News in 1940. The 45th Division headed to Italy in time to participate in D-Day in Sicily on July 10, 1943. When the newspaper began issuing editions on mimeograph paper, Mauldin learned how to cut drawings into stencils. Willie and Joe began appearing in the Mediterranean edition of the Stars and Stripes in November 1943. By early 1944, they were syndicated as Up Front by United Feature Service. Not happy with being segregated from his unit like most of the news staff was, Mauldin volunteered for gunning duty. He made sure he spent time with K Company, his fellow infantrymen. Near Cassino at Christmas in 1943, he was struck by a small fragment from a German mortar while sketching at the front. Although he said that he had "been cut worse sneaking through barbed-wire fences in New Mexico,", he earned a Purple Heart for his injury. One person who didn’t appreciate Mauldin’s cartoons was General George Patton, who thought Willie and Joe were scruffy and badly mannered. In March 1945, he drove to Patton's quarters in Luxembourg, where the General harangued him: "Sergeant," he said, "I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but the krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us." Mauldin was permitted to speak his mind to Patton. He later told Will Lang, the Life magazine journalist that “Patton had received me courteously, had expressed his feelings about my work, and had given me the opportunity to say a few words myself. I didn't think I had convinced him of anything, and I didn't think he had changed my mind much, either." In 1945, the war ended and Mauldin won his first Pulitzer for cartooning, prompting his high school to decide that he had done enough work to earn a high school diploma. Mauldin’s post war cartoons first focused on the difficulties that Willie and Joe had reentering American culture. By 1948, Maulding had progressed beyond the plight of Willie and Joe and he was attacking inequality and injustice elsewhere in society. The same stubbornness that allowed him to face General Patton allowed him to take on the FBI, Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and the Ku Klux Klan. When the Vietnam War began, Mauldin talked the Chicago Sun-Times into sending him to Vietnam, arguing that as a cartoon commentator he owed it to his readers to get "his own feet wet." He was visiting his eldest son Bruce, who was a warrant officer and helicopter pilot with the 52nd U.S. Army Aviation Battalion stationed two hundred miles north of Saigon when he experienced a Viet Cong attack on February 7, 1965. He sent back several cartoons about the experience. In 1991, and injury to his drawing hand that forced Mauldin to retire. By 2002, he had developed advanced Alzheimer's Disease. Bill Mauldin died on January 22, 2003 and was buried six days later, at Arlington National Cemetery. He truly is a New Mexican treasure. Jennifer Bohnhoff is a New Mexican who hasn't yet attained treasure status, but it working hard to get there. She is the author of 11 books, many of which are set in New Mexico or involve the trials of war. She is also the daughter and mother of men who have served in the Army.
To commemorate Veteran's Day this year, she is giving away a 1945 copy of Up Front by Bill Mauldin. All of the cartoons in this blog are from that book. The winner will be chosen from among the subscribers to her email list. If you would like to join that list for a chance to win the book, click here. In 2019, my husband and I were able to tour the World War I battlefields in Belgium and France. We visited many cities and towns, but my favorite was Ypres, a town with many names and a lot of history. Ypres is the third largest city in the Flanders, right behind Ghent and Bruges. Its official name is its Flemish one, Ieper, but it is most commonly called by its French name, Ypres. It most likely got its name from its proximity to the Yperlee, or Leperlee, River. During World War I, British soldiers often renamed the places whose names felt strange to their tongues. The town of Bailleul became Baloo, Étaples became Eat Apples, Foncquevillers.was called Funky Villages, and Ypres became Wipers.. Ypres is an ancient town. The Romans raided it in the first century BC, mentioning it in their records by location. The first written record of the name is from 1066. During the Middle Ages, Ypres became a major cloth-weaving city. It was such an important trading partner, its linen so valuable to the English that it is mentioned in the Canterbury Tales. England's Edward III offered economic incentives and protection to Flemish weavers, who migrated to the island nation in large numbers.Ypres cloth, both linen and woolen, was available as far away as the city of Novgorod, in Kievan Rus. Its population grew, possibly to as large as 80,000. It was during this peak of power that the famous Cloth Hall was built. Erected between 1260 and 1304, it was a jewel of gothic architecture and a testament to the riches that were pouring into Ypres. Behind it sits Saint Martin's Cathedral, which was built in 1221. Ypres had long been fortified to keep out invaders. Parts of the early ramparts, dating from 1385, still survive near the Rijselpoort (Lille Gate). Over time, the earthworks were replaced by sturdier masonry and earth structures and a partial moat. Ypres was further fortified in the 17th and 18th centuries. These fortifications did not always protect the city, and the devastation of war and siege. The city has been under French, Spanish, and Habsburg control. Its population dwindled to about 5,000. By the turn of the 20th century, the town looked old and worn. An extensive rebuilding program restored the Cloth Hall and Cathedral to their former glories. The town's restored beauty was not to last, however. Because it stood in the path of Germany's Schlieffen Plan, Ypres occupied a strategic position during the First World War. Belgium's neutrality was guaranteed by Britain, bringing the British Empire into the war and many hundreds of thousands of British soldiers into the Ypres area. The German army bombarded the city until it was reduced to ruins. The last inhabitants abandoned the city in 1915. By 1917 not a single house or tree remained standing. After the war the town was extensively rebuilt using money paid by Germany in reparations. The main square, including the Cloth Hall, town hall, and Cathedral were rebuilt based on the renovation plans from before the war. Today, Ypres is home to about 34,900 inhabitants. The restored Cloth Hall now houses In Flanders Fields Museum, which is dedicated to Ypres's role in the First World War and named for the poem by Canadian John McCrae. St. George's Chapel, which faces the Cathedral, remains a center of British culture in the town and a pilgrimage site for British Citizens who lost loved ones during WWI. The Menin Gate, in the city's east walls, holds the names of soldiers of the British Commonwealth who fell near Ypres before August 16, 1917 but who have no known grave. Soldiers who died later are commemorated elsewhere. As graves are identified, the names of those buried in them are removed from the Gate. Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic around the imposing arches of the Menin Gate Memorial stops while buglers sound the "Last Post." During the Second World War Germans who occupied the city prohibited the ceremony, so it was hosted at Brookwood Military Cemetery in England. The ceremony resumed on September 6, 1944 the day the city was liberated, even though there was still heavy fighting in other parts of the town. If you were to walk through Ypres today without knowing its history, you might think what a cute and quaint medieval town it is. But the gothic buildings are all new, rebuilt after the horror of war had reduced them to rubble. And although the buildings are rebuilt, the memory of trauma remains. Ypres is not a town that will ever forget the horror it went through a hundred years ago. Although she fell in love with Ypres, the scenes in Jennifer Bohnhoff's WWI novel A Blaze of Poppies do not take place in this area, but farther to the south, in France. One of the reasons she so loved this area is that her guide, Iain McHenry, breathed so much life into the area. An historian and the author of Subterranean Sappers: A History of 177 Tunnelling Company RE from 1915 to 1919, the definitive book on WWI sappers in the Ypres Salient, he comes highly recommended for the breadth of his knowledge of the area and its battles. A Gothic Ghost story by Jennifer Bohnhoff, |
ABout Jennifer BohnhoffI am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places. But not all of them. I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply. |