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Legionnaire, But No Disease

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Heroes, Military History

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Tags

Africa, Alexandre Dumas, Algeria, Beau Geste, Beau Hunks, Camels, Chasseurs d'Afrique, Film, Flying Deuces, Follow that Camel, French Conquest of Algeria, French Foreign Legion, Garde Suisse, Genoese, Laurel and Hardy, Legions, Louisa de Ramee, military, Ouida, P.C. Wren, Sahara, The Last Remake of Beau Geste, The Three Musketeers, Under Two Flags, uniforms, Zouaves

As always, dear readers, welcome!

Although we do a lot of Tolkien, we set up this blog for adventure in general and, in this posting, we’ve gone to a completely different world—as you’ll see.

When we think of the Sahara, we immediately see:

a. a satellite map, which shows us just how huge it is

image1sahara.jpg

b. and camels—although they aren’t native, they’ve been there a long time, having been introduced from Arabia perhaps about 300Ad

image2camel.jpg

c. and, of course, desert warriors

image3desertwarrior.jpg

d. and, also, of course, their opponents, the French Foreign Legion

image4ffl.jpeg

e. or, with a bit of a trim—and in color—

image5fflcolor.jpg

The Foreign Legion were hardly the first foreigners in the service of France.  Medieval French kings had used Genoese crossbowmen.

image6genoesecrossbowmen.jpg

And the later kings of France had, as part of their household guards, the Garde Suisse.

image7gardesuisse.jpg

The Foreign Legion was raised in 1831 and used, at first, during the French conquest of Algeria.

image8firstuniform.jpg

image9frinvasionalgeria.jpg

As Algeria was exotic, so were the soldiers there, beginning with the dashing Zouaves, originally locals, but gradually mostly French.

image10zouave.jpg

Along with these were the Chasseurs d’Afrique,

image11chass.jpg

who formed the background for what we think is the first North African adventure novel in English, Ouida (Louisa de Ramee)’s Under Two Flags (1867)

image12louisa.jpg

image13book.jpg

which became a film twice, in 1922

image14nineteentwentytwo.jpg

And in 1936.

image15nineteenthirtysix.jpg

Oddly, the Chasseurs d’Afrique of the novel were replaced, in the 1936 film by the Foreign Legion—perhaps because the script writers thought that the Foreign Legion would have been a more familiar unit to their audience?

If so, it may have been because of P.C. Wren’s 1924 novel, Beau Geste,

image16bg1924.jpg

which has appeared a number of times on the screen, initially in silent form in 1926,

image17bg1926.jpg

and again as a “talkie” in 1939

image18bg1939.jpg

and again in full color in 1966.

image19bg1966.jpg

The book—and the film’s—popularity—the story was all about noble sacrifice—and exotic desert adventure—did not escape satire.  As early as 1931, two of our favorite early film comedy stars, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy,

image20laurelandhardy.jpg

appeared in their longest short (37 minutes—but it which sounds like a contradiction in terms), Beau Hunks.

image21hunks.jpg

This title is based upon what appears to be a double ethnic slur, Bo- from “Bohemian” + Hunk- from “Hungarian”, so a disparaging reference to a central European—a lower class one, at that.  (It makes us thankful that it appears to have disappeared entirely as a slang term:  in our current world, we don’t need any more ethnic attacks—we have plenty already.)

This was remade in 1939 as Flying Deuces.

image22flying.jpg

This wasn’t the end of such cheerful assaults, however.  In 1967, there was Follow That Camel (from the British comedy series “Carry On…)

image23follow.jpeg

and, appropriately, in 1977, came The Last Remake of Beau Geste.

image24lastremake.jpg

All the same, we still love the old movie, with its last-ditch defense of Fort Zinderneuf,

image25ftz.jpg

where, borrowing from Dumas’ The Three Musketeers,

image26three.jpg

image27dumas.jpg

in desperation, the defenders prop up dead legionnaires to make their numbers appear greater than they are.

How could people with a passion for adventure not find that appealing?

Thanks, as ever, for reading

and, as always,

MTCIDC

CD

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wains and Carts and… (Part I)

07 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Military History

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Tags

Bronze Age, Byzantines, Carts, chariots, delivery carts, Flintbek, Gandalf, Great War, Greece, Iliad, Late-Victorian, Medieval, military, Mycenaean, Neolithic, Roman Roads, Romans, Schleswig-Holstein, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Trundholm Sun Chariot, Wagons, wattle and daub

Welcome, dear readers, once more to our blog.
We’ve just been watching the extended version opening of The Fellowship of the Ring, in which Gandalf appears, driving a cart.
image1gandalfcart.jpg
(Sorry—we couldn’t resist! We love Legos and the older Playmobil—Vikings, pirates, Roman warship, too. Not to forget the Egyptian pyramid! )
Unlike ordinary medieval carts,
image2amedcart.jpg
it is quite elaborate.
image2gandalfcart.jpg
image3gandalfcart.jpg
You can see from our second illustration that both the medieval example and Gandalf’s have wattled sides—that is, the upright spindles below the railing top have pliable sticks (perhaps willow or hazel?) woven between them to make the sides of the cart.
This is also a common method for producing traditional house walls: you just add daub, which is clay plus fibre, as a kind of plaster to fill in around the sticks.
image4wattleanddaub.jpg
Many buildings, from the Neolithic on, were constructed using the technique,
image5technique.jpg
image6house.jpg
as well as, without the daub, miles and miles of useful fencing.
image7fence.jpg
What caught our attention, however, was the general look of the cart and the detailing of the wooden railing,
image8agscart.jpg
image8bgscart.jpg
image8cgscart.jpg
which very much reminded us of this—
image8chariot.jpg
a Celtic chariot of the sort one sees both in chariot burials
image9chariotburial.JPG
and in stirring reconstructions.
image10britchariots.jpg
But that’s not the direction we wanted to take in this post. Rather, we were, as so often, thinking about the medieval world and Middle-earth and, in this case, wheeled vehicles.
The earliest evidence in Europe currently known for such vehicles is not the remains of a vehicle itself, but rather its tracks, found under a burial mound at Flintbek, in Schleswig-Holstein, in northwest Germany.
image11flintbek.jpg
These have been dated to about 3600BC, during the late Neolithic Era. A bit later, we see this odd thing, the so-called “Trundholm Sun Chariot”, from about 1400BC
image12trundholm.jpg
which actually appears to be some sort of wagon, or at least its frame.

Perhaps 50 years later, there are Bronze Age Mycenaean chariots
image13mycen.jpg
but, at least as far as illustrations go, European domestic vehicle depictions are scarce, especially in contrast to those of military—or sport—vehicles. Here’s a 5th-century BC depiction of a wagon being used for a wedding,
image14grkwagon.jpg
but we could then show you heaps of illustrations of chariots, used in very early Greece for warfare. You see them all over the Iliad, for example,
image15achilles.jpg
but chariots in the later Greek world were abandoned for warfare, although retained for racing, which was true for the Romans and for their successors, the Byzantines.
image16byzchar.jpg
We have lots more depictions of domestic vehicles from the Roman world, both carts
image17romancart.jpg
and wagons.
image18romwag.jpg
This shouldn’t be surprising, we suppose, given that the Romans built more than 50,000 miles of roads.
image19romrd
Judging by these depictions, it appears that the medieval world simply continued using Roman vehicle patterns, just as, where available, they continued to use Roman roads.
image19romcrt.jpg
image20medwag.png
For us, then Gandalf’s cart—which is not really described:
“At the end of the second week in September a cart came in through Bywater from the direction of Brandywine Bridge in broad daylight. An old man was driving it all alone…It had a cargo of fireworks…”
(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 1, “A Long-expected Party”)
would follow what we see in manuscript illustrations.
Tolkien might have been thinking of such illustrations, of course, but there is another possibility. In the late-Victorian world into which JRRT was born, horses still powered vehicles and delivery carts like this one
image21deliverycart.jpg
would have been a common site—even after the Great War. Perhaps he was thinking of something he might still have seen outside his window when he was young?
We’ll stop here for now, but will continue in Part II, where we’ll consider Farmer Maggot’s wagon and wains…

Thanks, as ever, for reading.
MTCIDC
CD

Armistice and Simbelmyne

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

Allies, armistice, Armistice Day, barbed wire, Belgium, Christmas Truce of 1914, Eisenhower, Evermind, flamethrowers, France, German Government, Guy Fawkes Day, John McCrae, machine gun, maxim gun, military, military rifle, Paris, poisoned gas, poppies, Remembrance Day, Simbelmyne, tank, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, truce, Veterans' Day, Western Front, Woodrow Wilson, Word War I, WWI Trenches

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

“At the foot of the walled hill the way ran under the shadow of many mounds, high and green. Upon their western sides the grass was white as with drifted snow: small white flowers sprang there like countless stars amid the turf.

‘Look!’ said Gandalf. ‘How fair are the bright eyes in the grass! Evermind they are called, simbelmyne in this land of Men, for they blossom in all seasons of the year, and grow where dead men rest. Behold! we are come to the great barrows where the sires of Theoden sleep.’ “ (The Two Towers, Book 3, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

simbelmynemounds

Like our bonus posting last week, for Guy Fawkes Day, this one is tied to a specific day, now called “Veterans’ Day” in the US, and “Remembrance Day” by our linguistic cousins around the world.

November 11th here was originally called “Armistice Day” when it was first declared by Woodrow Wilson in 1919. The change to “Veterans’ Day” came in 1954, but, to us, it would be good if it had remained as it was, both its name and what it commemorated, and President Eisenhower had chosen to add another holiday to the calendar, instead.

The armistice was, of course, the truce which marked the beginning of the end of World War I, the date and time—the 11th hour of the 11th day of 1918—agreed upon by commissions of the Allies and the Imperial German government who met in a railway car outside Paris in early November, after over a month of on-again-off-again negotiations. This was only a truce—the actual peace treaty was not agreed upon and didn’t come into effect until 10 January, 1920—but it did stop the fighting in the west almost immediately.

Armisticetrain_(slight_crop) Waffenstillstand_gr

The war to which it gave a permanent pause had been appalling in its losses: over 17 million people had been killed and 20 million wounded and the weapons used to kill 11 million soldiers had gone from the ordinary military rifle to the machine gun to barbed wire to poisoned gas to flamethrowers to the tank—and that was just on land.

Short_Magazine_Lee-Enfield_Mk_1_(1903)_-_UK_-_cal_303_British_-_Armémuseum

gassed

barbedwire

1280px-Sargent,_John_Singer_(RA)_-_Gassed_-_Google_Art_Project

flamethrower-10215292

tank-wire

In the process, it had driven men to dig 500 miles of trenches on the Western Front, where they lived a life of perpetual misery.

_77694555_sommetrench

Thus, the news, even of a truce, was the best of news to soldiers and civilians on both sides.

armistice

The price for that truce and for the eventual peace was almost too much to bear: all over northern France and southern Belgium seemingly endless, but necessary, cemeteries had gradually sprung up and, with the coming of peace, had been rationalized and formalized so that they looked like militarized civilian graveyards. To visit that area today is to understand, in some small way, what a horror that war was for those caught in it. And this is just the Western Front: there are many more burial places to be.

zonnebeke.passendale.tynecot.air_.dkv_

In 1921, people in the US began to wear little artificial poppies as a symbol of remembrance on 11 November and the custom was adopted abroad and still continues in Canada and Britain, at least. It is said that the custom was inspired by this poem, written by a Canadian soldier on the Western Front, John McCrae, in 1915. He had noted that poppies seemed to grow more quickly on ground which had been freshly turned—in the fighting and in the burials afterwards. And the image of the flowers, bright red as fresh blood, scattered across the fields was too powerful for a poet not to use, particularly a soldier-poet.

In_flanders_field_poppy_thumb

We here at Doubtful Sea want to commemorate all of the soldiers on both sides in this posting and wish that the famous Christmas Truce of 1914 had seen the end of the war, instead of four years and millions of deaths later.

Christmas-Day-Truce

And we offer, as Tolkien fans, not only the poppy, but the Evermind, the Simbelmyne, in remembrance.

Processed by: Helicon Filter; simbelmyneflower

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

CD

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