You know, I was so excited to post this yesterday for 11/11, but sometimes things don’t go as they ought! I took a bit of a tumble off the kitchen counter (always use a step ladder, folks) so I spent yesterday dealing with a broken wrist instead! However, my thoughts still often turned toward the day itself and what it means to me. Not just the overwhelming debt I feel towards all… Read More
It’s been awhile since we’ve checked in with this incredibly long poem, hasn’t it? I figured it was time to post another segment. In the First World War, poison gas saw its first large scale use on the Ypres Salient in 1915. It was a very potent chlorine gas, and it caused hundreds of casualties and almost 70 deaths. As the war advanced, so did the cruelty of this particularly barbaric weapon…. Read More
The “Let Me Tell You How I Died” series is back! Continuing this week with Part II, which has seven segments about World War I. Segment two of Part II covers the horrors of charging out of the trenches against well-fortified positions, machine guns, and barbed wire. It was a tragic scenario that played out countless times across the Ypres Salient, and I saw the results with my own eyes – the… Read More
Last year, I tapped into my long-dormant poetry well, and I posted a series of seven poems about World War II. They were all from the vantage points of the many people, from many places, killed during the conflict. This year, the “Let Me Tell You How I Died” series is back with seven segments from World War I. It was a conflict so encompassing in its devastation that it came to… Read More
The first thing we saw at Talbot House was the garden. It was spacious and green, with beautiful flowering shrubs all over the grassy lawn. Butterflies flitted everywhere. It felt like a haven, and I let out a nice exhale. In my first five minutes there, I saw why so many soldiers from the Great War and the nearby Ypres Salient found peace at Talbot House. As Sgt. Jacob Bennett of the… Read More