Jennifer Bohnhoff
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November 11, 1918

10/10/2021

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As far as most people are concerned, World War I ended at 11 am. Paris time on November 11, 1918. That is, when the Armistice of Compiègne, which was signed in a railcar at Le Francport, near the French town of Compiègne earlier that morning, took affect.  

The war had been winding down for a while already. Russia had left the war in March, 1918, when they agreed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, in which they turned over Finland, the Baltic provinces, parts of Poland and Ukraine to the Central Powers. Other armistices had taken Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire out of the fighting.


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The signing of the Armistice de Compiègne marked a victory for the Allies and a defeat, although not formally a surrender, for Germany. The terms of were largely written by the Allied Supreme Commander, French Marshal Ferdinand Foch. They included the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, the withdrawal of German forces from west of the Rhine, and Allied occupation of the Rhineland and bridgeheads further east. All infrastructure in Germany was to be preserved for Allied use, and aircraft, warships, and military materiel were to be surrendered. Although Allied prisoners of war and interned civilians were to be released, the treaty did not specify the release of German prisoners, eventual reparations, and the naval blockade of Germany was not to be lifted.
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Although the Armistice was officially signed at 5:45 a.m., it did not come into effect until 11am. This was to allow time for the news to reach combatants. There is no reason why 11am was chosen except for the symmetry of the numbers. Fighting continued in many sections of the front right up until the appointed hour, resulting in 10,944 casualties. 2,738 men died on the last day of the war. This led to controversy after the war. In the United States, Congress opened an investigation to find out why and if blame should be placed on the leaders of the American Expeditionary Forces. In France, many graves of French soldiers who died on 11 November were backdated to 10 November. 

PictureThe author's husband looking into the restored train car. It is now kept in a dark room to preserve it.
One reason the fighting continued was that many Allies didn’t trust that the Armistice would last, and wished to be in the most favorable position should fighting resume. Some artillery units reportedly continued to fire on German targets so they wouldn’t have to haul away their spare ammunition. Battery 4 of the US Navy fired its last shot long-range 14-inch railway gun from the Verdun area at 10:57:30 a.m., timed to land far behind the German front line just before the Armistice was scheduled to begin.
When 11a.m. finally did arrive, the guns fell silent along most of the line. In some places, men on both sides laid down their arms, crossed the line, and shook hands. In other places, there was cheering and applause. But in general, soldiers were too tired and too wary that this was an illusion to do anything to celebrate. One British corporal reported: "...the Germans came from their trenches, bowed to us and then went away. That was it. There was nothing with which we could celebrate, except cookies." 

PictureThe Peace Memorial at Compiègne
Because this was a world-wide war, news of the armistice did not reach all battlefields at once. The King's African Rifles, fighting in what was then called Northern Rhodesia and is in today's Zambia, did not hear that the war was over for two weeks. When they did, the British commanders contacted the Germans and they their own armistice ceremony.
 
Although the armistice ended the fighting on the Western Front, the war did not actually, officially conclude until much later. The armistice that began on November 11 lasted until December 13, when the parties involved renegotiated terms that held until January 16, 1919. The peace was delayed two more times before June 28, when the Treaty of Versailles, was finally signed. The treaty was ratified, and the world was finally officially at peace on January 10, 1920.



Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of A Blaze of Poppies, a novel set in New Mexico and France during World War 1. 
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Siegfried Sassoon

10/6/2021

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​Siegfried Sassoon was born into a wealthy Jewish family who were sometimes referred to as the “Rothschilds of the East” because their fortune was made in India. Before the war, he lived the leisurely life of a cultivated country gentleman, writing poetry that is not considered very good, and fox hunting.

When the war began, Sassoon joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He saw action in France in late 1915 and received a Military Cross for bringing back a wounded soldier during heavy fire.

After Sassoon was wounded in action, he wrote an open letter of protest to the war department in which he refused to fight any more. Sassoon thought his letter would lead to a court-martial, but friend and fellow poet Robert Graves successfully argued that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and needed medical treatment. In 1917, Sassoon was hospitalized.

Sassoon's war poems are angry and avoid sentimentality. Many of his detractors argue that his refusal to support the war effort was unpatriotic, but Sassoon's shockingly realistic depictions of war captured the feelings of soldiers and a public grown tired of the carnage. 

After the war, Sassoon became involved in Labour Party politics, lectured on pacifism, wrote a trilogy of autobiographical novels, and published a critical biography of Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith.  In 1957, Sassoon became a Catholic and began writing religious poems. He died in 1967 from stomach cancer. 

Attack
​by Siegfried Sassoon

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun 
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun, 
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud 
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one, 
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire. 
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed 
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear, 
Men jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire. 
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, 
They leave their trenches, going over the top, 
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, 
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, 
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!
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Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel, A Blaze of Poppies is set in southern New Mexico and in the trenches of World War I France.
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The Jeffery: Modern Mule

10/3/2021

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Early in the 20th century, the U.S. Army decided that mechanization was the wave of the future. In 1912, it requested proposals for a truck that could take the place of the four-mule teams used to haul standard one-and-a-half-ton loads of equipment, supplies and men. One of the companies that responded was the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
 
The Jeffery Company began their development by buying and studying a truck developed by The Four Wheel Drive Auto Company (FWD). They soon sold it and began their own design from scratch. By July 1913, they had developed a prototype of the Jeffery Quad that was ready for public demonstration of its capabilities.

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The Jeffery designed a four-wheel-drive truck, known as the "Quad" or "Jeffery Quad" that was sturdier than anything that had come before it. It had four-wheel brakes and an innovative four-wheel steering system that allowed the rear wheels to track the front wheels around turns. This meant that the rear wheels did not have to dig new "ruts" on muddy curves.  A very high ground clearance allowed it to drive through mud up to its hubcaps. The wheels were the same as those used on locomotive cars, with the addition of a thin rubber tire. When they were used near train tracks, the tire could be taken off and the Quad set on the rails.
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Quads on a muddy road in Mexico
Jeffery Quads first saw service during the Army’s 1916 Punitive Expedition through Mexico. General John “Blackjack” Pershing used a mix of Quads and mule-driven wagons to transport troops and supplies. He also had two Quads that had been specially modified with armor.
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Armored Jeffery Quad at Pancho Villa State Park, New Mexico
The Jeffery Quad Armored Truck, also known as Armored Car No. 1, was not the first armored car -- several National Guard units had already had their own designed – but it was the first one built by the U.S. Government specifically for Army’s use. It was designed to support combat forces. It had armored plate made by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and two manually operated turrets. Three light machine guns, a Bennett-Merier and 2 Colt “Potato Diggers,” provided the firepower. Neither vehicle was reported to have seen military action.
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When Pershing led the Army overseas, he brought the Quad with him. Its ability to negotiate France and Belgium’s muddy, rough, and unpaved roads made it the workhorse of the Allied Expeditionary Force.
Quads were also used by the United States Marine Corps from 1915 through 1917, during their occupation of Haiti, and of the Dominican Republic.
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Marines in Santo Domingo, 1916
Approximately 11,500 Jeffery and Nash Quads were built between 1913 and 1919. They continued to be produced until 1928, but their reliability and ability to negotiate difficult terrain that challenged more modern trucks meant that civilians to use these slow, but steady workers until into the 1950s.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical novels from her home high up in the mountains of central New Mexico. A Blaze of Poppies: A Novel About New Mexico and World War I will be published in October 2021.
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The Wrist Watch Man

9/30/2021

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At the beginning of the twentieth century, wrist watches were feminine novelties worn by trendy women. By 1920, they had become standard military issue and symbols of masculine virility. This change came about because of the need to synchronize artillery and infantry during the First World War. Perhaps no one captured this change better than Edgar Albert Guest, the people’s poet whose poems filled the papers throughout the war.

The Wrist Watch Man

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​He is marching dusty highways and he's riding bitter trails,
His eyes are clear and shining and his muscles hard as nails.
He is wearing Yankee khaki and a healthy coat of tan,
And the chap that we are backing is the Wrist Watch Man.

He's no parlour dude, a-prancing, he's no puny pacifist,
And it's not for affectation there's a watch upon his wrist.
He's a fine two-fisted scrapper, he is pure American,
And the backbone of the nation is the Wrist Watch Man.

He is marching with a rifle, he is digging in a trench,
He is swapping English phrases with a poilu for his French;
You will find him in the navy doing anything he can,
For at every post of duty is the Wrist Watch Man.

Oh, the time was that we chuckled at the soft and flabby chap
Who wore a little wrist watch that was fastened with a strap.
But the chuckles all have vanished, and with glory now we scan
The courage and the splendor of the Wrist Watch Man.

He is not the man we laughed at, not the one who won our jeers,
He's the man that we are proud of, he's the man that owns our cheers;
He's the finest of the finest, he's the bravest of the clan,
And I pray for God's protection for our Wrist Watch Man.


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Jennifer Bohnhoff lives in the mountains of central New Mexico, where she writes historical fiction and spends way too much time finding interesting bits of history on the internet. You can read more about her and her books on her website, jenniferbohnhoff.com

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World War 1 and the Development of the Wrist Watch

9/26/2021

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World War 1 changed society. One of the lesser known ways was the development of portable timepieces.
 
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when most people were out and about, they got the time from church bells and factory whistles. Many had mantel or wall clocks in their homes. Alarm clocks had been patented in the middle of the nineteenth century and were being used increasingly. But outside the home, people went without a watch.

There were two exceptions to this. Gentlemen and people whose jobs relied on timeliness, such as railroad conductors, carried pocket watches. Women who wanted to appear modern hung petite pendant watches about their necks, pinned tiny, brooch-like watches to their blouses, or bound dainty watches to their wrists. These small watches were not very accurate and were more decorative than precise and made small watches appear too feminine for most men to consider wearing.
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​The Great War changed that perception. It was one of the first times that artillery and infantry synchronized their movements over long distances. Some of the biggest guns were 75 miles from the front they were shelling, and in order to not rain havoc on their own troops, they had to coordinate who was where to a greater precision than “at dawn.” 
The phrase “synchronize your watches” was developed. The concept of the creeping artillery barrage, where artillery laid down a curtain of fire that the infantry was supposed to follow close behind, made precise timekeeping imperative. It was clear that men at war needed watches.
​But what kind of watch was best? A man crouching in a trench or exchanging gunfire with the enemy, simply couldn’t pull a watch from his pocket, open the case, and check the time. He needed a quicker solution. Thus, the wristwatch overcame its effeminate image and become a practical necessity. By 1916, a quarter of all soldiers wore wristwatches. In 1917, the British War Department began issuing wristwatches to all combatants.
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​The first trench watches, or "wristlets" as they were known, looked like pocket watches mounted on a leather bands. They quickly changed to meet the demands of trench warfare.

Hinged covers protected crystals on pocket watches. Trench watches often had hinged cages that didn’t obscure the numerals. These soon became fixed.  

​The creation of luminous dials helped soldiers see the time in dim light. 

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One thing that carried over from pocket watches was the engraving of names, titles, and places on the back cases of watches.  Although dog tags had been implemented during WWI, a personalized engraving could serve as a redundancy system for identification. Different branches of service issued their men different brands and makes of watches. Other watches were gifts from family or employers. Many of the World War 1 watches that are still on the market bear interesting engravings on the back. ​

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Roughly 1.8 million American soldiers served in France during WWI. Pictures of them in their handsome, trim uniforms, with their watches prominently displayed, helped the general public see wrist watches as symbols of masculinity and bravado, reflecting the spirit of a soldier. The fact that pilots, the most glamorous of all fighting men, started wearing using wristwatches gave wristwatches even more moxie with the American public. By 1930 the ratio of wrist watches to pocket watches was 50 to 1.

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Was the rise of the wrist watch a blip in technological fashion? Smartwatches and cell phones have been taking market share from mechanical watches for a decade now. Could it be that the wrist watch will go the way of 8-track tapes? Or are wrist watches here to stay? Excuse the pun, but only time will tell.

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Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel about World War I, A Blaze of Poppies, comes out October 22, 2021. There's still time to preorder the ebook on Amazon, or preorder a signed copy directly from the author. 

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Two Fusiliers and Two Poets

9/22/2021

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Robert Graves was born in Wimbledon in 1895, the third child of ten. His father was an Irish poet and his mother was the great-niece of a famous German historian. Graves learned to box because his half-German ancestry made him the target of bullies.

Graves published his first poems in 1911, when he was a student at The Charterhouse School. One of the young masters there was George Mallory, who introduced Graves to the works of George Bernard Shaw, Rupert Brooke, and John Edward Masefield, and took him climbing. Mallory was later to die on the 1924 Everest expedition.


In 1914, Graves was supposed to go to St John’s College, Oxford. Instead, he enlisted in the army joining the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He was posted to 
France in May 1915, and fought in the Battle of Loos in September that year. Two months later, he met the poet Siegfried Sassoon, a fellow-officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. “Two Fusiliers”, is a celebration of that friendship.

In July of 1916, Graves was wounded by a shell at High Wood, in the Somme. His colonel believed that Graves' injuries would result in his death, and  wrote a condolence letter to Graves’s parents. The Times reported that Graves had died of his wounds in their  August 4, 1916 edition. This “death” and “rebirth”, which occurred close to his 21st birthday, had a profound effect on Graves’s life and writing. 

Graves' bestselling war memoir, Good-bye to All That, was published in 1929 and caused a rift between him and Sassoon and ultimately between himself and his country. He moved to Deià in Majorca, where he lived until his death in 1985 with the exception of two periods, during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War, when he was evacuated. 

Graves is not only known as a poet and mythologist, but as a novelist. His I, Claudius books were turned into a miniseries for PBS. 


Two Fusiliers
BY ROBERT GRAVES

And have we done with War at last?
Well, we've been lucky devils both,
And there's no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
 
By wire and wood and stake we're bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun's glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.
 
Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the wet bond of blood,
By friendship blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men, breath.

Jennifer Bohnhoff's World War I historical novel A Blaze of Poppies will be published in October 2021 and is available for preorder on Amazon. 
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Funny Fragments from the Front

9/19/2021

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PictureBairnsfather in 1918
Most Americans are familiar with the art of Bill Mauldin, the cartoonist who captured the spirit of American GIs during the Second World War.

The British, First World War equivalent was a brilliant cartoonist named Charles Bruce Bairnsfather. 

Bairnsfather's cartoons were featured in a weekly "Fragments from France," serial published in The Bystander magazine. 

His best-known character, Old Bill, became the face of the British soldier stuck in the trenches. 

​Bairnsfather was born July 9, 1887 at Muree, in a part of British India that  is now in Pakistan. His father was a Major in the Indian Staff Corps, and both his parents were great-grandchildren of a Baronet. He was brought to England when he was 8 years old so that he could be educated. His plans for a career in the military were thwarted when he failed his entrance exams to Sandhurt and Woolwich Military Academies. After a brief stint in the Cheshire Regiment, he resigned to become an artist.
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When war broke out in 1914, Bairnsfather joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a second lieutenant. He served in a machine gun unit in France until 1915, when he was hospitalized with shellshock and hearing damage sustained during the Second Battle of Ypres.

He was then posted to the 34th Division headquarters on Salisbury Plan, in southern England. Here, he he developed his humorous series for the Bystander about life in the trenches.

Bairnsfather's most famous character was "Old Bill", an older, experienced soldier with an enormous moustache.

The best remembered of his cartoons shows Bill with another trooper in a muddy shell hole with shells whizzing all around. The other trooper is grumbling and Bill says, "Well, If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it." This cartoon is included in the collection Fragments From France, published in 1914. 

Bairnsfather's cartoon were immensely popular with the troops and created massive sales increases for the Bystander. However, the general public , initially  objected to the cartoons as "vulgar caricatures". As the war progressed and romantic notions of war faded, he became more popular. The cartoons did so much to raise morale that Bairnsfather got a promotion and an appointment to the War Office to draw similar cartoons for other Allies forces.
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When the Second World War broke out, Bairnsfather became the official cartoonist to the American forces in Europe. He worked from England, contributing cartoons for Stars and Stripes and Yank. He even drew some nose art for aircraft on American bases in England. 

When Bairnsfather died of bladder cancer on September 29, 1959, his obituary in the Times noted that he was "fortunate in possessing a talent … which suited almost to the point of genius one particular moment and one particular set of circumstances; and he was unfortunate in that he was never able to adapt, at all happily, his talent to new times and new circumstances." He may never have been able to extend his talent beyond the Great War, but he gave voice and a face to those who fought in the trenches.

​Jennifer Bohnhoff's World War I novel A Blaze of Poppies will be published on October 22, 2021 and is now available for preorder on Amazon. Every Friday from here through Veteran's Day she will be featuring a page from a copy of Fragments from France that she owns on her Facebook page.  and will be giving the copy away to someone on her email list of friends, fans and family during the month-long celebration.
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A Rendevous with Death

9/16/2021

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Alan Seeger was born in New York City, the son of a businessman with connections to Mexico's sugar refining industry. He and his two siblings grew up in a wealthy and cultured home in Staten Island. He attended the Staten Island Academy and then the Horace Mann School in Manhattan until the family moved to Mexico city when he was 12. Alan returned to New York in 1902 so that he could attend the Hackley School, in Tarrytown. He then went on to Harvard University, where he came under the influence of the Romantic poets. 

 After graduating in 1910., Seeger moved to  New York City's Greenwich Village, where he attempted to live a bohemian life, writing poetry and sleeping on the couch of his classmate, the revolutionary, John Reed. After two years, Seeger moved to Paris, France. When World War I began in 1914, Seeger enlisted in the French Foreign Legion.

Seeger's war-time letters talk of crowded quarters, filth, cold and misery. None of this made its way into his poetry, which demonstrates a romantic and fatalistic streak. 

Alan Seeger died of a shot to the stomach during the attack on Belloy-en-Santerreon on July 4th, 1916. The French military awarded him the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille militaire posthumously. He was buried in a mass grave.

Seeger’s collected Poems were published in 1917 to mixed reviews. Critics often criticize his verses as impersonal, conventional, and idealized, but, like his English contemporary Rubert Brooke, Seeger hadn't matured as an artist. James Hart in the Dictionary of Literary Biography explained, “He needed more time to move from a stock and outmoded romanticism to a more distinctive and original style, from a style full of abstractions to one more concrete and personal.” Given more time, he might have become an American version of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon.​

I Have a Rendevous with Death

​I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air--
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath--
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear ...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

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Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former history teacher who now writes full time. Her next novel, A Blaze of Poppies: A Novel About New Mexico and World War I, is due out on October 22, 2021.

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The Americans who Lie in Flanders Field

9/5/2021

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Flanders Field American Cemetery and Memorial is the only World War I American cemetery on Belgian soil. It is located on the southeast edge of the town of Waregem and honors 411 American servicemen, some of whose bodies are unidentified and others whose bodies are unrecovered.

The memorial was designed by architect Paul Cret, who
ennobled the site with art deco and lots of quiet, garden-like areas that make it a deeply moving place.
PictureLieutenant Kenneth MaCleish
One of the men interred in this cemetery is Kenneth MaCleish, the brother of American poet Archibald MaCleish, who lived into the 1980s and produced a massive and impressive body of work. Here is one of his poems to think on: 

Liberty
​
When liberty is headlong girl
And runs her roads and wends her ways
Liberty will shriek and whirl
Her showery torch to see it blaze.

When liberty is wedded wife
And keeps the barn and counts the byre
Liberty amends her life.
She drowns her torch for fear of fire.


Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former educator who writes historical fiction. Her World War I novel, A Blaze of Poppies, will be released in October 2021. 
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A Poem to Lead Men Into Battle

8/18/2021

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When I first began plotting out a novel set in World War I, it was tentatively entitled Agnes Goes to War. Then I came across this poem, and it moved me enough that I retitled the novel The Destined Will, used this poem as a preface, and named my lead male character Will. Two different critique partners suggested that the title wasn't inspiring and that readers wouldn't bother with a poem so long at the beginning of a novel, so I dropped both, and the novel became A Blaze of Poppies. 
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Julian Grenfell's parents were members of the Victorian high-society group called “the souls.” He attended Oxford's Eton and Balliol Colleges where he was known as a superb athlete and sportsman. He excelled at boxing and steeplechase, but most loved to take his greyhound hunting. Like many aristocrats of his time, he sketched and wrote poetry.

Grenfell joined the Royal Dragoons in 1910. He served in India and, after the outbreak of World War I, transferred to France, where he received a Distinguished Service Order and refused a staff position in order to continue fighting.

On May 13, 1915 during the Battle of Ypres, Grenfell volunteered to run messages during a heavy bombardment. He was seriously wounded when a shell splinter struck his head, and died in a Boulogne military hospital thirteen days later. 'Into Battle' was published alongside his obituary in The Times.


Into Battle

by Julian Grenfell

The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;

And life is Colour and Warmth and Light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight,
And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest, and fulness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their bright comradeship,
The Dog star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion's belt and sworded hip:

The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridges end.

The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.

The blackbird sings to him: "Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing."

In dreary doubtful waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers; --
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!

And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only joy of battle takes
Him by the throat and makes him blind,
Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.

The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moans and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

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A Blaze of Poppies is a novel set on a ranch in southwest New Mexico and in France during World War I. You can read more about Jennifer Bohnhoff, its author, here. 

Preorder A Blaze of Poppies here
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    I am in the process of moving all my blog entries to a different blog site. Eventually, this page will go away.

    If you're looking for something and it's not here, try my new site, or email me and suggest I write a blog on the topic you are interested in. 
    My new blogsite
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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I 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.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

    ​
    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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