Still privately owned by the Schier family, it is one of the few sites in Flanders where you can experience something of the actual terrain suffered by soldiers during World War I. On British military maps, it was noted as Hill 62, for its elevation in feet above sea level. For the tens of thousands who lived and died here it was known as Sanctuary Wood. To go there now is to experience the horrors of life in the trenches for yourself.
I'm listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episodes on World War I. How relevant and timely. Man. What a terrible war.
I'm fascinated by the British stiff-upper-lip colonial culture that raised many of the men who fought in WW1 among the Allies. It led to the most bizarre juxtaposition of horror and honor, brilliantly captured in Good-Bye To All That. Lots of the British chronicles that came out of the war took that bleak attitude of fake jollity, as a coping mechanism and because what else can you say? Graves often seems as though he's writing about a foxhunting expedition.
Check out the Italian Futurists. I know more about them from art school than how they fit into the timeline of the war, Italy entering later on the side of the Allies. The myth I heard is they all died in the war which they supported vehemently. Boccioni made one of the greatest modernist sculptures of all time and also allied himself with a movement whose manifesto says; Boccioni died when he fell off a horse. I just think that's funny. The whole Manifesto reads like deluded ramblings to the point where I can't believe this group is remembered. I'm not up on my early 20th century artistic manifesto style sheet though. Writing a manifesto was seemingly popular then. http://www.italianfuturism.org/manifestos/foundingmanifesto/ They also influenced Fascism. And died in war. Comical irony to me. Goddamn if that isn't a fine bronze though.We will glorify war—the world’s only hygiene—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom-bringers, beautiful ideas worth dying for, and scorn for woman.
Memories of seeing the boundaries of Zone Rouge come to mind viewing this. Haunting stuff.
Great article, and a link to a relevant poem by one of the most fascinating of the World War ! British poets.