All Purls. No Swine.
My subject is War and the pity of War. The poetry is in the pity"--Wilfred Owen Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, beloved son, accomplished poet, and soldier of The Great War, was born on March 18, 1893 in Oswestry, a Welsh border town, in the county of Shropshire. Readers of Ellis Peters's Brother Cadfael chronicles, or… Continue reading “He is all blood, dirt, and sucked sugar-stick”–Revisiting William Butler Yeats vs Wilfred Owen
Some things never change. One-hundred seventy years ago today, on 25th October 1854, during the Battle of Balaclava (1) 670 British soldiers under the command of Lord Cardigan(2), launched an ill-fated attack upon a well-defended Russian artillery battery and sustained 40 percent casualties in the form of approximately 120 killed, and at least 160 wounded.… Continue reading This Day in Knitting History. And Something Else: “Boldly they rode and well”
Forty-one years ago, suicide bombers detonated two truck bombs in Beirut, Lebanon. At the end of the day, October 23, 1983, 241 US military personnel, 58 French military personnel, and half-a-dozen civilians were dead. So--praise be--were the two attackers. I was twenty-nine years old. I remember it clearly. It was an event which set in… Continue reading Quote of the Day: “They Came in Peace,” October 23, 1983
Blood had run down into the fella's face and eyes. He was laying there just groaning and calling for a medic. I took water from my canteen, got some bandages, and I washed his face. And when that blood was washed from his eyes, his eyes came open. Man, he just lit up. He says,… Continue reading QOTD: “I felt it an honor to serve my country, God and country, same as the rest of them. The only thing, I just didn’t want to take life.”
Somewhere in the stacks of stuff that form my life, are newspapers and magazines reporting the event. The death of Queen Victoria. The ascension of Edward VII, and subsequently of George V. The election of Franklin Roosevelt. George VI's declaration of war on Germany. The marriage of the Princess Elizabeth. The divorce of the Princess… Continue reading Seventy-Nine Years Ago–Japan Surrenders: The End of World War II. I’m Pretty Sure That Actually Happened. I Even Have the Papers to Prove It.
Well, that's not quite right. But perhaps "close enough for gubmint work," as they say. Two-hundred seventy-nine years ago today, Prince Charles Edward Louis John Sylvester Maria Casimir Stuart raised his standard (and his pretension to the British throne) in the Lochaber district of Glenfinnan in the Scottish Highlands. "The Young Pretender." Also known as… Continue reading “Oh-Hoh Yes: I’m the Young Pretender”
It was the first of Bernard Cornwell's "Richard Sharpe" novels to be published, although it ended up, over the decades, being eighth in the chronological order of our hero's history. It was set in July of 1809, amidst the Battle of Talavera, an iconic bookmark during the Peninsular war between the Napoleonic armies and those… Continue reading Sharpe’s Eagle–The Battle of Talavera
This day in history, sixty-five years ago: Army officers MAJ Dale R. Buis and MSG Chester M. Ovnand were the first Americans killed as a result of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Not the Vietnam War that had been ongoing for decades previous, but the one that resulted from American involvement from 1954 and… Continue reading Here’s To the Heroes
More than seven years ago, just before the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States sent the world into perpetual "tilt" mode , I wrote this post on Ricochet. I'm reprising it here on the day my mother would have turned 96. November 6, 2016: I spent several hours this morning doing… Continue reading The Simple Things–On the 96th Anniversary of My Mother’s Birth
I first published this post five years ago, on June 6, 2019–the seventy-fifth anniversary–when Auntie Pat was still alive (she was 95 at the time). I really miss her: June 5, 2019: I just got off the phone with her and–shameless self-promotion alert–she’ll be 96 next month, and is my Dad’s last surviving sibling. I phoned her… Continue reading Five Years On: Auntie Pat on Operation Overlord