I’ll be down in New Ulm, Minnesota this Thursday evening giving a free lecture as part of the city’s centennial series on World War I. A German-American enclave in the southern part of the state, New Ulm had a difficult experience of the war, with its municipal leadership suspected of sedition by the state. You can learn more about that topic next month at the Brown County Historical Society, when the new “Loyalty and Dissent” exhibit opens.
But I won’t plan to say much about that history. Instead, I’ll return to one of my favorite topics: war commemoration. If you can’t see for yourself at 7pm in the New Ulm Public Library, I understand that a filmed version will eventually air on local cable. (If I can, I’ll post that here.)
But for a sneak peek… Here are a few of the photos from my WWI travels that I’ll be talking about.
Over 5,000 Commonwealth soldiers are buried across the road from the South African memorial
at Delville Wood, on the former Somme battlefield – CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Chris Gehrz)
London’s monument to the martyred nurse Edith Cavell: “Patriotism is not enough; I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone.”
From our most recent visit to the
German military cemetery at Langemark, Belgium — the moving site where I’ll conclude Thursday’s talk
War memorial in Ladysmith, Wisconsin — one of the thousands of copies of E.M. Viquesney’s “Spirit of the American Doughboy” found around the country. (New Ulm’s didn’t go up until 1941.)
The Cross of Sacrifice looking over the
Tyne Cot Cemetery in Zonnebeke, Belgium, where nearly 12,000 British and Commonwealth dead are buried. (Another 35,000 unknown dead are commemorated on a memorial at Tyne Cot.)
Roll of honor in Salzburg, Austria, naming the dead of both world wars
Detail of the
Australian War Memorial at London’s Hyde Park Corner. The names of over 23,000 hometowns and 47 battles (from both world wars) cover the surface of the memorial.
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