#WWI deaths

[charlesoberonn]

The Grim Reaper doesn't come for the dead. That's a myth. He doesn't wear a robe either. Nor does he carry a scythe.

The Grim Reaper comes for the living. He wears the uniform of a private, ill fitting on a young man who's barely past boyhood.

The Grim Reaper comes for mothers. And when he comes every mother on the street steps outside to watch him go, dreading that it's her door where he's gonna stop.

The Grim Reaper is trembling and shy. It never gets easier. All those eyes on him.

The Grim Reaper doesn't carry a scythe. He carries a mailbag. And in it are a hundred letters. Each stamped with the Royal Army Seal.

The mother cries. She refuses the letter. But the Grim Reaper will not be denied. He is not the instrument of death. Only its herald.

The Grim Reaper has no time to stay. There're so many letters yet to deliver today.

The year is 1915, and the Grim Reaper knows that tomorrow will be a busy day as well.

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

"How fortunate we were who still had hope, I did not then realise; I could not know how soon the time would come when we should have no more hope, and yet be unable to die."

~ Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth (1933)

[nevertrustanoracle]

Barely made it 5 minutes into Dead Boy Detectives before crying. I love Death of the Endless so much… 😭

[158590]

[todaysdocument]

Men of the Harlem Hellfighters (369th Infantry), some of whom had been awarded the Croix de Guerre by France for their courage under fire, on June 11, 1918. 

Record Group 165: Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs

Series: American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs

File Unit: Colored Troops

Image description: A line of Black soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder in a grassy field. They are wearing World War I U.S. Army uniforms and narrow metal helmets. 

Transcription: 

SUBJECT: 165-WW-127-4 NUMBER EU

165 WW-127 4

Inter. Film Ser. Photographer

Rec'd June 11, 1916  Taken

DESCRIPTION:

NEGRO TROOPS IN FRANCE.

Picture shows a part of the 15th Regt. Inf. N.Y.N.G organized by Col. Haywood, which has been under fire.  Two of the men Privates Johnson and Roberts, displayed exceptional courage while under fire and routed a German Raiding party for which the negroes were decorated with the French Croix de Guerre.  it will be noticed that the men have taken to the French trench helmet instead of the flatter and broader British style.

[whumpbby]

"Jiang Cheng is evil, because he acted like Wei Wuxian owed him something!"

He fucking did, tho?

Did you skip the fourth of the novel that spells out that Wei Wuxian fucking did owe Jiang Cheng something?

He owed him a goddamn ✨✨explanation✨✨ for suddenly going rogue, then seemingly insane, then murdering his brother in law and then losing his mind and their sister to the powers WWX assured everyone and anyone he could control 100% no biggie.

And that this is ultimately all Jiang Cheng wanted from Wei Wuxian? An explanation and an apology for being lied to and abandoned without a word? He wanted him to come back home, apologise to the dead, and explain himself.

How is that a hard concept to understand to some people?

If your friend keeps telling you "Hey, let's open up a bakery and I will do half of the work, and its gonna be great!" but then, once you open the bakery, the friend keeps skipping his part of the job and ultimately, without an explanation, goes to support your flagging competition while pissing off every other shop owner in the city - demanding an explanation is the least you'd do.

How the hell can you look at the guy desperate to ask "What happened to make all our lives go so wrong?" and think "Eugh, entitled!"

Jiang Cheng and Jin Ling are THE people deserving answers the most in the whole world post WWX's ressurection. He pretty much destroyed both of their lives - not on purpose, no, but inadvertently that's what happened. There was more people and interests at play, but the things that impacted these two the most were of Wei Wuxian's lies.

Demanding explanations is, really, the gentlest thing Jiang Cheng could punish him with.

[clove-pinks]

Once a soldier removed his helmet and kit harness in battle, he might be killed if his captor was in the heat and anger of battle or had a personal grudge. Usually his life would be spared. The lowered head, the anxious face, the upheld bible or crucifix were sufficient. Seeing a man recognizably human and not that stereotype of inhumanity which the front-line soldier usually projected onto his foe, a civilian response subvened.

— Denis Winter, Death's Men: Soldiers of the Great War

[mock-arts]

Cover for “The Other Kingdom” by @banhus for the @endlessbigbang

Fic and Art on ao3

In 1916, Roderick Burgess successfully summons Death, and Hob Gadling wakes up in the trenches alongside three dead soldiers.

Bonus custom divider

[vikkicomics]

Inked (yet to be coloured) panel from Ottoway volume 2 of unnamed French soldier caught in barbed wire, pose taken from 'The death of Laocoön and his sons'.

[victusinveritas]

An image from the 1917 silent Danish film PEACE ON EARTH (released in Denmark as “Pax Aeterna”).

[gameo-archive]

"got a cameo for my bestest friend so this is clipped for personal reasons!

just incase u forgot who george was, a reminder.

on staying motivated, particularly in the arts.

a stanza from ‘The Sack of the Gods’, as recited by Death in The Case of Crystal Palace."

Do you have any favourite poems for you or Edwin?

"She with the star I had marked for my own - I with my set desire - Lost in the loom of the Night of Nights - lighted by worlds afire - Met in a war against the Gods where the headlong meteors glow, Hewing our way to Valhalla, a million years ago!

They will come back - come back again, as long as the red Earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?"

- The Sack of the Gods, Rudyard Kipling

[edwardian-girl-next-door]

~ Wilfred Owens, "Dulce et Decorum Est"

via poetryfoundation.org

text id under cut-off

[ID/ Wilfred Owens poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est"

"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

/end ID]

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Fritz Gareis (1872–1925), In Erwartung (In Anticipation), Illustration from Die Muskete magazine, 1916

[blueshistorysims]

Lt. Alexander Walsh on his 24th birthday, April 1916, France

Alexander Bernard Walsh was the second-eldest child and eldest son of Peter and Rebecca and younger twin to his twin sister Edeline. He was born in Newcrest and spent his childhood there before going to Willow Creek for secondary education and later on to Liverpool University, where he graduated in 1914 with a degree in pre-law. Out of national pride and a sense of duty, he enlisted as a commissioned officer in the army, reaching the rank of lieutenant, where he eventually died of wounds taken during the Battle of the Somme.

Alexander was a great animal lover, and while he never had the opportunity to have a pet of his own, he considered caring for the army horses one of his favorite duties. Likewise, he also enjoyed parties and spent much of his time at Liverpool University attending socials, which cost him his relationship with beau Edith in 1912, who would go on to marry the Newcrest mayor's sectary Mr. Clayton. After his sister Edeline's wedding in 1915, he and Edith began a secret affair that lasted until his death. Not even Byron, whom he considered his closest confidant, knew about the affair until his confession on his deathbed.

Alexander is survived by his mother Rebecca, father Peter, twin sister Edeline, younger brother Byron, and his youngest sister Giselle. He died unmarried with no children.

alexander in photographs over the years we've known him

[major-alenko]

read this in a book the other week and cannot stop thinking about Shepard in the first half of me2 lol