French Military Museum at The Invalides

These are photographs of the absolutely incredible museum at The Invalides, a structure which was originally a French hospital but which was converted by Napoleon to military use.

All photographs by MKTH.

The amount of material at this museum, including these cannons, is absolutely incredible  Everything from and about French military history can be found there.

These are small artillery models.  Incredibly detailed.

Model soldiers depicting Napoleonic Wars era troops.

Martial musical instruments.

Coat and hat of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon's hat.

Napoleon's horse.

Portrait of Napoleon as Emperor of France.

Russian uniforms of the World War One and civil war period.

This uniform reflects the typical French uniform of the Franco Prussian War period on to early in World War One.

Uniform of German landser, World War One, post 1915, with Maxim 08 machine gun.

M1916 German helmet with death's head, as used by Freikorps units.

Polish uniforms circa World War One.

American Army uniform as worn in Siberia by American troops committed to Russia during World War One.

Flag of French forces that were committed to Russia from 1914 to 1919.

World War One era French cavalry display.

Churches of the East: The ruins of of Saint Albain Nazaire, France.

Churches of the East: The ruins of of Saint Albain Nazaire, France.:

The ruins of of Saint Albain Nazaire, France.

The 16th Century "Old Church" at St. Albain Naizaire in France stands as a silent reminder of the violence of World War One.  The church was destroyed by the French Army to keep it from being used by the Germans as an observation post in 1914.

Following the war, locals elected not to rebuilt the church and leave it as a monument to the tragedy of the war.

All photographs by MKTH.

Memorial to the Dead of the Country, World War One and World War Two. France.

A French villages memorial to its dead of World War One, with names added for World War Two.

MKTH photographs.

Lex Anteinternet: As we pass 700,000 views, the State of the Blog(s)...

Lex Anteinternet: As we pass 700,000 views, the State of the Blog(s)...: Lex Anteinternet Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter. ...

Foch Memorial, Paris France

This statue in Paris is in memory of Ferdinand Foch.

Foch was a significant French commander throughout World War One with military service dating back to the Franco Prussian War.  In March 1918 he became the supreme Allied commander, a role which he occupied until the end of the war.

Joffre Memorial, Paris France

This is the memorial to Joseph Joffre, who was commander of the French forces in World War One from the start of the war into 1916.  While he was basically promoted up out of that position in 1916, his early leadership in the war was responsible for the French being able to stop the tide of the German advance.

Lex Anteinternet: They Shall Not Grow Old

Lex Anteinternet: They Shall Not Grow Old:

They Shall Not Grow Old

You still have time to see this.  It will run again in the United States on December 27.

If you are student of history, or of film, this is a must see.

New Zealander Peter Jackson, famous for his Lord of the Ring films (which I have not seen) was asked by the British Imperial War Museum to take their original movie footage and do something, in terms of a film, with it.  Four years later, this is the spectacular result.

Jackson and his crew took over 100 hours of original IWM film footage, restored it, colorized much of it and then selected six hours of that, and then a little less than two, to produce this movie length tribute to the British fighting man of World War One.  Experts in reading lips were hired to determine what soldiers were saying in the film footage where they can be seen speaking and then matched with actors from appropriate regions of the UK to produce film that sounds like original talking film footage.  Background noises for the sounds of war were added as well (the artillery shocked me in the film as its one of the very, very few instances of artillery sounding actually correct, both in the firing and in the impact. . . it turns out that new recordings of the New Zealand Army's artillery were taken for that effort).

For the voice over, or narration, as to what is being depicted, Jackson relied up on the BBC's series of interviews of British veterans of World War One that were done in the 1960s and 1970s.  These were recently run as a BBC podcast as well, so some individuals may be familiar with this set.  Using it for the film produced an excellent first person result.

There's nothing really like this to compare it to.  It was a huge effort and that produced a very worthwhile result.  Highly recommended.

As an aside, the title comes from Laurence Binyon's 1914 poem, For the Fallen.

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children, 

England mourns for her dead across the sea. 

Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit, 

Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal 

Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres, 

There is music in the midst of desolation 

And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young, 

Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow. 

They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted; 

They fell with their faces to the foe.

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.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again; 

They sit no more at familiar tables of home; 

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time; 

They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight, 

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known 

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, 

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain; 

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, 

To the end, to the end, they remain.

Monument to Charles Peguy, Villaroy, Île-de-France, France.

We've already mentioned Charles Peguy in a prior post on Le Grande Tombe de Villaroy.  Here's a nearby monument to Peguy himself.

Peguy is a celebrated French poet who, as already noted, lost his life in the battle noted.  He's an interesting character having gone from being an atheist to deeply believing, but quixotically non observant Catholic.  This monument is in his honor.

Monument to 13 Executed from Choisy Le Roi, Seine. August 13, 1944

This monument is dedicated to 13 residents ("Fusilles", which means shooters, so presumably partisans) of Choisy Le Roi (a town near Paris) who were "victims of German barbarism" on August 22, 1944.  They were executed.  I don't know the circumstances of their execution, but there would be many like them.

Photographs by MKTH.

Justices to consider constitutionality of cross-shaped war memorial on public land: In Plain English

Justices to consider constitutionality of cross-shaped war memorial on public land: In Plain English

Statue of Maréchal Gallieni at La Musée de la Grande Guerre à Meaux

This is a statue of Marshall Joseph Gallieni at the Museum of the Great War in Meaux, France.

Gallieni was a Corsican (of Corsican and Italian descent who had a long career in the French Army, which he'd entered as an officer in 1868.  He'd been captured in the Franco Prussian War and added the German language to his knowledge of French and Italian while a prisoner.  Thereafter he'd served in French colonial wars, steadily rising up the ranks.  He retired prior to World War One in 1914.

Having only recently been retired, he returned to service at the start of the Great War and became the Military Governor of Paris. By that time his health was fragile and he was suffering from prostrate cancer.  He died in 1916.

Lex Anteinternet: Two Casualties of Belleau Wood, Taking a Closer Look. Part Two. Weeden E. Osborne

Two Casualties of Belleau Wood, Taking a Closer Look. Part Two. Weeden E. Osborne

Lieutenant, junior grade, Weeden E. Osborne.

Weeden E. Osborne was the first commissioned offer in the history of the U.S. Navy to be killed in ground combat overseas. He was also the first officer of the Navy's Dental Corps to be killed in action.



He isn't the exception to the rule in regard to just that.



Weeden is actually fairly difficult to obtain accurate information on, at least if you are trying to do it via the net.  Still, we can learn a little.



He was born on November 13, 1892 in Chicago.  Lake Villa is a suburb of Chicago today.



He went to primary school, however, at Allendale Farms.  Allendale School was a school for orphans.  As we'll see, other evidence also suggests that Osborne had lost his parents at an early age.  At any rate, he graduated from that facility and, after completing school he went to work and worked his way through Northwestern in Chicago, graduating dental school in 1915.  That would have made him a dentist at the young age, at least for today, of 23.  And that's a pretty impressive record for somebody who had an apparent rough start in life.



What exactly he did thereafter is a little unclear, but at least a paper with connections to Allendale Farm (but which focused on dogs) claims that he relocated to St. Joseph Missouri, where he started his dental practice.  If he did, it seems that by 1917 he had relocated to Denver, Colorado, where he was instructing in the Dental School at Denver University, which was noted about him by the National Dental Association, of which he must have been a member.*  The ADA's journal spoke highly of him but noted that his disposition was "nervous", and also energetic.  It might well have been, given that he had gone from being a resident of a school for orphans to a dentist at rocket speed.  That may well have been while he moved on to being a dental professor in Denver, or perhaps his young age made it difficult for him to gather a practice.



He wasn't at that long before the Great War arrived.



He seems to have entered the service from Denver but gave a Chicago residence as his permanent residence upon entering the service, for which there could be a lot of reasons.  He listed his sister as his nearest relative, and she was also living in Chicago, in some sort of association with Wheaten College, but he didn't give her address on Racine as his.**



He was carried on the Navy's roles as a Dental Surgeon, with an appointment date of May 8, 1917.  He served in Boston and Alabama in that role until March 1918 when he was assigned by the Navy to the Marine Corps.  The Marines are a branch of the Navy, and this was even more true at the time than it is now, and the Marine Corps was provided with all of its medical personnel from the Navy.



He had only been at the front with the Marines for a few days when the Marine unit he was attached to went into action at Belleau Wood.  While there, he exposed himself to German fire again and again as he went into the field to help bring in wounded Marines.  He was helping to carry wounded Cpt. Donald F. Duncan when shell fire killed both Osborne and Duncan.



The Recruit Dental Station at the Navy's Great Lakes training facility, which is in his native home of Chicago, is named after him.  And the Marine Corps has remembered him and another dental corps member in the name of an award that they give to members of that branch annually.



So here too, was this a sad story?  It's certainly not a typical one.  Weeden seems to have been a Chicago orphan who overcame his circumstances to become a dentist at a very young age, while keeping in touch with a sister in Chicago.  He was killed at age 25, just starting out, but seems to have applied the heroism that characterized his life to what he saw on the field of battle.

Marker for Lt. J.G. Weeden E. Osborne at the Belleau Wood Cemetery in France.

*This era saw the real rise of professional organizations, including the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, and the American Bar Association.  All of these organizations were working to improve the professionalism of their professions, and they all had very wide membership.  The percentages of practitioners who are members of these organizations has declined greatly since then.



**I don't know Chicago at all, but Racine is depicted as the street of residence of the Irish policeman who is killed by the mob in the film The Untouchables.

Former Senator Alan Simpson Tribute to President George H.W. Bush (C-SPAN)