Men jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear
Alvin Thomas Knost
This is a photo of my dad, Alvin (“Al”) Thomas Knost sometime around 1972.
Al served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. Three days after the D Day invasion, his unit was sent from England to Normandy Beach to pick up all the dead and wounded. They continued to follow the troops as they marched through France and into Germany where they encountered the survivors of the Holocaust.
After the war ended, dad returned to the states and resumed his life. He married, apprenticed to become a plumber and had three daughters. Dad died in 1985. While he was live he rarely spoke about his personal experiences in the war but the few times he did, he cried.
Give me love, give me peace on earth…no one says it better than George Harrison:
Reposting this poem in memory of the men and women who have suffered and died in war. Let’s say “No More War” and “Give Peace A Chance.” Click here for the video of John Lennon and Yoko singing “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
For the royal entry of Henry II in Rouen, 1 October 1550
Early morning over Rouen, hopeful, high, courageous morning,
And the laughter of adventure, and the steepness of the stair,
Have you ever traveled to beautiful places where the history of bloody battles, rebellions and executions soaks the stones, the air? You marvel at an historic sight only to discover that most of structure had been burned down or bombed out in a war.
This is how I imagine Rouen, a city with a tortured history going as far back as the Gauls and continuing to massive destruction during World War II. It was here that Joan of Arc was executed in 1431.
Quiet night-time over Rouen, and the station full of soldiers,
All the youth and pride of England from the ends of all the earth;
The poet May Wedderburn Cannan was born in Oxford, England to an intellectual family. In 1915, she spent a month in Rouen helping out at a canteen for soldiers. Her experience in this military supply base during World War I inspired this poem.
Can I forget the passage from the cool white-bedded Aid Post
Past the long sun-blistered coaches of the khaki Red Cross train
To the truck train full of wounded, and the weariness and laughter
And “Good-bye, and thank you, Sister”, and the empty yards again?
Compiègne, France: Château de Compiègne – Musée du Second Empire – Adolphe Yvon: Bataille de Solférino
The Red Cross was borne from the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino (June 24, 1859) during the Austro-Sardinian War. In one day, 40,000 soldiers died or were left wounded. In 1867, the first International Conference of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent was held. Austria formed a Red Cross chapter in 1880 and The Hapsburg Empress Elizabeth (or “Sisi”) presided over its inaugural meeting in June of that same year.
Robert Antoine Pinchon, 1905, Le Pont aux Anglais, Rouen, oil on canvas, 38 × 46 cm, private collection
When the world slips slow to darkness, when the office fire burns lower,
My heart goes out to Rouen, Rouen all the world away;
Alice-Catherine 