World War One Poetry
Not yet will those measureless fields be green again
Where only yesterday the wild sweet blood of wonderful youth
was shed;
There is a grave whose earth must hold too long, too deep a stain,
Though for ever over it we may speak as proudly as we may tread.
(From "The Cenotaph" by Charlotte Mew)
"Not since the Siege of Troy," asserts anthologist Tim Kendall about the First World War, "has a conflict been so closely defined by the poetry that it inspired." The group of soldier-poets who fought in World War One - including prominent figures such as Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Rupert Brooke - are among the most read and admired poets of the 20th century. Generations of students have contemplated the horror, anguish and contradictions of the Great War by studying, among others, Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" and "Anthem for Doomed Youth," Sassoon's "Attack" and Brooke's "The Soldier."
The poetry of the First World War, however, is most profitably approached and understood as a multi-faceted, multi-voiced and multi-national subject. It properly includes women poets like May Sinclair, Vera Brittain and Mary Borden, all of whom served as battle zone nurses; and established civilian poets such as Thomas Hardy, Robert Bridges and Rudyard Kipling (Kipling's son was killed in the war). It covers a range of poetic forms expansive enough to encompass the high modernism of David Jones, the sonnets of Charles Sorley, the traditional pastoral conventions of Edward Thomas, and the lyrics of popular music hall songs.
And while World War One poetry remains most often associated with those like Sassoon, Owen and Brooke - but also Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg, Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden - whose work draws movingly on their experiences as British soldiers at the front, the output of American poets writing about the war, while certainly slighter and less celebrated then that of their British counterparts, includes poems of enduring interest such as Alan Seeger's "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" and Carl Sandburg's "Grass."
Colonial war poetry, which includes, amongst others, the work of the Nobel Prize-winning Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, the Canadian author of "In Flanders Field" John McCrae, and the Australian poet and veteran of Gallipoli Leon Gellert, reflects the contribution of Commonwealth countries to the war effort and the often complicated political, social and cultural situation surrounding the British Empire. The case in Ireland similarly widens the critical, historical and political frame for W.W. I poetry as many Irish poets of the period, like Padraig Pearce who was executed as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, and Francis Ledwidge who joined the Irish Volunteers and fought and died (at Passchendaele), were passionately engaged with the ongoing struggle for Irish independence.
While it is impossible to fully account for why the trenches of World War One produced so many great writers and so much fine poetry, there were particular historical forces at work that are worth noting. The growth in literacy levels driven by the nineteenth-century expansion of public education in Britain, and the popular enthusiasm for reading classical and English literature encouraged by organizations such as the National Home Reading Union, meant that "[b]y 1914," as Paul Fussell has written, "it was possible for soldiers to be not merely literate but vigorously literary." Changes in recruitment practices (including conscription after 1916) also resulted in a British army that included larger numbers of highly educated and well-read young men than ever before. Across classes and ranks soldiers with a literary bent turned to poetry to describe their experiences, capture their sensations, express their states of mind, protest their situations and lament the loss of friends, comrades and their idealism. Often drawing on forms, tropes, symbols and national archetypes familiar from the canon of English poetry, which many carried in their pockets and haversacks in the form of Arthur Quiller-Couch's Oxford Book of English Verse, the best poetry written in the trenches is rich in literary allusiveness and deeply conscious of the English poetic tradition.
Subject to expansion, critical reconsideration and reconfiguration, First World War poetry is a less settled and more dynamic literary category than is often assumed; what remains constant, however, is the cultural presence of a varied, influential and powerful body of poetic work that has shaped, and will continue to shape, how World War One is represented, commemorated and remembered.
Fontes:
http://wwionline.org/articles/world-war-one-poetry
http://cocoaferret.deviantart.com/art/END-RUN-Dulce-et-Decorum-est-276754802
Mais:
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/yeats.html
http://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2006/10/05/poetry-v-history
An unexpected epidemic of shell shock
(Rob Ruggenberg)
The First World War produced an enormous and totally unforeseen epidemic of shell shock - a term that was unknown until then. In 1914 war took on a new meaning. Even far away from the trenches this war seemed to maintain absolute power over men. It was as if the war implanted an enormous destructive impulse within the soldiers’ bodies, thus destroying individual expression of will or coordinated movement.
It happened most often to soldiers who fought in the trenches of the Western Front in France and Belgium and at the Isonzo front in Italy. These were places where inhumanity, brutality and fear had become part of daily life, and where soldiers could do little else than adjust. Escape was impossible.
Military physicians did not know what to do. Many tried the new Electroconvulsive Therapy, now known as electroshock, but this did not help (it did cause brain damage and sometimes permanent loss of memory though). Afterwards we can say that only one of them, doctor William Halse Rivers Rivers (1864-1922), a British physician, seemed to understand what was really going on.
Rivers maintained that these war neuroses did not result from the war experiences themselves, but were "due to the attempt to banish distressing memories from the mind". He encouraged his patients to remember, instead of trying to forget what they had been through.
His insights in psychoanalyses led the medical world into a better understanding of what we now call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
REAL FIGURES UNKNOWN
British estimates are that shell shock in the Great War affected 7-10 percent of the officers and 3-4 percent of other ranks. By 1916, over 40% of the casualties in fighting zones were victims of shell shock and by the end of the war over 80,000 cases had passed through British Army medical facilities.
The real figures however must be higher, as medical officers were told not to diagnose lower ranks as shell-shocked. Eventually the term became forbidden altogether. From June 1917 on they had to use NYD(N), short for Not Yet Diagnosed (?Nervousness).
Other terms used were neurasthenia, nerve trouble, hysteria, battle fatigue and anxiety neurosis. The Germans called it Kriegsneurose, Granatshock or Granatfieber. The French had trouble nerveux, choq de guerre, choq traumatique or traumatisme de guerre, and the Belgian soldiers suffered from d'n klop or la kloppe. The Americans called it soldier's heart and shell shock in the beginning, but later switched to neurasthenia, combat stress and combat exhaustion.
The authorities first believed that shell shock was an excuse for cowardice. Why would one man break down and become a nervous wreck, while another soldier who had the same experience remained unaffected? They felt that harsh discipline and harsh therapy would cure and prevent more cases. It did not.
The disease led to at least 200,000 discharges in the British army alone. A German military medical report talks about 613,047 cases of Kriegsneurose. In the short period the Americans fought they counted 70,000 - 100,000 soldiers with nerve problems and more than 40,000 of them had to be discharged.
SUICIDES AND SUFFERING
In all armies shell shock also led to an unknown number of suicides, not to mention the innumerable soldiers who suffered the rest of their lives. In 1920 alone 50,000 British ex-soldiers were awarded a war-pension because of mental disorders.
British VAD-nurse Claire Tisdall saw them coming in from the front: "I got quite used to carrying shell-shocked patients in the ambulance. It was a horrible thing, because they sometimes used to get these attacks, rather like epileptic fits in a way. They became quite unconscious, with violent shivering and shaking, and you had to keep them from banging themselves about too much until they came round again. Of course, these were the so-called milder cases; we didn't carry the dangerous ones. They always tried to keep that away from us and they came in a separate part of the train. They'd gone right off their heads. I didn't want to see them. There was nothing you could do and they were going to a special place. They were terrible."
Another nurse, Sister Mary Stollard: "They were very pathetic, these shell-shocked boys, and a lot of them were very sensitive about the fact that they were incontinent. They'd say, 'I'm terribly sorry about it, Sister, it's shaken me all over and I can't control it. Just imagine, to wet the bed at my age!'"
Sister Henrietta Hall told: "They used to tremble a great deal and it affected their speech. They stammered very badly, and they had strange ideas which you could only describe as hallucinations. They saw things that really didn't exist, and imagined all sorts of things. And, of course, they were terrified of going back."
THE DOCTOR HAS ORDERS TOO
But almost all physicians did all they could to send these soldiers back to the mincing machine as soon as possible. They made no distinction between military and health interests. The doctor had his orders too. Shaming and the infliction of pain were the main methods they used; some doctors infected the soldiers with malaria because they thought the high fevers could heal; electric shock treatment was very popular too. The situation on the other side of the front, in Germany and in Austria, was similar.
Of course there were exceptions. Konrad Alt, a German medical officer, published an article in a leading Austrian medical journal in which he expressed great concern for the "enormous group of trembling, shaking and staggering soldiers one can frequently find walking around or sitting in wheelchairs on the streets of major cities, who are stared at everywhere, questioned, pitied and often given with presents".
They came from everywhere, but the frontlines at the Somme, Ypres, Isonzo and Verdun were incomparable. A German officer recalled from the front near Verdun:
"We saw a handful of soldiers, commanded by a Captain, slowly approaching, one at the time. The Captain asked which company we were and then all of a sudden started to cry. Did he suffer of shell shock? Then he said: 'When I saw you approach it reminded me of six days ago, when I walked this same road with approximately hundred men. And now look how few there are left...' We watched as we passed them; they were about twenty. They walked by us as living, plastered statues. Their faces stared at us like shrunken mummies, and their eyes were so immense that you could not see anything but their eyes."
Fonte:
http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-shellshock.html
Mais:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/Pathe-footage-World-War-One-effects-shell-shock.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP2ravKtcY8
http://jhmas.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/05/19/jhmas.jrr015
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_in_the_mud
Trechos de O Bom Soldado Švejk (1921), de Jaroslav Hašek.
O bom soldado Švejk caminhava humildemente, acompanhado pelos armados defensores do Estado.
As baionetas brilhavam ao sol. Quando chegaram ao bairro de Malá Strana, Švejk parou diante do monumento a Radetzky e, dirigindo-se ao gentio que os acompanhava, exclamou:
- A Belgrado! A Belgrado!
- - -
O último recurso daqueles que não queriam ir à guerra era a prisão militar. Conheci um professor que não queria atirar porque era matemático, de maneira que roubou o relógio de um tenente para que o trancafiassem na prisão militar. Fez isso depois de ter pensado muito. A guerra não o atraía nem entusiasmava. Disparar contra o inimigo e matar outros professores de matemática tão infelizes como ele parecia uma estupidez.
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Exibiam algumas execuções levadas a cabo pelo exército na Galícia e na Sérvia. Eram fotografias artísticas de casas de campo queimadas e de árvores cujos galhos se inclinavam sob o peso dos enforcados. Uma fotografia especialmente bela era a de uma família enforcada. Um menino, o pai e a mãe. Dois soldados com baionetas vigiavam a árvore com os enforcados e um oficial aparecia em primeiro plano fazendo uma pose de vencedor com um cigarro na mão.
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Recordo que uma vez, durante uma dessas missas, um avião inimigo deixou cair uma bomba precisamente sobre o altar de campanha, e restaram do capelão apenas uns farrapos sanguinolentos. Os jornais disseram então que era um mártir, enquanto nossos aviões preparavam o mesmo tipo de glória para os capelães adversários.
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- Alguns estudiosos dizem que a guerra é consequência das manchas solares. O surgimento de uma dessas manchas prediz que algo terrível está prestes a acontecer. A conquista de Cartago...
- Vá para o diabo com sua erudição, sabichão - interrompeu-o o sargento.
- - -
"Caramba!", disse para si, lendo com interesse as notícias do dia. "O sultão acaba de condecorar o Kaiser Wilhelm com a medalha de guerra, e eu, no entanto, não tenho nenhuma medalha, nem uma pequena, prateada."
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Quando viu que Švejk continuava seu discurso com uma expressão estúpida, semelhante a que talvez pudesse ter sido vista na fotografia que fora publicada certa vez em A Crônica da Guerra Mundial com o seguinte título: "O sucessor do trono austríaco conversa com dois aviadores abatidos por um aeroplano russo."
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Enquanto um sem-fim de soldados instalados nos bosques à beira do Dunajec e do Raab eram cobertos por uma chuva de granadas e a artilharia de grande calibre destroçava e enterrava tropas inteiras nos Cárpatos, enquanto nos horizontes de todos os campos de batalha resplandecia o fulgor das cidades e das aldeias incendiadas, o tenente Lukáš, acompanhado por Švejk, vivia, entediado, seu idílio com a dama que fugira do marido e agora representava o papel de dona de casa.
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"Quando tomba no campo de batalha, deve prestar continência antes de morrer. Quem não sabe prestar continência, quem finge que não viu ou presta com negligência, este, para mim, é um animal."
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- Não faz muito, na taverna, um homem contava que o imperador [Franz Joseph] tem duas amas de leite que lhe dão o peito três vezes ao dia.
- Quem dera que tudo acabasse logo! - suspirou o soldado. - Que nos deem uma surra, mas que a Áustria volte a viver em paz de uma vez por todas.
- - -
Continuaram interpretando as opiniões da média do povo tcheco sobre a guerra; o soldado da caserna repetia que naquele dia ouvira dizer em Praga que era possível ouvir os canhões disparando em Náchod e que o czar estava prestes a entrar na Cracóvia.
Depois, comentaram o fato de o nosso trigo estar sendo enviado para a Alemanha e de os soldados alemães receberem cigarros e chocolates.
- - -
- Meu soldado, uma última coisa. Se cair prisioneiro de guerra na Rússia, dê lembranças de minha parte ao cervejeiro Zeman de Zdolbunov. Eu escrevi o meu nome em um papel. Mas, sobretudo, seja esperto e evite ficar muito tempo no front.
- Não se preocupe comigo - disse Švejk -, sempre é interessante conhecer terras estrangeiras, e ainda por cima de graça.
- - -
Antes que o trem de passageiros chegasse, o bar de terceira classe ficou lotado de soldados e civis. Os soldados pertenciam a diferentes regimentos e formações e eram de diversos países. O redemoinho bélico os levara aos hospitais militares de Tábor e agora voltavam ao campo de batalha em busca de novas feridas, mutilações e sofrimentos, ou para ganhar uma simples cruz de madeira em seu túmulo, sobre a qual, ainda depois de muitos anos, na triste planície da Galícia, ondeará sob o vento e a chuva um quepe descolorido de um soldado austro-húngaro com a viseira oxidada; de vez em quando pousará nela um velho corvo que recordará os pantagruélicos banquetes de antanho e a interminável mesa cheia de saborosos cadáveres de homens e cavalos, e pensará que precisamente sob um quepe como aquele costumava encontrar o mais delicioso dos bocados: olhos humanos.
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Quando descobriram os carros, os russos começaram a cobri-los com granadas. Uma granada matou o cavalo do cocheiro Josef Bong, do 3º Esquadrão Imperial e Real de Serviço. Bong lamentou: "Meu branquinho, acabaram com você, pobrezinho!" Nisso Bong foi atingido por um estilhaço de granada.
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Jareš filho, avô do velho Jareš, guarda costeiro em Razic, perto de Protivín, foi coberto de chumbo e pólvora por ter desertado. E antes de ser fuzilado na fortaleza de Písek, foi obrigado a atravessar um corredor polonês; levou seiscentas cacetadas.
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No exército temos os lanceiros territoriais austríacos, a defesa territorial austríaca, os caçadores bósnios, os caçadores austríacos, a infantaria húngara, os artilheiros imperiais tiroleses, a infantaria bósnia, os hovends da infantaria húngara, os hussardos húngaros, os hussardos territoriais, os carabineiros montados, os dragões, os lanceiros, os artilheiros, os trens, os sapadores, o corpo de saúde, os marinheiros. Estão entendendo? E a Bélgica? A primeira e a segunda esquadra formam o exército operacional, a terceira fica na retaguarda...
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Será um simples intercâmbio. Um soldado tcheco dormirá com uma garota húngara e uma pobre menina tcheca receberá, em sua casa, um soldado húngaro; depois de alguns séculos, os antropólogos terão uma grande surpresa: por que surgiram às margens do Malše pessoas com faces salientes?
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- Mesmo que no meio da luta caísse na latrina, teria que se lamber e voltar ao combate. No quartel todo mundo está habituado aos gases tóxicos, pois comem pão de campanha e ervilhas com cevada. Mas dizem que os russos acabaram de inventar alguma coisa contra os oficiais...
- Devem ser descargas elétricas - completou o voluntário.
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Não faz muito tempo, em Budejovice um companheiro ferido me contou que quando estavam avançando se cagou três vezes: a primeira quando saíram das trincheiras e se arrastaram até os alambrados, a segunda quando começaram a derrubá-los e a terceira quando os russos caíram em cima deles gritando "Hurra!". Então recuaram até as trincheiras e no grupo não restou um que não tivesse se cagado.
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No ato oficial e solene de recepção ao trem em Viena intervieram três membros da Cruz Vermelha austríaca, duas sócias de uma associação bélica de senhoras e jovens vienenses, um delegado oficial da magistratura de Viena e um representante das Forças Armadas.
O cansaço era patente em todos os rostos.
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O major havia voltado ao seu regimento depois que ficara patente sua absoluta inaptidão nas batalhas do Drina, na Sérvia. Diziam que mandara destruir uma ponte flutuante quando a metade de seu batalhão ainda estava na outra margem.
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Ao entardecer [o tenente Lukáš] havia saído do acampamento apenas para ir a Királyhida, ao teatro húngaro da cidade, onde estava sendo representada uma opereta húngara protagonizada por atrizes judias gordinhas, cujo maior atrativo era que quando dançavam levantavam as pernas e se via que não usavam nem anáguas nem calcinhas; e além disso, ainda para maior prazer dos oficiais, estavam raspadas como as tártaras.
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De vez em quando Švejk se distraía, pegava o fone e ficava escutando. O telefone dispunha de um novo sistema que acabara de ser introduzido no exército. Tinha a vantagem de permitir que fossem ouvidas, nitidamente, as conversas de toda a linha.
A intendência e o quartel de artilharia se insultavam mutuamente, os sapadores ameaçavam o correio militar, a artilharia do exército protestava contra a seção de metralhadoras.
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Em Osek, na Croácia, dois veteranos trouxeram ao vagão um caldeirão com coelho assado; não conseguimos nos segurar e mergulhamos de cabeça. Naquela viagem não fizemos nada além de vomitar pelas janelas. Em nosso vagão, o cabo Matejka comeu tanto que tivemos que colocar uma mesa em cima de sua barriga e ficar pulando, como se estivéssemos pisando uvas; isso o aliviou, e começou a expelir tudo por cima e por baixo. Quando estávamos atravessando a Hungria, atiravam galinhas assadas nos vagões. No entanto, na Bósnia não nos deram nem água.
Trechos de Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life In Science (2014), de Daniel P. Todes.
The Pavlovs were summering at Sillamiagi when Nicholas II stepped onto the balcony of the Winter Palace on July 20, 1914, to address several hundred thousand of his subjects who had gathered in Palace Square to hear his response to the German declaration of war. In the very spot where a deadly fusillade from the tsar's army had sparked the 1905 revolution - and where, not six months earlier, a quarter million workers had angrily demonstrated to mark the ninth anniversary of that Bloody Sunday - the crowd now knelt as one and sang "God Save the Tsar." A rousing cheer greeted his pledge "not to make peace as long as a single enemy remains on Russia's soil."
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Pavlov's patriotism, too, was much aroused. He devoted his first lecture of the 1914-1915 academic year to an enthusiastic endorsement of Russia's war aims, and assured his coworkers that "if not for my age, I would abandon everything and volunteer for the army." With his sons Vladimir and Vsevolod at the front, he followed the war news avidly. "Every Russian defeat or victory touched him to the depths of his soul," recalled Jasper Ten-Kate, a member of Pavlov's much-diminished lab group during the war years. "So great was his interest in the front that his coworkers competed to provide him with sensational news acquired through personal contacts." Pavlov rewarded them with passionate reactions, "cursing the Germans or the Russians depending on the circumstances". Declining an invitation to speak at Moscow's private Shaniavskii University in September 1914, he explained: "Now my mood is so unstable since everything is overshadowed by the war that scientific interests and scientific thinking barely remain." Two months later, he mused to physiologist Alexander Samoilov: "There is the result of all those international contacts for you. How and when will we again meet with our scientific comrades? What a mystery of human life, of human culture! This occupies me now rather more than conditional reflexes." In April 1915, he still felt too preoccupied with the war to deliver a public lecture about science: "God grant that the terrible cloud hanging over the world will pass and that we will be able to return to our usual peaceful activities. But now I do not have and cannot summon the necessary inspiration for either work or presentations."
He peppered his lectures with comments about the war, pouncing on one student whose late arrival to class reminded him of the cursed Russian trait that had exacted such a price at the Battle of Tannenberg: "Sir, you have now acted like General Rennenkampf, who arrived late to relieve General Samsonov, whose army, due to this tardiness, was captured. Sit down and don't repeat this." This precipitated a ten-minute peroration on national types: "The Slavs, particularly the Russians, should learn from the Germans about punctuality and precision... If one could add German precision to the Russian's boldness and cleverness, then we would far outpace all nations and states."
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Enthusiasm and unity on the home front had long since disappeared, replaced by food lines, despair, finger-pointing, and accusations of treason. Secret police reports warned that inflation and material privation were stoking dangerous sentiments among workers and peasants.
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On a clear winter day, a gloomy Pavlov strolled with his collaborator Iurii Frolov past the Winter Palace. The newspapers were full of lurid details about the killing of Rasputin and rumors of intrigues and treachery. As they passed the tsar's residence, Pavlov spoke rapidly and emotionally: "They lost the war ... The tsar lost the war ... What now will become of Russia?"
Pavlov resumed his working routine by the fall of 1915, although most of his coworkers had been called to the front, and those who remained were usually available only for short periods of time. During the war years, research concentrated on the dynamics of inhibition and differentiation, the relationship of inhibition to sleep, and the stages by which CRs [conditional reflexes] developed.
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Pavlov's patriotic reaction to the war and concern for the development of Russian physiology led him to join physiologists Nikolai Vvedenskii, Vartan Vartanov, and Aleksei Likhachev in March 1916 to found the I. M. Sechenov Society of Russian Physiologists. Their goal was to unite specialists and address scientific issues through annual meetings, the publication of a journal, prizes for Russian contributions to experimental biology, and support for various scientific institutions.
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That revolution arrived on February 23, 1917, as mass discontent exploded in a final wave of strikes and demonstrations.
Throughout this empire-shaking drama, Pavlov doggedly continued his research and teaching. On the morning of one lecture at the Military-Medical Academy, his chief assistant, Georgii Fol'bort, was unable to prepare the demonstration because he was pinned down in his apartment - near the foot of Nevskii Prospekt, a stone's throw from the Winter Palace - by street fighting. He arrived late to the lecture and received a predictably fierce public scolding. His explanation cut no ice with the chief. Turning scornfully to the students in the auditorium, Pavlov remarked: "There's a Russian assistant for you: a few fools are shooting at one another and he considers this an excuse to be late for work!"
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Pavlov had always thought that a second revolution would be the death of Russia, and its occurrence left him extremely pessimistic. To Petrova's expressions of enthusiasm about the prospects for a democratic Russia, he responded mournfully, "I foresee much grief and suffering ahead." He had just escaped his sickbed, "limping, much thinner, and pale". Trudging slowly down the street, he seemed to Petrova "so lifeless, so aged". Vera accompanied him on a short recuperative trip to the Crimea, but, preoccupied with events in the capital, he hurried home. In a note to Petrova on April 1, he congratulated her on her appointment as lecturer at the Women's Medical Institute and empathized with her moodiness of late: "Mood swings are most natural now. We are enduring such an extraordinary time that I can't imagine anybody who is not being tossed from side to side." He confessed himself occasionally depressed.
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He [Pavlov] had never been a committed monarchist or an admirer of the tsarist regime. Now tsarism was gone, and he set about playing an active part in the civic life of the new Russia - exploiting in particular the new possibilities for Russian science.
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[...] articulating his [Pavlov] hopes for the future of "our revolution":
"The great French Revolution was responsible also for a great sin - the execution of Lavoisier and the declaration, in response to his request for a reprieve while he completed some important chemical experiments, that 'the republic has no need for scientists and their experiments'. But the past century has produced a decisive revolution in attitude within human minds, and now one needn't fear that a democracy will forget the eternally reigning role of science in human life."
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Amid tragedy and privation, Pavlov struggled to continue his research, but shortages of heat, provisions, dogs, and assistants soon brought it to a virtual halt. His labs were unheated, all but a few coworkers were at the front, and his
dogs were starving.
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Pavlov reacted to the Bolshevik seizure of power with grief and horror. "He talked constantly about the death of our homeland," Petrova recalled, "regarded the Bolsheviks with hostility and distrust, and openly expressed his dissatisfaction
with their various measures." These sentiments were shared by the great majority of his colleagues. On November 21, Pavlov attended a meeting of the Academy of Sciences that adopted a resolution denouncing the Bolsheviks and urging the upcoming Constituent Assembly to save Russia's honor:
"A great misfortune has befallen Russia; under the yoke of the tyrants who have seized power, the Russian people is losing consciousness of its character and dignity; it is selling its soul and, at the price of a shameful and unreliable separate peace, is prepared to betray its allies and put itself in the hands of its enemies. [...] Russia did not deserve such shame."
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A list of 179 eminent Petrograd scholars who had died during the hungry years [between 1918 and 1920] also included the head curator of the Hermitage and three of Pavlov's colleagues at the Military-Medical Academy.
Pavlov had just begun his sixty-ninth year when the Bolsheviks seized power, confiscating his Nobel Prize money and even the gold medals awarded to him and his sons by St. Petersburg University and the Academy of Sciences.
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In the heat of the civil war, the Bolsheviks had basically dealt with the great majority of scientists as former members of the tsarist elite and White sympathizers. The Pavlovs had been repeatedly rousted by local authorities familiar with their White sympathies, and the Bolshevik leadership had apparently even suggested that they leave the country. But now, in 1920, with victory over the Whites imminent, Lenin pondered the challenges of "socialist construction" and considered Pavlov a national treasure. Scientific and technological progress was central to the Bolshevik vision of socialism (and to common notions of national power), so, at least until a replacement generation of "Red specialists" could be prepared, the ruling party needed to nurture the "bourgeois specialists" it had inherited from the tsarist regime - to save them from starvation, discourage (or simply prevent) them from emigrating, and facilitate their research.
Pavlov began in August 1920 to address various requests to the Petrograd City Soviet: decent meat for his dogs, funds for a special supply of electricity and gas to his lab, firewood for the IEM [Institute of Experimental Medicine], and paper for its journal. All were quickly granted.
DAILY MIRROR
31 July 2014
The 9 million unsung heroes of WW1: Dogs, horses and carrier pigeons made victory possible
A 16 million-strong army of animals including mules, donkeys, cats and even camels was deployed - with the lives of 9m tragically cut short.
(Melissa Thompson)
Trapped behind enemy lines during the First World War, the few surviving soldiers of the 77th Infantry Division came under fire from both sides.
As German bullets strafed through the Argonne Forest in north-east France and picked them off one by one, they came under heavy shellfire from their own lines too.
With less than 200 men from a 500-strong unit still alive, three messengers were sent on a perilous last-ditch mission to let HQ known their position. It was their only hope.
Two were killed at once. The third was hit too. But blinded in one eye, with a gaping chest wound and one leg hanging by a single tendon, the determined courier managed to struggle a further 25 miles and deliver the message before collapsing.
The plan worked. Allied bombardment ceased at once and 194 men from what became known as the US Army's Lost Battalion were rescued.
What makes this heroic First World War story all the more astonishing is the fact the messenger was not a soldier. It was a female carrier pigeon called Cher Ami.
She was one of 100,000 homing pigeons used to carry messages to and from the trenches between 1914 and 1918. Where other methods failed, pigeons had a success rate of 95%.
The Germans were so rattled they took hawks to the frontline - so some pigeons that dodged bullets and shellfire succumbed to birds of prey.
These feathered fighters were among a 16 million-strong army of animals - horses, mules, donkeys, dogs, cats and even camels - that helped secure victory.
But not without an enormous cost. More than a million dogs and eight million horses, mules and donkeys died on both sides.
Cher Ami survived her battle wounds from October 1918 and even had a wooden leg carved for her before dying a year later.
Stewart Wardrop, manager of the modern-day Royal Pigeon Racing Association, said: "That pigeon getting that message back saved 190 people's lives. There were no radios in the trenches and the land wires were broken once shelling started, so contact was lost.
"Pigeons were the best way of carrying messages from the front line and by 1918 the Royal Engineer's Signal Service alone had 25,000 birds in use with 380 men to look after them."
Archives at the RPRA offices near Cheltenham, Glos, celebrate the achievements in page after page telling how pigeons saved lives.
RAF pilots would take them on missions then release them if they were downed with a message giving their position to rescuers.
Dogs were used to carry messages too. They also helped wounded soldiers and sniffed out the enemy. Around 20,000 served in the war, some pulling heavy armour, machine guns and other gear.
Among the most important were watchdogs trained not to bark but quietly growl on the approach of enemy troops. In some instances they would just silently prick up their ears.
The training took place at the War Dog School of Instruction in Hampshire. Lt Col Richardson, who ran the school and went into battle with his dogs, said later: "Their skill, courage and tenacity has been amazing.
"During heavy barrages, when all other communications have been cut, the messenger dogs have made their way."
One of the most legendary was Rags, an abandoned French stray adopted by the US 1st Infantry Division.
Though he was gassed, shelled and partially blinded, he survived the war. This was partly because he could hear shells coming before the soldiers - so he was an early-warning system too.
Canaries were used to detect poisonous gases and both cats and dogs hunted rats in the squalid trenches.
Horses were recruited in hundreds of thousands for the cavalry and, with donkeys and mules, to haul equipment over terrain vehicles could not cross. In the Middle East and Asia camels did the same.
Some built high reputations, including Warrior, a thoroughbred ridden by General Jack Seely and known as The Horse The Germans Can't Kill.
With exploits that mirror the fictional story of War Horse, he survived the massive casualties at Ypres, the Somme and Passchendaele and lived on until 1941.
Warrior's newspaper obituary said : "The horse served continuously on the Western Front till Christmas Day 1918. Twice he was buried by the bursting of big shells on soft ground, but he was never seriously wounded.
"Again and again he survived when death seemed certain and, indeed, befell all his neighbours. I have seen him, even when a shell has burst within a few feet, stand still without a tremor - just turn his head and, unconcerned, look at the smoke of the burst."
Dr Matthew Shaw of the British Library, which dedicated an exhibition to WW1 animals, says: "They were central to the war effort. "Without them it's likely victory would not have been secured. It would have been impossible to keep the front line supplied."
The casualties were heavy. Of a million horses and mules recruited by the British Army, nearly half died as a result of injury or enemy fire. In one day alone 7,000 horses died during the battle of Verdun in 1916.
And most of those who survived enemy action were seen off by disease, so that in the end only 60,000 returned home. When war broke out the charity Our Dumb Friends League launched what would become the Blue Cross Fund to raise money for the Army Veterinary Corps.
Steven Broomfield, hospital manager at the Blue Cross HQ in London, explains: "By the end of 1914 the Blue Cross had established four main depots on the Western Front supplying bandages, antiseptic tablets, fly shields for their eyes and humane killers if they couldn't be saved."
By 1918 the fund had raised £170,000 - around £6million today - and treated 50,000 sick horses and 18,000 dogs.
Mr Broomfield also believes horses played a decisive role in the victory.
"In the latter part of the war, the Germans ran out of horses and dismounted their cavalry," he says. "In 1918 they launched a massive offensive that broke through the British and French lines but had no cavalry to exploit it.
"We, on the other hand, had several divisions of horses that could plug holes all over the place."
Some animals were even accused of espionage. In a July 1915 report released by the US National Archives, officers from the 36th Infantry Brigade, 12th Division, claimed a dog and two cats were "acting suspiciously" around the trenches, and voiced the suspicion that they were spying.
The note read: "They have been in the habit of crossing our trenches at night. Steps are being taken to trap them if possible."
The fate of the suspects was never recorded. Another vital role played by animals was as morale-boosting mascots. And alongside domestic pets taken into battle, goats and even fox cubs were recruited too.
Paul Cornish of the Imperial War Museum explains: "You'd find kittens in a tank and even in the heat of the battle, men would adopt animals that had been left over by the enemy.
"It was probably something to do with holding on to a bit of normality... offering a bit of innocence in contrast to the horror around them.
"Because the one thing they couldn't blame for everything bad that was happening around them was an animal."
Fonte:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/9-million-unsung-heroes-ww1-3939895
Mais:
http://www.horizon14-18.eu/animaux-et-guerre.html
http://www.leberry.fr/cher/actualite/2014/08/24/14-18-les-animaux-de-guerre_11117869.html
