![Razz :P](./images/smilies/77tongue.gif)
I'll try to come up with something intelligent to say in response to your posts at some point, but honestly I am just enjoying getting to read what you have to say. I find it extremely interesting and insightful.
There I'm not so sure. At the same time the Somme was raging, the Germans were hurling innumerable troops into the meat grinder of Verdun, with some 400,000 casualties. It's probably more accurate to say that frontal assaults on the Western Front were, generally, hopeless and bloody (the Germans' development of "Hutier" or infiltration tactics late in the war was a partial solution.)Allied casualties tended to be far heavier than German (who had more men to call on in the first place)
TATGW doesn't mention that (it sticks pretty close to Tolkien's own experiences), but it's interesting. I like it. It's not an exact analogy but it's pretty close.axordil wrote:I really should read TATGW, if only to see if there's any mention of one of my pet notions, that the resonance between the Rohirrim and the Americans is more than coincidence: a younger, less refined but more vital culture coming to save the older, established one, arriving in the nick of time. It's not an exact analogy with either WW I or WW II, but a bit of both.
The Germans did start off with a larger population though, and in the beginning at least had more men to call up. According to John Keegan -- I'm going to get these numbers wrong -- the French had something like 80% of eligible men already enlisted at the initial mobilization while the Germans had only used 50% of those available. That's not quite right, but Germany (and Austro-Hungary probably) had more untapped population. This balance certainly tipped eventually, but they did have an initial advantage in manpower. I have no idea, but I'm wondering if the losses at Verdun were less painful to them due to the freeing up of forces from the Eastern Front in 1917.There I'm not so sure. At the same time the Somme was raging, the Germans were hurling innumerable troops into the meat grinder of Verdun, with some 400,000 casualties. It's probably more accurate to say that frontal assaults on the Western Front were, generally, hopeless and bloody (the Germans' development of "Hutier" or infiltration tactics late in the war was a partial solution.)
I completely agree. He could represent many aspect of the "Old Man" type, but particularly the politician. That's an interesting quote that you pull out, especially the comment on "madness", considering that this was the first time that shell shock was really recognized.I'm not sure Denethor is so much a portrait of Haig though, as he is of a politician. (Think Churchill and Gallipoli). For military leadership-from-behind, Tolkien gives us this: "the Captain of Despair does not press forward, yet. He rules rather according to the wisdom that you [Denethor] have just spoken, from the rear, driving his slaves in madness on before."
Even the sound of the words is lovely. And again, it is the ‘swift sunrise’ which counterpoints with the rain being rolled back (like the rain that frequently flooded the soggy trenches of Flanders) that illuminates the first glimpse of Valinor.And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
You’ll never convince me that that’s not at least inspired by the trenches, and all of the places that it looks are heavenward – the sun, the stars, and above all shadows. The sky is, naturally, the only place really visible outside of the trenches. You can’t exactly pop your head over the parapet to see how the poppies are getting on this year. The sky is the one element that remains completely untouched in the war. The landscape and architecture that got in the way is frequently reduced to barely recognizable ruins, but nothing can touch the beauty of the sky, of the sunrises and the stars. Consider Edward Blunden who, like Tolkien, tends toward an archaic style: “The officer and I, having nothing to do but wait . . . sat in the trench considering the stars in their courses.”Though here at journey's end I lie
In darkness buried deep, [. . . ]
Above all shadows rides the Sun
And Stars for ever dwell.
I will not say the Day is done,
Nor bid the Stars farewell.
I strongly agree. I'd even help make contact.solicitr wrote:O Scildearm-maegdh! I thik you've topped yourself with this one! Seriously, you should assemble these posts into an article for publication. They're that good.
Well, that's true of the BEF and especially the New Army as a whole: but Tolkien's Lancashire Fusiliers were recruited almost entirely from the country. The Merseysiders were in the Liverpools (King's Regiment).My one tiny carping criticism is this: most of the men in the British lines were those despised town dwellers. Little, underfed, undereducated, ignorant, Cockneys and Geordies and Clydesiders. They fought too, they died in their hundreds of thousands. They didn't know the Arcadia they were fighting for, and they never would.
Yes. But I just hate it when they're left out. They would have been bored to tears in Hobbiton. No cinema, no music hall. Birds singing and waking them up too early. Toffs walking around with their noses in the air. Dull country dwellers with who'd never left their village. But Bert and Tommy were "British", too, and gave up every bit as much for something they would never have, and were despised while they were doing it.solicitr wrote:Well, that's true of the BEF and especially the New Army as a whole: but Tolkien's Lancashire Fusiliers were recruited almost entirely from the country. The Merseysiders were in the Liverpools (King's Regiment).My one tiny carping criticism is this: most of the men in the British lines were those despised town dwellers. Little, underfed, undereducated, ignorant, Cockneys and Geordies and Clydesiders. They fought too, they died in their hundreds of thousands. They didn't know the Arcadia they were fighting for, and they never would.
As were the Sams- I don't see that any of them (that survived) got anything from the war. It's not like England or Britain was improved, or saved (the Kaiser's ambitions never looked across the Channel). All that the charnel-house achieved was a temporary setback to German militarism.But Bert and Tommy were "British", too, and gave up every bit as much for something they would never have, and were despised while they were doing it.
I find it nearly unbearable, to be honest. I started writing a long Remembrance Day post, but had to give it up. I can't be rational about it.solicitr wrote:As were the Sams- I don't see that any of them (that survived) got anything from the war. It's not like England or Britain was improved, or saved (the Kaiser's ambitions never looked across the Channel). All that the charnel-house achieved was a temporary setback to German militarism.But Bert and Tommy were "British", too, and gave up every bit as much for something they would never have, and were despised while they were doing it.
But I appreciate the 'despised' part. Too, too true.
That's an excellent point. I wonder if this looking to monarchy also had to do with the rise of anarchy and the rash of assassinations going on while Tolkien was growing up in the nineties. The War of course was also so much about disorder and the overturn of, well, everything that the return of an older (and better) order is almost a refuge. I'm working my way through a book of WWI poetry and there's an epitaph by Rudyard Kipling which says simply 'If any question why we died/Tell them, because our fathers lied.' Aragorn's return is almost a direct argument against this kind of thinking, of blame for the Old Men and the Generals (despite Denethor).solicitr wrote:Sharkey's ruffians' downfall begins when they are openly confronted by a King's Messenger - a legitimist intervention against the minions of that uber-politician Saruman. The Shirefolk had always kept the King's Laws long after there was no King, "being both ancient and just;" and ruffians and monsters alike were dubbed folk who "had never heard of the King." After all, Edward VII was the last British monarch to exercise any sort of power.
You're completely right and I certainly didn't mean to forget about them. I was only referring to the people whom I'm guessing Tolkien would have associated with or who would have left impressions. And of course most of the writing and art we have are from those people -- the officers, the educated -- so they created the war in our cultural imagination. It's an admittedly skewed view.vison wrote:My one tiny carping criticism is this: most of the men in the British lines were those despised town dwellers. Little, underfed, undereducated, ignorant, Cockneys and Geordies and Clydesiders. They fought too, they died in their hundreds of thousands. They didn't know the Arcadia they were fighting for, and they never would.
First off, I should note that it has now been a year since I read Tolkien and the Great War and the library made me return their copy (What will they think of next?), and ages and ages since I read either the Lost or the Unfinished Tales, so please take all of this with a small heap of salt and maybe a little pepper for extra measure.MSA, what do you think may have been the literary fruit of Tolkien's Army experience not in the trenches, but in the rear- the giant camps in Staffordshire and at Etaples, and in reserve behind the lines in Picardy? An army's imposition of itself simply by marching and camping on the landscape produces something unnatural, soulless and ugly to a Tolkien, I would think.