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Tag Archives: WWII

Terrible as an Army with Banners

25 Wednesday Sep 2019

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

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banner, Captain Souter, color, Dol Amroth, ensign, Eye of Sauron, First Afghan War, flag, George Washington, Revolutionary War, Rohirrim, saltire, standard, The Lord of the Rings, The Song of Solomon, Tolkien, Trooping of the Colour, White Hand of Saruman, white horse of Hannover, White Tree of Gondor, WWI, WWII

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Our title comes from the Hebrew Bible, in the book entitled The Song of Solomon, Chapter 6, verses 4 and 10, where the speaker’s beloved’s beauty is likened to an army with banners.  Growing up, we always wondered about that word “terrible”.  We didn’t see why someone’s good looks could be frightening, but we could certainly see how an army with its flags could be scary.

image1ahussars

 

On the subject of banners, recently, we’ve been writing about 2nd Lieutenant JRR Tolkien.

image1jrrtlt.jpg

In an earlier posting, in fact, we mentioned that that rank of 2nd Lieutenant was a replacement for the earlier rank of “ensign”.  “Lieutenant” is just the English version of a French compound for “place-holder” (lieu + tenant), in this case meaning the person who will step into the captain’s shoes if necessary.  Instead of a compound with its implication of replacement, “ensign” is actually a job description.  An “ensign” is a flag (a “color”, if infantry, “standard”, if cavalry) and an “ensign” is also the person who carried it.

By 1916, when Tolkien became a 2nd Lieutenant, colors were no longer carried in battle, but only on parade, as this early-20th-century illustration demonstrates—

image2parade.jpg

and is still the case for the famous “Trooping of the Colour” for the Queen of England’s birthday parade, where her splendid footguards march with one of their colo(u)rs.

image3trooping.jpg

This is clearly all about show, now, but, once upon a time, colors—and their ensigns—had an important role in warfare.  Earlier colors were much bigger—in the 18th century, they were 6 feet by 6 feet square (1.82 metres by 1.82).

image4color.jpg

And here are some modern reenactors to help you to see just how big that really is.

image5color.jpg

The reasons for such a size (on a 9-foot pole, or “pike”—that’s 2.74m) are:

  1. units in earlier times (pre-late-19th-century, more or less) fought in long lines and, if you put the colors in the middle, everyone in a unit had a kind of fixed point to help them know where they—and their unit—were

image6nap.jpg

  1. as well, earlier firearms, which used black powder, put out enormous clouds of (white) smoke—

image7smoke.jpg

image8smoke.jpg

If colors were big and tall, they could still be made out in the midst of those clouds.

image9oconnor.jpg

They could also act as a rallying point.  When lines came apart and the order was Charge!  (Or when things were falling apart and the call was for Retreat!)

image10rally.jpg

In time, colors came to be thought of as almost the physical representative of the spirit of a unit and being called upon to surrender them was looked upon as the worst disgrace.  This portrait of George Washington would have been thought particularly nasty by his British and German enemies because all around him are their colors, captured in two battles, Trenton and Princeton.  (His own headquarters flag—13 stars in a circle on a blue background—is in the upper right of the picture.)

image11gw.jpg

To escape surrendering their colors, soldiers would strip them from the poles/pikes and hide them in their clothes or, in real desperation, burn them, as the French did in 1760 when forced to surrender to the British at Montreal, in Canada (then New France).

image12burning.jpg

In earlier centuries, before gunpowder came to dominate battlefields, colors were already used as rallying points,

image13rally.jpg

but also, in the days before uniforms, colors—big or little—indicated who was fighting.  If you saw a figure bearing a flag with a white, angled cross (a “saltire” in heraldic terms) on a blue field (background), for example, you knew that the King of Scotland was on the battlefield.

image14bruce.jpg

Thus, although 2nd Lieutenant Tolkien would no longer carry one of his unit’s colors into battle, as previous ensigns had, he would have known the importance of their role—and especially of the role of what they carried, which is why, for example, we see that, when it comes to battle in Middie-earth, nearly everyone seems to have a distinctive flag:

  1. the Rohirrim have their running horse

image15ro.jpg

(which we think JRRT may have borrowed either from the chalk cutting known as the “White Horse of Uffington”

image16uff.jpg

or possibly from an emblem long-related to the British monarchy, the white horse of Hannover—as we can see on this 18th-century grenadier cap).

image17gren.jpg

  1. Gondor has its tree and stars

image18gon.jpg

  1. and, when Aragorn marches out of Minas Tirith,

 

image19ara

it’s under his version of that banner–

image20a.png

which also boldly states his claim to be the rightful king—without actually coming out and saying it—compare the two banners–

  1. and the Prince of Dol Amroth has his flag, with “his token of the Ship and the Silver Swan” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 1, “Minas Tirith”).

image21dol.png

As for their opponents, we see Saruman’s white hand on armor,

image22arm.jpg

so we can presume, we think, that any banners carried would bear the same insignia and the same is true for Sauron’s orcs, which would have borne the lidless eye.

image23orc.gif

(We might also note that Southrons in the service of Mordor appear to carry red banners—as Gollum reports to Frodo and Sam in The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter 3, “The Black Gate is Closed”.)

All of which made us wonder if Solomon would have been so eager to describe his beloved as he did if the army he saw looked like this?

image24orcs.png

 

As ever, thanks for reading and

MTCIDC

 

CD

 

 

ps

In an odd but fortunate use of a color, in 1842, during the First Afghan War, a Captain Souter was saved because he had hidden one of his regiment’s colors by wrapping it around his waist.  As the last members of his unit fell around him, his Afghan opponents saw what they believed to be a fancy waistcoat/vest and took him prisoner, hoping for a rich ransom.

image26gandamak.jpg

Peace

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

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

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Alderaan, armistice, Boss Nass, dictatorships, First Galactic Empire, First Order, Galadriel, Garden of Eden, gardens, Great War, Gungan, HG Wells, Isengard, Samwise Gamgee, Second World War, Star Wars, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The War That Will End War, Tolkien, trees, WWI, WWII

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

At the end of Star Wars 1:  The Phantom Menace, the Gungan leader, Boss Nass, raises a large crystalline globe and shouts, “Peace!”

image1bn.jpg

After all of the chaos which comes before, including the death or capture of many of the Gungans in battle with the forces of the Trade Federation,

image2gungans.jpeg

this declaration, including that mysterious globe, sounds a happy and satisfied note.

As a young man, just finished with university, Second Lieutenant Tolkien

 

image3jrrt

saw a great deal of the effects of war upon western Europe

image4ruins.jpg

image5fuins.jpg

image6leuven.jpg

and must have rejoiced as both soldiers and civilians did at the news of the armistice, 11 November, 1918.

image7soldiers.jpg

image8civilians.jpg

He then went on with his life, having married during the war, eventually produced four children, and worked his way rather rapidly up the academic ladder during the 1920s and 1930s.

image9jrrtandfam.jpg

Along with various scholarly works, he published, in 1937, The Hobbit.

image10hobbit.jpg

The Great War (the First World War to people in the US) was supposed, in HG Wells’

image11wells.jpeg

1914 book title,  to be “The War That Will End War”.

image12book.jpg

Instead, combined with everything from financial disasters in the 1920s and ‘30s to the rise of dictators during that same period,

image13hitmus.jpg

there was a Second World War, with even more destruction.

image14blitz.jpeg

image15berlin.jpg

The end of this brought more relief and rejoicing.

image16veday.jpg

It did not, however, bring an end to war, either, and Tolkien’s England—along with much of western Europe—had suffered horribly through the six years of this second war, damage which lasted for years after its end.

image17london.jpg

During the same period, however, he continued both his academic and creative work,

image18jrrt.jpeg

and, of course, the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings appeared in the mid-1950s.

image19lotr.jpg

Since then, the world has suffered war after war—so many that we would have difficulty listing them all, even if we wanted to—and massive destruction by weapons which are increasingly more effective.

image20yemen.jpg

It is so in the Star Wars galaxy, of course.  Boss Nass’ cry would be a short-lived one.  The victory on Naboo was only the beginning of a massive war between the Republic and the Separatists.

image21geonosis.jpg

This was then succeeded by the First Galactic Empire,

image22palp.jpg

during which at least one planet, Alderaan, was destroyed.

image23alderan.jpg

But, when the Empire was eventually defeated,

image24endofseconddeathstar.jpg

the cycle seemed to begin all over again with the rise of The First Order.

image25firstorder.png

None of this, fictional or real, would, we think, have surprised JRRT.  After all, not only had he seen the real horrific destruction of two World Wars, but he had imagined and depicted scenes of similar violence and destruction, especially in The Lord of the Rings.  We have only to remember the ruin of Isengard,

TN-The_Wrath_of_the_Ents-We.jpg

the wreckage at Minas Tirith,

image27mt.jpg

and, of course, the decimation of the Shire.

image28shire.jpg

But what cure—even temporary—would he have suggested for such savagery and waste?  We would suggest that, although as a firm believer, he would assume that a return to the Garden of Eden

image29garden.jpg

was permanently out of human reach—

image30tissot.jpg

yet gardens and the trees within and around them were not.  And we remember Galadriel’s gift to Sam:

“For you little gardener and lover of trees, …I have only a small gift… Here is set G for Galadriel,…but it may stand for garden in your tongue. In this box there is earth from my orchard, and such blessing as Galadriel has still to bestow is upon it. It will not keep you on your road, nor defend you against any peril; but if you keep it and see your home again at last, then perhaps it may reward you. Though you should find all barren and laid waste, there will be few gardens in Middle-earth that will bloom like your garden, if you sprinkle this earth there. Then you may remember Galadriel, and catch a glimpse far off of Lórien, that you have seen only in our winter. For our spring and our summer are gone by, and they will never be seen on earth again save in memory.”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 8, “Farewell to Lorien”)

For Tolkien, who loved trees more than almost anything,

image31jrrt.jpg

perhaps this would have been enough.

tumblr_mhlp1nHQnL1rmflrno1_1280.jpg

Thanks, as always, for reading.  At the turn of the Western year, we wish you peace and prosperity in the year to come.

MTCIDC

CD

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