Living Underground

I'd like to express my gratitude for all of your patience last week as I was preoccupied with yet another frustrating confrontation with my internet provider.  Wind Mobile seems to have far too many policies in effect which enable them to not deliver services paid for.  The upshot is they acquiesced (only after threatening them with the Better Business Bureau) and I have service well into March.  Shame on me if I fail to engage another, more reliable provider by that point.

On to some good news.  I've recently heard about Leadership Grants, a group designed to financially assist new and emerging small businesses, including ones geared to Not-for-Profit.  They make a review of submissions in April, so I've got a little time to put a solid business plan and proposal together.  It's just this kind of jump start that can get "If Ye Break Faith" under weigh.  It wouldn't be possible if there weren't people like you reading my work and supporting the ideals this project represents.  We're coming up on some interesting times real soon, so if you haven't, please follow along with us on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date on things as they develop.

Not having tools, I've had a neighbour help to drive some screws to hang my paintings.  I'm grateful for that as now the print of "The Battle of Vimy Ridge" by Richard Jack is finally up on my wall.  It's taken a while because I'm generally not that handy; which is why I didn't join the Engineers.  I'm certainly glad of them, though.  Armies have used the asset of skilled labour since the dawn of warfare.  They built siege engines, forded rivers, prepared winter camps.  When taking a castle under siege, the engineers were responsible for digging ditches to approach the foundation under cover to attempt to breach the wall.  These ditches were called saps, and is why engineers today take pride in the title "Sapper."

There was no short need for engineers during the First World War.  Countries at a crescendo of the Industrial Revolution were waging an industrial conflict against the other.  Under expected circumstances engineers would have been called to keep lines of supply and transportation open.  Often supplemented by surplus labour from infantry units "at rest", they would build roads and lay rail line.  The war as it happened solidified into an extension of siege warfare from an age gone by giving opportunity for the engineers to be utilized to their fullest.

Trench systems, though begun at opportunity, must become well organised to provide protection for the troops and be as defensible a position as possible.  Engineers would have been responsible for designing trench layout and troubleshooting building issues like the high drainage in Flanders where a complex system of pumps and drains were needed to keep trenches dry.

It occurred at some level that frontal attack without adequate reduction of the enemy position prior to jumping off was just not on.  While the artillery went through it's own remarkable learning curve through the war to deliver death from above, some very special engineers were put to the task to deliver death from below.

It is difficult to remember a world that ran on coal, but the turn of the last century was an age yet to really come to terms with the potential of petroleum.  Many young men who left for the war came up from the mines only for many of them to wind up back down in them.

The purpose was to sink a shaft from friendly lines, tunnel towards enemy trenches, and clear a large gallery below a predetermined point.  The gallery would be packed with the high explosive ammonal and linked to an electronic charge for detonation at the right moment before an attack.  The mining was just as physically dangerous as going down a seam back home.  There was risk of collapse, ventilation problems, and, in Flanders, flooding.  Civil miners would have had some experience with explosives, but hardly on the scale they were called to in the war.  That, and the enemy was attempting the exact same thing.  The war underground escalated and developed in it's own way, much as the rest of the war shifted as the next ingenuity conferred advantage to the first side to use it.

Now tunnels were not only being built to destroy trenches, but to listen for and intercept enemy mines.  Weapons and equipment designed or modified to work best in cramped and dark conditions were quickly adopted.  At the same time, the method of how the tunnels were dug lent exclusively to the skills and technique of those most familiar with the work.

It becomes difficult to imagine.  As I said, I'm not that handy in the first place, and couldn't bear to be enclosed underground even in the best of circumstances.  Nor could I, for that matter, imagine the feeling of standing on a fire step, looking out into no-man's-land, never entirely certain that there wasn't several tonnes of explosive directly underneath me waiting for the word "go" to vapourise the immediate surrounding area.

And perhaps that's a good exercise for today.  Let's try to imagine what that must feel like.  There's no certainty of knowing, but an attempt at empathy will help keep current what immense sacrifices were made.

Objective: Objectivity

It has been far longer than I had hoped between my last essay and this one.  I'd like to thank you all for sticking with me through this little rough patch; particularly those of you whom have followed me recently despite lack of addition of new content.  Both the Facebook Page and Twitter Feed for this work remain active, so please check them out and follow along to show your support.

Just what is it that I'm encouraging you to support, you ask?  "If Ye Break Faith" is many things.  Right now it's not much more than a showcase for an enthusiastic amateur historian keen on building his portfolio and expressing thoughts on the First World War.  "If Ye Break Faith" does have the potential to move beyond this and take on the mantle of a Not for Profit group dedicated to the cause of continual and analytical historical education.  We're a long way off from that.

On that note, I'd like to state that efforts on my part to expand the audience; a crucial step in moving this work forward, have not gone to plan.  As the plan was flawed, I'm not disappointed with the result.  I don't wish to force this project into a wider scope before it's ready and I still enjoy the grassroots effect of accepting new readers in a trickle rather than a flow.  The project retains an air of person-ability more so in this fashion than wanting to reach thousands at one go.  It will happen, just not yet; and I'd rather it come naturally than by coercion.

 When I say that "If Ye Break Faith" wishes to propagate historical education, I stand firm in the camp which believes that our current approach on the most part is incorrect.  The difficulty is that as history tells our stories of the past, it is nigh-on impossible to treat any study of the past without subjectivity.  The danger in this is any dissemination of fact not taken as objectively as possible risks losing a great part of what we might be able to learn.  The tautology is that in order to understand our present and be best prepared for the future, we should be incorporating the lessons history has given us.

If we, though, cling to bias on national, personal or creedal lines we fail to gain a complete understanding.  My thought is:  What we don't understand, we fear.  What we fear, we hate.  In order not to succumb to hatred we therefore must understand as much and as completely as possible.  Divesting ourselves of bias and prejudice in historical study would go a long way to rectifying cultural understanding.

It is not an easy task.  Looking at my library, I can point to any number of well written and researched books by prominent authors.  I continually use them for reference or read them for enjoyment.  However, most of these books treat the subject matter far more subjectively than otherwise; mainly a pro-British (and Empire) bias which can tend to overlook aspects which might influence thought otherwise.  At the very least, they do nothing to disabuse us of long held perceptions of our past rooted more in emotional ties than removed observation.  Two of my least popular posts, "Taking the Ridge" and "Over There" stand as proof that expressing ideas contrary to popular perception are not well received.  Books I have to hand which treat the subject with objectivity or set out to purposely disassemble preconceived notions are among the least popular and controversial titles I own; and even among those cultural and natural bias on the part of the author are still present.

I've engaged in debate with my peers on this topic, many of whom claim no qualms with history as it is studied today and has been studied throughout.  Some recognize the validity of my argument but maintain that emotionally removing oneself to view events objectively is just not possible.  I'd like to challenge that, with one sentence.

The first of July, 1916.  What did that inspire you to think about?  Perhaps the "Flower of British Youth" sent forward with cheerful naivete into an impossible attack by uncaring generals ignorant of the way in which war had changed and unaware of the conditions at the front.  How many of you accounted the overall situation of the war, Western Front and beyond which dictated the time and place of the British offensive at the Somme?  Haig had wished to attack in Flanders that spring but was held to obligations to directly support his French allies, necessitating an attack further south on ground unfamiliar to commanders and front line troops alike.  Working with undertrained assets of the New Armies, the offensive was slated to begin much later but the French drain on manpower due to the siege at Verdun dictated the British attack sooner rather than later.  Not to mention, of course, the actual returns of the day.  The rate of British units achieving their objectives on the first day may not have been stellar, but would probably stand to surprise a great many.

We hear "Sixty-thousand casualties", "Absolute slaughter", "Lost generation" and other evocative statements so often that is becomes a difficult task to divorce ourselves from an emotive response.  I'm guilty of it as well, but as much to be gained by attaching our emotional sensibilities to history, so much more is lost in lack of thoroughness.  Going forward, I hope I can deliver on my desire to take as wide and all-encompassing view as is possible.  There is so much more to learn that way.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, or any other subject I've touched upon.  Please post responses, questions or comments in the section below, via Facebook or Twitter, or by email to ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com.

A Wide Reaching and Lasting Influence

I began yesterday's column calling out for a more open format for this space.  Already, some of you have begun posting relevant links on our Facebook Page, about which I am quite pleased, and look forward to seeing more.  It is not just the numerical increase in audience that Operation AMPLIFY has set out to achieve, but a more responsive audience overall (as well as the secondary goal of meeting our funding needs, see our campaign at IndieGoGo.)  So, towards a desire to engage in this responsive fashion, I'm once again making an adjustment to our format.  Going forward, beginning today, I will introduce on Tuesdays a discussion topic open to all to comment, debate or opine upon.

The first of these is a big one:  The four years encompassing the First World War is a period of time far more influential than any other event over the same amount of time in human history.

The war, either directly or indirectly contributed to a vast amount of social, political, and economic changes which not only shaped the immediate period contemporary to the war, but well beyond and in some instances is still felt today and will be so well into the future.  Some of these items are: The beginning of the end of Colonial Imperialism (a process which is still under way) and the start of a shift to Corporate Imperialism; The collapse of the last absolute monarchic powers in Europe; inception of Communism as a practical system of government as opposed to a thought experiment philosophy; emergence of the United States as a world power, and the decline of Britain from this position; technological advances and improvements made as a necessity of war; the arbitrary division of the Middle East into nation-states; the empowerment of women; it perpetuated in its immediate wake a series of global economic booms and crises such as never experienced in scale and duration, and one other example that comes to mind.

Which is, of course, the poorly enacted and ambiguous peace which left the door open for the events of the Second World War.

So, why is it that WWI is not more widely regarded as the most influential period in human history?  Why is it that I expect to have many comments taking an opposite view as mine?  It is this:  We have been long sold on the notion that the war is a mistake of history, a preventable error which did nothing but destroy life and waste money.  It is only the inconclusiveness of the peace which lead to the Second World War that usually has any cause to claim historical influence.  That we can pigeon-hole the Second World War along more definitive lines of "good v. evil" is partly due to the nature of the conflict itself, it's clear ending in Allied victory and being more recent takes some of the thunder away from the study of the influence of the First.

  A far more accurate assessment in my opinion is that there is only one World War, fought with a rather long "time-out" period in-between open hostilities.  Agree or disagree, I leave it up to you.  Post your opinions and arguments in the comments section below, or to ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com.  We will revisit your submissions to this discussion next Tuesday, before introducing the next discussion topic (if you have a suggestion for that, send us your ideas.)

War on Film

It speaks to the long road we've yet to go as far as audience growth when I can take a weekend off and it escapes notice.  Operation AMPLIFY is still in effect, and running until 31January 2012.  We've got that amount of time to drive our audience into the thousands and hopefully collect enough voluntary contributions to register the business and move ahead to achieve the goals of this project as a not-for-profit.  Fortunately, some of the new audience members and Twitter followers we've gained are great additions to the professional network "If Ye Break Faith" is establishing; but I will admit to getting discouraged by the slowness of growth, and the complete dearth of contributions to our IndieGoGo project funding page.  The other part that discourages me is that I want this space to become a bit more interactive than it is now, and I've yet to experience any great level of feedback or participation from my readers.

Is this work even worth continuing?  The goals are worth striving for to be sure; furthering the education of history, preserving the records and artefacts of our past, and giving support to our veterans, interconnected by the means of using the First World War as our focus subject.  I'd like to know your thoughts.  Where am I falling short, and where am I meeting expectation?  Is there a blind spot to the success of this project that I fail to see?  Is there anything in particular you would like me to explore in an essay, or a cause which falls within our mandate that we can help support through this space? Questions, comments, suggestions, complaints should be forwarded to ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com.  We can also be found on Facebook.  Feel free to post relevant links on our page; some of you have already done so, but I'd really like to see more.


I've been re-watching the 1964 tri-national (UK, Canadian, Australian) production "The Great War".  I've not had it to hand for very long, and already I'm nearly through the whole twenty-odd episode series twice over.  It's difficult to find a good documentary that covers the history of the entire war, and this one is the best of the ones I've seen.  What it brings to mind is in the telling of a story on film, one has to have compelling images to work with.  It is quite remarkable to realise that almost all of the "combat footage" in this series, and in fact in most films and television projects documenting war is largely recreated.  Even to such a psychological level as having the Allies for the most part moving from left to right on screen and the Germans right to left (even if the film negative has to be reversed to do so) so that in our minds eye the Allies are headed east and the Germans west.  One can excuse the lack of genuine front line footage from the First World War, as the technology was new, heavy and cumbersome.  The medium of film was so novel and popular that as soon as was possible the public was being informed on the war through moving pictures.  It hadn't been quite fifty years since the public had seen the first still photographs of war, via the American Civil War, and the appetite for the public to know what a war looked like had just been whetted.

The difficulty that arises is that, due to technology being new to film genuine scenes of action was not always possible, and perhaps most importantly, the public couldn't be shown the whole story.  I've gone over very briefly about press censorship during the war, and the intent was very clear.  The public must be given only the information they need to continue to support their government in pursuing the war.  A civil mind by its nature does not understand the martial, and cannot empathise with the way in which the military operates or the true face of war.  The images the home population were to consume in picture houses would be tailor made to evoke just the right kind of emotive response, and no other.

There then becomes a delicate balance.  It is one in which the public are given the media they wish to see, as close as to the truth as is dared, but not so that the message intended is lost.  As the century unfolded, and our ability to communicate with audio and film improved; as well as the speed at which these ideas could be disseminated, the ability for the government to exercise tight control of the media lessened.  By the late 1960's, daily televised broadcasts, mainly from Indochina were shocking an uninitiated public with uncut spontaneous film of combat actions.  What this did, for the very first time was prove Erasmus' thought: "War is more delightful to those who have never experienced it."  The experience may have been quite vicarious, but the daily dose of difficult images played a large part in developing American public opinion against their government's decision to deploy into Vietnam.

I won't discuss the politics of going to war here.  The point I wish to make is that even though in this day and age we may be able to see unedited footage of war, it is something I believe we are not meant to see.  By and large, the civil mind does not understand war.  It wants to, desires to know, but cannot unless the experience is first hand.  Feeding the appetite for the public to view war does not equate understanding, which is the most important thing.  If we all understood war as well as those who have seen it do, we might not have so much of them.

Seek and You Shall Find

Keeping up with this site and the project it supports can be done by following our Facebook Page, and Twitter Feed.  Any suggestions, questions or comments, please forward them to me here: ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com.

Special thanks to GreatWar FouteenEighteen for posting a reading suggestion on our Group Page.  I deeply encourage this type of contribution.  "If Ye Break Faith" is primarily about the perpetuation of the education of history.  If you have something to share, please do so.  It would be a pleasure to see an open dialogue not just between myself and the audience, but all of us as members of "If Ye Break Faith."

As far as history education goes, I may actually be doing more than I realise without doing anything in particular.  Let me explain that.  One of the great tools at my disposal with this blog site is a fairly comprehensive statistic counter.  I can see where my site traffic is coming from, even to Google search terms that netted in a visit.  I really get a kick out of some of the searches that have wound people up on our shores, sometimes the connection to subject matter and search term is quite tenuous, and other times intent is clear.  Students needing to research certain aspects of the war have been, little by little, drawn to our work here.  The most popular search parameters this week have to do with the Home Front during the war; and in the past hot topics have been medical treatment of the wounded, the dissemination of what countries were involved in the war and on which side, along with a host of other subjects I've touched upon.  Occasionally, I have found people coming to IYBF while searching for a particular bit of history, information on a family member usually.  It's a shame that I can't trace who made the searches, because I'd like to be able to help them with their quest.  Remember, IYBF was initiated to tell personal stories, to bring humanity to history, so it feels a bit of a failure when this site cannot provide information being sought.

The delight is that somewhere out there might be a student writing an essay on the Great War who has used information I've imparted to help formulate their thoughts.  In a way, I'm teaching.  Which is kind of cool because I really haven't had opportunity to teach in the formal sense since I left the army (where I was an instructor) and I enjoy the idea of spreading knowledge.

You see, I once (very briefly) tried to market myself as a "Freelance Historian."  It sounds a bit of a strange concept, but what I was finding was that people keen on their genealogy were now able to receive huge amounts of documented information via "Ancestry" sites.  The problem was that most of these people had no understanding of the context or relevance of some of the information they had come to possess.  Someone was needed to interpret for them the significance.  A case in point if a friend's mother-in-law receiving a box of memorabilia from her father who had just passed away.  He had been with the Essex Scottish (2nd Canadian Division) at Dieppe in 1942, where he was taken prisoner.  There was a treasure trove of items, from the correspondence between the soldier's mother and the Red Cross for six agonizing months trying to determine if her son was a prisoner of war or worse, to lapel pins and badges, one of them a Hitler Youth button celebrating "FurhersTag" (Quite a different way to spend the 20th of April back then, eh?) It was a very rewarding afternoon, as I got to handle a wide assortment of physical history and be able to piece a little of this man's story together which I hope helped his daughter to better understand what he went through.

What I like is that I really do gain a sense of satisfaction by believing that something I may have written has helped to foster understanding of the past.  That this so far has been on a very small scale makes me anticipate the opportunity to address a wider audience as the reward of a feeling of worth will be proportional, and how fantastic would that be?

Let me encourage you then, to submit questions, topic suggestions or anything you'd like for us to look into.  I look forward to this space becoming far more interactive than it is now, even to the point of members helping members with research, interpretation and understanding; making this site an open forum to discuss the historical relevance of the First World War with the power to spread that message through further education, efforts to preserve the physical links we have to our past and keeping the gratitude for our veterans present throughout the year.  That is what "If Ye Break Faith" is meant to do, what it definitely has the potential to to do so, and needs your help in order to enable it to do so.

Time Keeps on Slipping

Keeping up with this site and the project it supports can be done by following our Facebook Page, and Twitter Feed.  Any suggestions, questions or comments, please forward them to me here: ifyebreakfaith@gmail.com.

Perhaps I'm just not good at self promotion.  I do believe in what we are doing, and the best opportunity to fulfil those objectives are through a campaign like AMPLIFY, but I'm much more of a writer and lover of history than a marketer, and I just can't do this alone.  So, a big thanks to the efforts made already, and a pre-emptive thanks for the continued drive to success.  Let's all work together to make this happen.

A friend of mine is relaunching his business, an executive coaching venture, and has invited me to take a look at some of his supporting documents.  For me, this is an opportunity to do some copy writing work, an exciting prospect.  To that purpose, I've been thinking a lot about the symbolic nature of his own logo, a brush painted circle.  It makes sense for his work as it speaks towards the personal journey one embarks upon to find the qualities in oneself which have been neglected to the detriment of success.  The circle, or ring, has a deep an abiding significance throughout our history, and it is along those lines that I was developing some introductory copy for my friend's site.  Of course, I tried relating some of the observations I intended to make to my project.  It works, but after a fashion.

Time, or at least our understanding and imposed method of measuring this dimension is linear.  We are forever in the present, the past is what has happened and the future yet to be.  Exploring the theoretical edge of time in a metaphysical way, what with the expansion and eventual retraction of the universe it could possibly be circular, we just don't know it.  There is nothing we can do to alter what has happened and only a best guess can be made as to what will happen.  This is both what makes the study of history relevant and frustrating at times.  Once an event has moved into the past, we can only use what evidence we have on hand to evaluate the event and the effect it has on the present or will have on the future.  The real trick, in order to delve deep into the past to extract it's lessons is objectivity.  To say that the objective study of history is difficult is mastering understatement.  Since our own identity, as individuals, is tied into familial, cultural and social factors, we are more inclined to be subjective.  Thinking about our story, and the past that it has come out of is an emotionally driven prospect which can lead us to observe the past more perhaps as we would wish to see it rather than it actually was.  Any evidence that challenges perception of our past is often treated with contempt at first, because it threatens to take away from an identity we've made for ourselves.

British Recruits, August 1914

Where the First World War is concerned, it is still widely viewed as a conflict that shouldn't have happened, a waste of lives and money in a futile event which didn't seem to change anything.  Even writing that sentence, it mystifies me that there are those who think this way about World War One.  More than likely, they'll be people willing to talk about how much WWII changed the face of history.  I no longer point out the irony in their thinking.  My own thought is that the events surrounding the onset of the Twentieth Century, of which the most prevalent is the war come from a long and interlinked history, and has shaped the course of political and social movement in ways that are still apparent today.

It is our goal here, using the First World War as our touchstone, to best extract what lessons can be imparted from our collective story, and how best to apply those lessons to encourage a peaceful future for us all.  Time may well be linear, but the cause and effect of past events which continue to impact us should be the encouragement we need to plumb the depths of our stories to evaluate a potential course of following events.

Notes for a Weekend In

For the first five days, I am really quite pleased at the early results from Operation AMPLIFY.  These numbers notwithstanding, there is a lot more yet to achieve, so I know that time over the weekend for me means time to think on how I can improve the reach scope and response of this project.  If anyone has any input, now would be the time.  I have yet to have a single respondent to my request for volunteer logo design.  I wouldn't ask if I could do it myself.  I leave only a link to our Promotional Video to prove my inadequacies at design.  Contributions are also behind.  Please visit our funding project at IndieGoGo and give if you can.  Don't be put off by the lofty goal I've set on that site, by the way.  Our immediate concern is the $1 000 prudent reserve needed to push through our registration documents. Regardless, show your support for If Ye Break Faith and Operation AMPLIFY by joining the Facebook Event Page.  It's an open invite, so all are welcome to join.  Important news and updates with regards the development of the operation will be posted through there.

I had wanted to engage in a bit of an interview with someone in my network to have that as today's update, but I think I need to allow a little more lead time.  I wanted to discuss the great work being done to assemble The Great War's Essential Reading List; found here.  It contains a catalogue of nearly 1400 titles pertaining to study of the First World War, on a wide variety of subjects and selection of languages.  The list is quite comprehensive, the books within it described well and is updated surprisingly often.  Prior to Remembrance Week, they held a user poll to determine the top twenty-five books within the list.  Many books I have gone to to make reference, or may have read for my own enjoyment found their way to that top twenty-five, and I always have opportunity to learn about aspects of the war my focus of study tends to overlook.

I love books.  I don't own a lot of fancy things, I haven't terribly posh tastes- in my estimation I own nothing more valuable than my books.  The enjoyment I get by looking at them, happily organised in their ranks on my shelves is something I fail to explain adequately to others that doesn't leave them with quizzical looks and questions of my sanity.  About fifteen years ago, my great-uncle gave me a gift of a book that detailed the organisation of the Scottish regiments.  He added a dedication to me in which he mentioned that he hoped this book would make an excellent addition to my library.  I looked at my shelves bulging with titles, and realised for the first time that a library is what I had.  I'd rarely felt so fulfilled.  While I do own an e-reader, and like the fact that I can cram ten times as many books as I now own onto the thing, I don't think I will ever be prepared to give up on the aesthetic quality of a weighty leaf of bound pages; something to be pulled from a shelf, admired, thumbed through with a look, feel and smell of its own.

To that end, I'm looking out my window at a steel-grey December sky.  Occasionally a lone flurry will break loose and gravitate wistfully towards the earth, each one carrying the threat that more will follow.  It is still and cold and spare.  Along with thinking on how to bring AMPLIFY through its second week, I imagine that I shall spend a great deal of time this weekend with one of my favourites: "The Western Front" by Richard Holmes.  Brig. Holmes is one writer of history I particularly admire.  His narrative style and desire to tell personal stories from contemporary sources is one I would wish to emulate.  His career was quite prolific, and there are a number of titles he wrote on a wide variety of historical subjects.  Of any I have read, they are all fantastic.  Brig. Holmes passed away just this last April, but he's left a respectable body of work to be fondly remembered for.  "The Western Front" could best be described as a 'primer' on the war as it was in Europe from 1914-1918.  It is simple without being simplistic, and in my opinion, a great starting point for someone interested in the war who hasn't studied it extensively.  Brig. Holmes doesnt' just relate fact, though.  He often brings up points of contention or long standing controversy, explains them and possible conclusions in an understandable fashion.  When I speak of having history appeal to a wider audience, it's to writers like Brig. Holmes I look to for inspiration.  Have a good weekend, folks, I shall see you all here (and with luck a whole bunch of new followers, too) Monday.