Vee, which day in November ?

Is it the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ?

Sorry yoyo, yes it will be this Sunday with church parades and civic ceremonies in cities, towns and villages throughout the country. Beacons will be lit on hilltops and full peals of church bells are being rung across the Nation

The poppy is always the symbol of 'Remembrance Day' and this year, besides the usual small eg's produced in their millions by veterans, groups of people are now knitting eg's and putting them up around their local War Memorials, which have stood inscribed with the names of the Fallen since the early 1920's.

I told my husband about your post and he shared this family memory :

His great uncle, John Hartnett of Little Falls , NY served in the trenches in the Verdun under General Pershing. He was about 20 years old. During that time he was gassed with Clorine gas by the Germans which permanently damaged his lungs.

He also served in the Alsace region and came home as a Sargent. John never married. His lungs were so afflicted and his breathing so difficult that he could barely carry on a conversation or walk up steps. He was not able to drive a car or hold a job due to this. He lived into his 60's before he died.

John Hartnett was a hero in the eyes of his community and his family. In order to get a veteran's pension he joined his fellow doughboys on a train to Washington DC to demand their just dues.

The image of what people suffered because of this war makes me weep even now.

The only family person I know of who served in WWI was the father of my mother's cousin. He died, but of the flu not in battle.

We do observe the day. It is a Federal holiday but now known as Veteran's Day to honor the armed forces of all our wars rather than just WWI. I remember when it was called Armistice Day, though.

National Veterans Day Ceremony

The Veterans Day National Ceremony is held each year on November 11th at Arlington National Cemetery . The ceremony commences precisely at 11:00 a.m. with a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns and continues inside the Memorial Amphitheater with a parade of colors by veterans' organizations and remarks from dignitaries. The ceremony is intended to honor and thank all who served in the United States Armed Forces.

Thank you for your input Yoyo and Carolyn, We have a similar wreath laying ceremony in London's Whitehall usually by HM Queen at the Cenotaph, the memorial to the 'Unknown Warrior'. The body of the soldier, brought back from one of the French battlefields, is actually buried in Westminster Abbey. A short service is held after a two minutes silence.

The ceremony remembers and honours the sacrifice of not just British forces but those of the Dominions . . . Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa and many of the smaller colonies.

We do commemorate Remembrance Day, and also have the poppy as the symbol. Public places have a minute's silence at 11 am. However the main war remembrance day in Australia is Anzac Day, the 25th of April. On that day in 1915 Australian and New Zealand troops (hence ANZAC - Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed at Gallipoli and spent several months fighting a battle with Turkish troops for tiny bits of land, and had to be evacuated in December.

Some churches here in Charleston, SC will have special music commemorations this Sunday for Veteran's Day. My late husband's father was sent to France and was gassed. His health was never the same, after that experience

I remember when I was a school girl, we had to memorize "In Flanders Field's" I still love that poem.

Many years ago, I worked in a library with several intelligent older women. Once they felt free to discuss why there were so many "spinsters" (unmarried females) of their generation. Several had had young men who were sent overseas. Most either died in battle or of influenza. These co-workers said almost an entire generation of the best and brightest young men was destroyed by the Great War.

Some of the finest poems were written by young men of that generation, who served. One of whom was Rupert Brooke, one of my favorite poets, who died in WW II.

Mary/woodnymph, you will be familiar with the 1914 poem by Laurence Binyon and still read at every commemoration ceremony.

For the Fallen

"They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them."

I like that poem a lot, too, Vee. Seeing the American cemetery at Normandy was such a sobering and heartbreaking sight. They were so young, and there are so many of them.

The film director Peter Jackson and his team have spent hundreds of hours repairing, colouring and adding sound to old film from WWI. We have only seen snippets of it but it does make the lives of the men, conditions in the trenches etc. come to life

Carolyn I haven't visited the War Graves in France, but our two older children went as part of a school trip. Personally I felt they were too young to get much from the experience although they probably were a similar age to many of the 'men' at the Front.

Peter Jackson Film They Shall Not Grow Old

Yes, Vee, I know that poem well. Binyon's beautiful poem is engraved on a WW I monument on the campus of the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville. My late husband and I visited it many times.

Mary, you mention the 'spinsters' who's husbands/sweethearts had been killed in WWI. My Mother told me that while she was at a convent school during the 1930's during special remembrance services there were tears shed by several of the nuns who had lost loved ones (and possibly special young men).

I attended the same school some thirty years later and there was never any mention of WWI. I think this was because of the large influx of Irish nuns who had been 'instructed' by the politician Eamon de Valera that no commemoration should take place despite the very many Irish men who had joined the services and fought with great courage. Luckily this attitude has recently changed and the Irish Ambassador joins the other participants at the Cenotaph in London.

That's interesting, Vee. I forgot to mention that on Nov. 11, at 11 a.m,. all the church bells here in the city of Charleston will be rung loudly and long, in memory of WW I. (Charleston is nick-named "The Holy City" because there are so very many old churches).

The Last Post in Ypres........

http://www.greatwar.co.uk/events/menin-gate-last-post-ceremony.htm

Carolyn, you are right! Anything before 1600 is considered positively modern to us.

On Sunday as many churches as possible will ring their half-muffled bells. Well over a thousand new bellringers have been trained as it is an Art that has been dying out in recent years . . . and from what little I understand is an enjoyable but quite mathematical undertaking that needs great concentration.

I used to love the sound of bells carrying over the countryside on 'practice' evenings.

Bells from the Village of Powick Worcertershire

Have you read The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers? Bell ringing is a plot device.

Guess I'm inattentive because I hadn't realized until today's paper said so that this is the 100th anniversary of the armistice.

There will be many ceremonies here today. Locally thousands of hand knitted poppies decorate the memorials and nearly 200 buglers of all ages will sound "The Last Post" at 11am in various locations, linked by a phone signal.

My father served in Persia during WW2 and said he was safer there than we were in London, being blitzed! He was almost blind in one eye but still got called up for service, learned some Arabic and liaised with high-ranking sheiks, organising work parties of the local men. He was offered a civilian position there when discharged but just wanted to come home at the end of the war.

Annpan, during WWII my Father fought with the 8th Army in North Africa an experience he seldom talked about except to mention the dirt and poverty among the 'Arabs' in the Atlas Mountains.

DH's Aunt served in the WRAF band and marched through Berlin at the end of hostilities and was spat on by the Germans. Surprised they had the energy.

Already commemoration ceremonies are taking place in both France and at home . . . rain not withstanding.

I am just about to pin my poppy to my coat and slosh my way to our village war memorial for a short 'service'. Our small church has only one puny bell and as they don't know how to 'muffle' it (or maybe it would fall down should they try) we will have to rely on the full peel from our much bigger parish church a mile away.

There's a very moving song called "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" about the Australian soldiers at the battle of Gallipoli. All who glorify war should hear it. Also, I recently saw this somewhere, a comment that Armistice Day celebrates peace. Veterans Day celebrates war and those who fight in it. A big difference.

And I don't mean to denigrate vets, just that peace is SO much more important than war. And remember, WW I was called to the war to end all wars.

The only person I knew who served in WWI was my mother's father. I only met him once, as he lived in a veteran's hospital in another state and was estranged from his family. I have come to suspect that PTSD may have contributed to some extent, but who really knows?

When I was a little girl, we lived in a small town in Pennsylvania. I remember seeing veterans of three wars in the town's parade - the youngest men from the Korean War, men the age of my father from WWII, and grandfatherly aged men from WWI. I seem to remember vaguely my father saying that someone was there from a yet earlier war, but I can't remember which one. No one old enough to serve in the Civil War would still have been alive at that time, so probably the Spanish-American War.

Laceyvail, I like your comment about celebrating peace rather than war. Rouan's and my mother was very upset when Armistice Day was changed to Veterans' Day.

It is my feeling that we celebrate Veteran's Day to honor the men and women who serve and have served in the military, not war as such.

Laceyvail, another song from Australia about war is "I was only nineteen." So sad and these songs point out the futility of wars as we see the friendship which now exists between countries that were fighting each other in my lifetime.

So true Annpan. But now the European 'Theatre of War' has moved to the Middle East and is ongoing in parts of what was the USRR and Afghanistan. Terrible as it is I think there will be no end to 'conflict' until the end of time.

There is a wonderful French film, "Joyeux Noel" about the true event of a Xmas eve during WW I when German, British, American, and French soldiers joined in singing Xmas carols, despite being on opposite sides. It was a short-lived "armistice."

And there is now an opera based on the film. :) It's currently playing in DC, although the review is mediocre. The review in 2013 from New York is a little more generous:

NY Times review of 2013 production of 'Silent Night'

My mum's father (maternal g'pa) was 19 years old when he was called into the Royal Navy for WWI. So young. I think he was sick for most of the fighting with the big flu epidemic that also happened around then, so that was rather fortunate in some ways (although it was a life-and-death situation - no antibiotics).

Two uncles served in the RAF just after WWII (both pilots), and then I served as an officer in the U.S. Navy for eight years. (America has been very good to me, and I wanted to pay her back in some way. Plus - family tradition!)

DH is a former U.S. Marine officer, then transferred to the U.S. Navy. We're both of us very proud to have been selected for service.

liz/lemon head. Well done!

I know my late Mother tried to join the Royal Navy as a 'WREN' in 1940 but was turned down as her Father was an alien (not the little-green-man kind . .. but an American) so she was not accepted. In a fit of pique she went to the next-door recruiting office and enlisted in the Women's Army, which would take anyone and which led to about four years of misery. I don't know if this was made up for by meeting my Father, also in the Army, as she had believed marriage would be her 'ticket' to freedom. Wrong. The only way out, other than being sent to prison, was by becoming pregnant . . . not easy in her case as her husband had been sent with the 8th Army to N Africa.

My late husband's late father served in WW I. He was sent to France where he was gassed. He suffered the effects for the rest of his life.

My late husband served in the Army Air Corps in WW II, where he was on a ship that was torpedoed while in the Caribbean. He saw service in the far East, as well.

Here is a great pared down , simple explanation of why WW1 began.....a fact that I am embarassed to admit was never made clear during any of my education :

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/12/what-started-world-war-i/

Looking through a 1940 edition of the Rumford Complete Cookbook and came upon this recipe . Have you ever heard of it ?

World War Cake

1. Boil for 3 minutes : 1 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 cup water , 1 cup raisins , 2 oz. finely cut citron , 1/3 cup shortening, 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. salt.

2. Let cool and then add 2 cups flour , 5 tsp. Rumford baking powder and 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

3. Mix well and bake in a well-greased loaf pan in a moderate oven ( my guess would be 350 degrees ) for about 45 minutes ( my guess would be until it's firm to the tap in the center ) .

Never heard of that cake, Yoyobon. The 5 tsp of baking powder made my eyebrows rise. Will you try it?

It's tempting just to see what it is......the baking powder is a leavening but I agree it seems a bit more than needed. Sounds like a sort of fruitcake, minus all the other fruits and nuts . I would substitute butter for shortening for sure.

The same cookbook had a hand-typed recipe tucked into it for Chocolate Mashed Potatoe (sic) Cookies !

Mashed potatoes and chocolate? Be still my eyebrows!

That sounds like a recipe for "Boiled Fruit Cake" I have made this many times but with slightly different ingredients, like a spice mix rather than separate ones. The baking powder is first mixed in hot water and fizzes delightfully.

During WW2, there wasn't brown sugar available so my grandmother used bottled coffee essence to darken the almost fruitless cake. The coffee taste wore off in the cooking.

You test the cake with a knife which should come out clean. (Old cartoon joke, husband to slatternly wife, if the knife comes out clean do the same to the dirty knives!)

Kathy....lol.....be still my stomach ! That's right up there with my DIL's family recipe for her grandmother's stuffing which has proven to be mostly inedible. The dish includes the usual bread cubes , perhaps some crumbly sausage then goes off the deep end with green olives and some vermouth and other unidentifiable bits . She claims she's following the recipe as handed down. It reminds me of that Friends episode when Rachel is making some dessert and the page flips over to a meatloaf recipe and she ends up combining some incompatible ingredients !!

I think perhaps DIL has combined gramma's stuffing recipe and gramma's martini recipe !

My first thought was lots of baking powder to help it rise since there are no eggs in it, but I've never made a fruitcake so I don't know.

Iceland wasn't directly involved in WWI. This year we celebrate 100 years of national self-determination and commemorate the great influenza pandemic, which killed 0.5% of the nation.

Wartime recipes are interesting. I own three cookbooks that were published during WWII, and two of them have war chapters with recipes for stuff like offal and apple-free apple pie, eggless this-and-that and so on.

Apple-free "apple" pie......reminds me of a popular 1950's recipe that my Mom made a few times ( thankfully only a few ) using Ritz crackers as the "sliced apples". It promised to be exactly like an apple pie in taste , probably due to all the spices. I know there was no shortage of apples so I imagine this was a marketing ploy by Nabisco to get an increase in their cracker sales !

The 1918 flu epidemic afflicted 25 % of the US population . My MIL's father died in October when the flu resumed more deadly than earlier that year. He got sick on a Tuesday and was dead by Thursday...he was 30 years old and my MIL was born two months later.

Here's an excellent summary of that epidemic with photos :

https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

Apple-free "apple" pie reminds me of the time my SisIL made lasagne with pumkin instead of tomato (she is supposedly allergic to tomatoes, and about a thousand other things, which she reminds everyone of at great length every time she gets a chance). She claimed it tasted exactly the same. Hmmm.

Donna

Donna........okaaaay but then let's have her call it something else, NOT lasagne ! Maybe Pumpkin Kugel ? :0)

( and by the way, I share your frustration over the sudden surge of allergies. I need to see the results of the scratch test ! )

re the war-time cake recipe. We make a similar 'boiled cake' as Annpan describes but add an egg. Difficult for me to think in terms of cups as we still weigh in oz (or younger folk in metric . . I'm too old to learn). The amount of baking powder does seem generous, but as the book was produced by the Rumford people I suppose they had to make sure their product got used.

Yoyo, I so agree about allergies. All these people saying they are gluton intolerant etc. when in reality a very small %age of the population have a 'reaction' to it.

I also wonder at peanut etc allergies that are now heard about so often. I'm not saying I don't believe that people or their children can't tolerate these foods but how is it for eg. in my distant childhood (the '50's ) these things were not a problem? Has there been a change in people's physiological make-up? Does it go back to what babies are weaned on?

I've heard to give children peanut butter or peanuts early on as it is thought the avoidance of peanut products may be what produces that particular allergy later on.

Vee, I know you meant gluten, but after all the food I ate at yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner, I need to be glutton intolerant for several days to come.