Anzac news

What are your plans for Anzac Day?

From the Friends of Anzac:

Dear Friends
The Official  Commemorations for the 102 anniversary of the Gallipoli Campaign  and the ANZAC Day, will host in Lemnos island, the 20th and 21st April, 2017, presenting  once again to the world community, the participation of the island in this global historical event. The North Aegean Regional Governor, the Mayor of Lemnos island  and “The Lemnos ‘Friends of ANZAC “ Association, cordially  invite you, to these 2–days historical commemorative events, with the appropriate solemnity that the ritual itself, gives.
Below is the program of the events. It will be as well, a great chance for us to show you the preparations and the actions  we do for the  promotion of the historical memory in the beautiful island of  Lemnos. And except of all these, we ll make you communicants  for the next years’ (2018) great events for the centenary of the Sign of the Armistice of Mudros which will be the main event for the Greek State, of the participation and the finish of the WW1, at Mudros-Lemnos. (November 2018)
www.friendsofanzac.com

Stelios A. Mantzaris President No. 2 Australian General Hospital / Mena House / Egypt. The first batch of wounded Australian soldiers from Gallipoli / May 1915 Detail taken from this photo: www.flickr.com/photos/thrutheselines/7665435294  Source: Irene Victoria Read papers, pictorial material and relics, 1839-1951 acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/item/itemDetailPaged.aspx?itemID=910142 Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

Here come the Yanks: April 6, 1917

The U.S. Congress declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917, bringing America into the war that had consumed Europe and dragged in countries on every continent, including Japan.

The National World War Museum and Memorial will commemorate the anniversary today with a ceremony at the museum that will tell the compelling story of the U.S decision to enter into the Great War through a unique multi-media program including significant and representative American writings of a century ago, including selections from speeches, journalism, literature and poetry, as well as performances of important music of the time. Invited participants and guests include the President of the United States, international Heads of State and diplomats, military leaders, veterans’ organizations, and national and state elected officials.

President Donald Trump will not attend as he will be hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping today.

The commemoration will include flyovers by U.S. aircraft and Patrouille de France, the precision aerobatic demonstration team of the French Air Force, as well as the U.S. First Infantry Division Band and Color Guard, Native American Color Guard, and Army and Air Force legacy units that served during World War I.

You can livestream the ceremony at https://www.theworldwar.org/april6.

 

 

 

News from the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission

The U.S. World War I Centennial Commission has picked ‘THE WEIGHT OF SACRIFICE” for the new national World War I Memorial project.

“THE WEIGHT OF SACRIFICE” was selected from a group of five Finalists and culminates an open, international design competition that has run since May 2015. The Commission’s decision endorses the recommendation of the design competition’s independent jury.

“We were thrilled by the quality and creativity by all the submissions in this competition,” stated Commissioner Edwin Fountain, who directed the competition. “This selected design concept reflects a high level of professional achievement.”

Imagery of “THE WEIGHT OF SACRIFICE,” and of the other four Finalists, can be found here  www.ww1cc.org/selection

The design concept was submitted by Joseph Weishaar, an architect-in-training currently located in Chicago, Ill., and collaborating artist, veteran sculptor Sabin Howard, of New York. Mr. Weishaar received his professional architecture degree at the University of Arkansas in 2013.

Mr. Weishar’s full professional team, necessary to implement the design concept, includes the Baltimore architectural firm GWWO Inc.; landscape architect Phoebe Lickwar, and engineering consultants Henry Adams LLC, Keast & Hood and VBH.

Regarding the World War I Memorial, Commission Chair Robert Dalessandro stated, “Those five million Americans who served in uniform during World War I literally changed the world. This new landmark in our nation’s capital will be a worthy expression of their great legacy.”

The location for the new World War I Memorial is Pershing Park, in downtown Washington, DC, bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th and 15th Streets NW. The park is one block from the White House, adjacent to the Willard Hotel and the District of Columbia’s Wilson Building.

This site was designated by Congress in 2014. The Centennial Commission is a Congressional Commission set up in 2013 to ensure a suitable observation in the United States of the centennial of World War I.

Poppies at the Tower

Here are the photos I took at the Tower of London of the art installation “Blood Swept Lands and Sea of Red.” I photographed the workers installing poppies, people watching and the spill of poppies from the Tower onto the moat.

It was very moving to walk around and overhear conversations: My granddad was in the King’s Rifles, my great-uncle was in the Navy, my grandmother always said, and more.

Centennial Countdown to the Great War

Battle on the Prussian-Russian border 1914/15 in present-day Lithuania. Jens-Olaf Walter photo

Are you following this blog by Dennis Cross? This is the clearest explanation of how the dominoes fell in July 1914.

http://centennialcountdown.blogspot.com

He said, then I said, then he said, then I said, etc.

Dennis tells a lot of stories that you might not have connected to the march toward war, including a famous murder trial in France that delayed the country’s attention to the approaching disaster.

Henriette Caillaux, the second wife of former French Premier Joseph Caillaux, was tried this month for the murder of Le Figaro editor Gaston Calmette following the magazine’s publication of private letters between herself and her husband written when both of them were married to others.  She claimed that she had not planned to kill Calmette, only to teach him a lesson, but had been overwhelmed by passion.  She told the court the shooting was an accident: “It is terrible how these revolvers go off when they begin shooting — one can’t stop them!”

 

No kidding, lady.

My thanks to Dennis for this blog post.

A French officer’s photos restored

This post is from Casa de la Imagen, a cultural place in Logroño, Spain.

We has an impresive and unseen collection of 500 stereo negatives taken by a french officer at WWI, who portrayed battles like Somme, Arras or Ypres, and people and weapons of all the Western Front’s armies in high quality images. We had digitalized and restored the entire collection. You could see a small example here, in a special section inside the French Government official website to commemorate the Centenary: http://centenaire.org/fr/tresors-darchives/fonds-prives/archives/les-archives-photographiques-de-la-casa-de-la-imagen

Also, to reveal the 3D virtues of this exceptional images, Casa de la Imagen just made the video you can see here: https://vimeo.com/75787815

In this link you can see the new dedicated to our collection in the most important spanish journal EL PAÍS, the 1th November 2013: http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/11/10/inenglish/1384091378_813043.html?rel=rosEP

Our project is to make a book and exhibition showing the collection commemorating 2014-2018. We just finished the book (in Spanish yet). You can see it here: https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/29a0ed440c7d35001e23b93077dfb3ea20140705143653/be062824f66e7ce77edc91c78aac3e4a20140705143653/7ac58a

For further information, please feel free to write to info@casadelaimagen.com

This is a basic information about the archive:

The collection was discovered at Tanger in 1999. It was contained in 10 wooden boxes, wherein each contains about 50 glass plates. In total, about 500 plates. All are unseen stereo negatives, made by a Verascope camera, if we believe in the advertising attached in the boxes. Each plate measures 4×10,5 cm, and each frame 4×4,5 cm. The conservation condition is variable, but mainly between good to excellent. The unknown French officer wrote notes between the stereo pairs. All the photos are dated, many are placed and a important portion has commentaries as “25/10/1917 Nettoyage du champs de batailles par les boches”.

The photographer domains the stereo peculiarities, is technically superb and the photographic, military and historic information is very rich.

After a hard investigation, we discovered the author was the captain Pierre Antoine Henri Givord, born at Lyon in 1872 and attached to the Transport de Matériel (le Train) during the Great War. We have his complete military records. The photographer travels between Northern France and Belgium: Ypres, Amiens, Hooglede, Somme…  The dates starts at 1916 and goes until the end of the war, even a familiar part of the collection after the war includes a visit to the post-war front. The officer was in close contact to the other allies armies, including a big amount of british themes photos, like soldiers and curious weapons.

Nowadays, we am working on a complete historic research on each image. The entire collection has been digitized by a full frame camera using a non-aggresive conversion method and restored, achieving high quality images for exhibition and publication purposes.

I can send you more specific info if you wish.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any further questions.

Thanks, Casa de la Imagen!

The ship sank — why can’t we get over it?

I was playing a computer game last night when I happened to look at the clock and realized it was exactly 100 years ago that the Titanic lowered away the last lifeboat. I waited to see if I was sad, decided I was more frustrated that I couldn’t escape the cat zombies and went back to my game. I have no ancestors who were on the Titanic. We were never the ocean liner sort. I didn’t like the movie that much, though people around me were sobbing their hearts out. What’s it to me this century later?

This month we also marked the 75th anniversaries of America’s entry into World War I and the Canadians’ victory at Vimy Ridge, and later we will celebrate ANZAC Day. http://www.anzacday.org.au/index.htm

Not my family. Not my fight. It’s true my grandfather was drafted, but my grandmother would have married him, anyway. And my Great-Uncle Elmer did fight in France, but I never even met him.

On the other hand, my ex-husband and I watched coverage of the 60th anniversary of D-Day together. It was late when he got up to leave. I walked him to the door and he suddenly said, “Sixty years ago, right this minute, my father’s ship hit a mine in the English Channel” — and we both burst into tears.

Why do we count the years away? Because every event in history shrinks in the distance as time leaves it behind. Anniversaries give us the chance to make the moments big again, so we can be present to the people who were there, who suffered and struggled and did the best they could, even when they failed. It makes us bigger, too.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them

We will remember them all.