The Somme
10/07/16 11:15 Filed in: History
It is almost a century later after the Battle of the Somme. Unbelievably, the loss of life for the British and the French was staggering at 1.2 million lives. That is inconceivable. More here.
"The observation that one death is a “catastrophe,” one hundred thousand deaths a “statistic,” is both callous and flippant. But it carries with it some truth. How do we begin to conceptualize death on the Great War’s scale? In England, the chosen medium is ceramic poppies, which have been laid before the Tower of London en masse. On August 5, when this memorial was inaugurated, just 120,000 were in place — still enough to encircle the building. By November 11, there will be 888,246 — one for each British or Commonwealth soldier who died abroad. The installation has a fitting, if macabre, title: “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.” "
"The observation that one death is a “catastrophe,” one hundred thousand deaths a “statistic,” is both callous and flippant. But it carries with it some truth. How do we begin to conceptualize death on the Great War’s scale? In England, the chosen medium is ceramic poppies, which have been laid before the Tower of London en masse. On August 5, when this memorial was inaugurated, just 120,000 were in place — still enough to encircle the building. By November 11, there will be 888,246 — one for each British or Commonwealth soldier who died abroad. The installation has a fitting, if macabre, title: “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red.” "
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