Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of 'On War' (2016)

Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman Behind the Making of On War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Using primary source material, this book fills in gaps and contextualizes the story of Marie Sophie von Brühl and Carl von Clausewitz, giving readers a glimpse of European life before, during and after the Napoleonic period, most specifically from the point of view of Prussia and other German-speaking lands. The spirit of Napoleon and the French Revolution permeates everything, even fledgling German nationalism.

Back up a minute. Two of the great (and possibly most important of them to date) books on and about war and human society are:

孙子, 孙子兵法 / Sun Tzu, The Art of War (first Chinese edition circa 500 B.C.)

Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege / On War (first German edition 1832 A.D.).

We can't say much for sure about the creation of The Art of War, but Bellinger's well-researched study clearly shows that Countess Marie Sophie von Brühl (1779-1836) was a key player in the development of Carl von Clausewitz's (1780-1831) adult life and work. Though she started higher up in the social scale, Marie faced constraints in the public sphere because of the conservative status quo regarding gender roles. She pushed against them to the point of shocking many of her peers. 

The two married in 1810 and, when parted from each other's company due to wars and other duties, carried forth a lively correspondence. In person, they enjoyed free-wheeling tête-à-tête discussions and active participation in literary salons. Throughout, she influenced him and he influenced her. They both wrote, organized and edited.

After Carl died at age 51 from cholera, Marie steered On War and Carl's other works into publication, and just in the nick of time. For Marie died just five years after Carl, at the age of 56. Marie, incidentally, like George Washington, was killed indirectly by her doctors, the most likely cause of her fatal infection. 

One of my favorite parts of On War is the discussion of "Friction" in war (which stands in for other aspects of life, as well). "Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult . . . Countless minor incidents -- the kind you can never really foresee -- combine . . . so that one always falls far short of the intended goal . . . Iron will-power can overcome this friction: it pulverizes every obstacle, but of course it wears down the machine as well . . ."  ~~ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984 edition; originally published in 1976), page 119. 

Without Marie von Clausewitz, there wouldn't have been such a gestation and early launch for Vom Kriege; without Vanya Eftimova Bellinger, we wouldn't have truly grasped even that. This is important historical work -- making more visible a previously obscured mover and shaker, inspiring us to muse anew about On War and its impact. 

Today's Rune: Journey. 

'The Sage of Waterloo: A Tale' by Leona Francombe (2015)

I finished reading a quietly poetic, subtly philosophical and imaginative novel of life and war, past and present told from the perspective of the Hougemont bunnies. Leona Francombe's The Sage of Waterloo: A Tale (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015) empathizes and sympathizes with her rabbits, yes, but she also muses about people and horses, birds and landscapes, architecture and moonlight. I found it refreshing and engaging.  

Besides her rabbit characters -- Old Lavender, William, Spode, Caillou, Boomerang, and others -- Francombe makes a compelling case for women writing about war. More, please.

"The 'glory' of war is often manufactured afterwards by male writers, after all, and not by the women, who are invariably left behind to pick up the pieces of their broken men, but who can read entire human stories in the torn sleeve or bloody hat in which men can only comprehend victory or defeat" (pages 197-198). 

In describing some of the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815), Francombe notes that 10,000 horses died. I wondered. Doing a little extra research, I came across this same figure, and another account that claims, given that wounded horses were almost invariably "put out of their misery," a total of 20,000 horses died as a result of the battle. (See here).

The Battle of Waterloo was so cataclysmic that no one seems to be able to figure out how many human beings perished as a result of it, let alone horses and bunnies. 

Paul O'Keeffe is helpful in setting the scale via Waterloo: The Aftermath (N.Y.: The Overlook Press, 2015), page 50:

". . . the actual fighting was confined to a front just two miles long. This meant that for little more than ten hours, some 200,000 men, 60,000 horses and 537 guns [artillery pieces] were in action on a piece of land measuring five square miles . . .

See also Bernard Cornwell's Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies, and Three Battles (Harper, 2014), page 324:

"As night fell on 18 June [1815] there were probably around 12,000 [human] corpses on the battlefield and between thirty and forty thousand wounded men, all within three square miles. Many of the wounded were to die in subsequent days." 

Any way you dice it, Waterloo was brutal -- as Belgian bunnies know so well.

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

Chalmette 200: The Battle of New Orleans, 1815-2015

Chalmette plantation: today's the 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, fought at the very end of the "War of 1812," which might better have been named the War That Began in 1812. Or, Another Human Folly Played Out in North America.

After British, Canadians and First Nations (aka Indians) fended off an ill-conceived, half-assed American invasion of Canada earlier in the war, the British high command thought it would be fun to bag New Orleans for the Empire. On January 8, 1815, the "poor bloody infantry" charged with this task -- as "boots on the ground"  -- were ordered to launch a frontal assault against a fortified American defensive position that covered the approach to New Orleans, under the command of Andrew Jackson (who became a national hero.) 

This date, which also happens to be the birthday of Elvis (USA) and David Bowie (UK), became a national holiday in the USA after 1815 -- a big drinking day full of toasts and boasts. Besides July 4 -- Independence Day -- there wasn't much else to celebrate yet.   

At Chalmette/New Orleans, the British had about 10,000 troops, the Americans, half that number -- but behind a canal and barricades. The attackers, out in the open, lost some 2,000 casualties, including many officers, while the defenders lost maybe 300. 

Some of the surviving British soldiers made it through this nightmare only to die, about six months later, at the Battle of Waterloo. 

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Je me souviens: Waterloo 199 (1815-2014)

Next year will be the big 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. From the British imperial perspective, it meant "a century of peace" in Europe (for the British) -- until the Great War of 1914-1918. A skewed perspective, given that wars large and small continued not only in Europe, but around the globe. But Waterloo is worth remembering for any number of other reasons.

In what distant deeps or skies 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 
On what wings dare he aspire? 
What the hand dare sieze the fire? 

When the stars threw down their spears, 
And watered heaven with their tears, 
Did he smile his work to see? 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

(From William Blake, "The Tyger," 1794)

These are samples of a larger corpus of text-based artifacts picked up over the last thirty years by family and friends, during pilgrimages to Waterloo in particular and Belgium in general. 

Je me souviens: Waterloo 199 (1815-2014). Now, on to Brussels!

Today's Rune: Journey. 

"He's Dead. I'm Crippled. You're Lost."

And now for something completely different: epic war movies. There are many, but the best ones are able to let history speak on a grand scale, without simplistic renderings or overly partisan agendas. The ones I prefer try to get at all sides of war, not just the immediate victors' or -- as is the case with most Vietnam movies, losers' -- angle.

Irish-born Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), a young war correspondent during WWII, knew how to show the many faces of war with both deftness and fairness; he provided the basis for two excellent film adaptions. His books The Longest Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974) look at D-Day, the fall of Berlin, and Operation Market-Garden with a clear, wise eye.

Something of Cornelius Ryan's generous spirit is reflected in the following movies:

The Longest Day (1962). Today's header is derived from the Richard Burton character's final assessment of D-Day at the end of this great film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who utilized no fewer than four directors in the field. All sides are given their due, which is incredibly refreshing. "Sometimes I wonder which side God is on. . ." -- Major General Gunther Blumentritt, June 6, 1944.

Zulu! (1964). Rorke's Drift. Michael Caine is superb. Zulu Dawn (1979). Depicts the Battle of Isandlwana, in which the Zulus defeated the British; not bad, either, but not as exciting as the earlier film.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Pearl Harbor from multiple perspectives.

Waterloo / Ватерлоо (1970). Napoleon vs. Wellington. A little ragged in parts, but a great story and amazing to see. Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles.

A Bridge Too Far (1977). Near the end of WW2, Netherlands. Sean Connery, et al.

There are, of course, zillions of war movies, and I'm not even including documentaries. The caveat for the above films: viewers can learn a bit of narrative history in an entertaining way. There are also spectacular scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), and particularly the air assault on the VC village in Apocalypse Now! (1979). Two unconventional but extraordinary war films also worth mentioning here: Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Queimada / Burn! (1969) with Marlon Brando. Most of the war movies of the past twenty-five years either suck or carry a transparent agenda (eg., Oliver Stone) -- or I simply don't like the director/film. An excellent exception is: Der Untergang / Downfall (2004/2005), about the collapse of Nazi Germany from the German perspective. Let's not forget Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima / Iōtō Kara no Tegami (2006).

Today's Rune: Opening.

Benelux Next Time

195th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo (1815). If Napoleon had won, it's possible the Benelux countries would still be part of greater France, and the Germans might have been kept at bay in their later uses of the Low Countries as an invasion route. The British Empire may have run basically the same course through the present. But who knows?

In any case, Belgium, Netherlands (Holland) and Luxembourg are strange, interesting little countries, much fought over in the past. Belgium has Flemish and Walloon culture (I'm partly Walloon by way of Sweden) and good ale. I've spent time in all three, happily.

New book (really an old book, newly translated from German into English by Peter Hofschröer) -- Carl von Clausewitz, On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (2010). Von Clausewitz's work is full of pithy aphorisms. He was a thinker. From Vom Kriege / On War: "Action in war is like movement in a resistant element. Just as the simplest and most natural of movements, walking, cannot easily be performed in water, so in war it is difficult for normal efforts to achieve even moderate results." (Michael Howard/Peter Paret translation).  Something still not learned very well by those who indulge in war.  

Waterloo keeps inspiring powerful cultural expressions, not only through books and visual art, but through metaphors, movies, monuments and music.  In its own way, Waterloo is as evocative as Cleopatra and Helen of Troy. What do you think when you hear the name?

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Waterloo Sunset

The influence of the Kinks goes far and wide. "Waterloo Sunset" (1967) is a good example. Not only is the song widely saluted as a major achievement in songwriting by other songwriters and critics, it's also been covered by bands and artists as diverse as Def Leppard (hear below, from 2004), David Bowie and Billy Bragg; let's also not forget that Ray Davies' charms captivated Chrissie Hynde. I could probably list twenty powerful and touching Kinks songs -- and probably at some point will, mostly out of curiosity of what readers think.  What I can say for now is that the Kinks -- along with the Rolling Stones and a few other groups -- seeded the ground for my first visit to London and many of its geographic landmarks in 1981, from Leicester Square to Chelsea to St John's Wood.



Today's Rune: Fertility.

Pligrimage to Waterloo II

As Jodi ponted out in response to yesterday's post, ABBA had a big hit with "Waterloo" in 1974, applying the battle's outcome to a romantic disaster. As Mark (Walking Man) noted, the battle's name has become synonymous with defeat. Waterloo connects to so many things it may equal the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Here's a shot of Waterloo Station taken by my Dad in 1992, not too far from the Belgian battlefield.  There's a much bigger Waterloo Station -- named after Wellington's victory -- in London; it's heralded in the 1967 Kinks song "Waterloo Sunset," which has been covered by all sorts of artists and bands ranging from David Bowie (2003) to Def Leppard (2004).  














Waterloo keeps on giving, spilling even into contemporary American politics. Last summer, Jim DeMint of South Carolina -- one of the most right wing senators in the USA -- declared about Health Care reform: "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."  Above fish-eye shot of the battlefield taken by my Dad in 1992.

Finally, here's ABBA rolling out "Waterloo" at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974. ABBA plus (Iggy Pop and) The Stooges will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 15, 2010, along with Jimmy Cliff, The Hollies and Genesis. Crazy, huh?



Today's Rune: Signals.

Pilgrimage to Waterloo I

Four pilgrimages to the Waterloo battlefield, from the 1980s through the first decade of this century.  This is where Naploeon I fought his last battle on June 18, 1815.  Each side lost close to 25,000 in killed and wounded, but aferward, Napoleon abdicated his throne and was exiled to St. Helena until his death. Of my immediate circle, I got there in 1983; my parents and later my friend Evan toured the ground in the 1990s; and my friend San Antonio Bill devoted a lot of time there in 2005. But a little more on these trips soon.

Above is the Lion's Mound / Butte du Lion, finished in 1826, a large earthen memorial you can scamper up. The battleground is easy to get to from Brussels, Belgium, by train, car, bike or foot: it's only about twelve miles away. No wonder Napoleon exclaimed, "Now on to Brussels," or maybe something more like, "Maintenant, maintenant mettez le Garde Vieux en avant, et puis, à Bruxelles!" as the back of Evan's 1998 post card suggests . . .

2015 will mark the 200th anniversary of the great battle, something maybe to aim for in the way of a return . . .

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.

Tent Revival!

That old time religion . . . Before TV and internet and FM radio, religious revivals provided a mix of old school entertainment and engagement. Even now with an overflow of technology, they still do. I've glimpsed black and white versions (in these cases, African American and European American), both highly charged. As an aside, a dynamic mix of black and white revivalism comes together nicely in someone like Elvis, gyrations, gospel and all.


One dude I once saw and heard, the "Apsotle" D., looked like a cross between Paul Harvey (before death) and Conway Twitty (before BIG HAIR and death). The Apostle D. was fiery and wild. He fomented spiritual insurrection against the powers that be. Besides the Catholic Church, he preached against Protestant Churches -- any organized group with a hierarchy or secular power base. "We have a direct line to Jesus, and we don't need no intercessions!" The end of the world was/is coming, naturally and speedily, but there was/is a twist. "This will not be the age of Pentecost," he proclaimed. "This will be the age of Tabernacle!"


God is LOVE, but unbelievers will be purged with FIRE, he suggested helpfully. He didn't ask for any money, and I don't know who paid for the vast tent setup that could hold a few hundred people and actually held about forty at the time I checked it out (admittedly late, after nine o'clock post meridiem).

Oh yeah, and let's not forget all the people wiggling and shaking and speaking in tongues, or babbling in weird pidgin languages. A little unnerving, but well worth checking out. And remarkably similar to proto-protesant movements like the Bogomil and the Cathari in Europe back in the day, driven underground as heresies by the powers that were. In the USA today, such folk are allowed to jig around, treated more like crackpots than threats. At least until the Second Coming . . .

Also worth checking out: Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry (1927); Main Street (1920); Babbitt (1922); Arrowsmith (1925); and It Can't Happen Here (1935). And Richard Brooks' movie version of part of Elmer Gantry (1960), starring Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger, and Shirley Jones.


TONY ALAMO UPDATE: "Alamo guilty on all counts / By: Lynn LaRowe - Texarkana Gazette - Published: 07/24/2009." It may not have been Pearl Harbor, but Alamo did meet his Waterloo.

For background, see "Meet Tony Alamo" at: http://eriklerouge.blogspot.com/2009/03/meet-tony-alamo.html

Some lively comments from both sides included.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Meet Tony Alamo

Tony Alamo (formerly Bernie L. Hoffman) is facing a legal challenge, again. If you've seen the HBO series Big Love and all those polygamist groups that have splintered off from the Mormons, you get the picture (think Roman and his Compound).


If not, here's Mr. Alamo, courtesy of the Coconino County (Arizona) Sheriff's Office, September 2008.

Tony Alamo and his ministries have thrived -- especially before and after his period of jail time in the mid-1990s -- since the 1960s. He and his assistants have produced radio broadcasts, pamphlets, tracts, books (at least one regarding polygamy), and fanciful clothes designs* ranging from Hollywood via Arkansas and Nashville through New Jersey to New York. A little something-something for everybody, especially those who hate Catholics and a miscellany of other groups.

I should note here that I am Catholic, so to me this guy is like a KKK kind of demagogue. And to the Southern Poverty Law Center, as well:

Alamo blames the Catholic Church for every evil imaginable, including communism, Nazism, the two world wars and even the Jonestown Massacre. "Narcotics, prostitution, pornography, booze and black market - every filthy thing – can be traced right back to the Vatican," the cult leader has written. . . They're condemning polygamy where it's never condemned. God never says, 'No polygamist shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven,'" Alamo declared angrily in one recent broadcast. "But these bastards, these homosexual Vaticanites, they condone homosexuals and they condemn marriage and a man that would take care of his… . [T]hey … say, 'You're a polygamist,' that I married too many wives. Well, find out! Prove it! And even if I was, there's no law in the Bible [against] it." (excerpt from Susy Buchanan, "The Ravening Wolf: Catholic-Hating Organization Reemerges" SPLC Intelligence Report, Fall 2007).

The most recent charges against Tony Alamo revolve around allegations of his polygamous marriages with minors; the 74 year old Alamo apparently took a nine year old girl as his latest wife.

Stay tuned. Will Alamo yet now meet his Waterloo?

For more background, there's Maria Luisa Tucker's "The Barely Legal Empire of Tony Alamo," The Village Voice (5/13/2008).

*Actual designs can be seen (and bought) via eBay, all items under "Tony Alamo." No joke.

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).

Napoleon Unplugged

Napoleon I lived with great gusto. The man was brilliant at political theater and military strategy. He had as many girlfriends and wives as a 1970s rock star, to boot. In the end, though, personal and imperial overeach led to defeat: guerrilla insurgencies in occupied Spain and Russia, wars of attrition, overdependence on loyalty. The painting above by Hippolyte Delaroche captures the emperor's mood after abdicating. Unlike our present bungling leaders, he had the decency and sense to go into exile -- twice. If only we were half so lucky now.


What ever happened to Lisa Bonet? Her high tide came in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unlike Napoleon, she did make the cover of Rolling Stone.


Sherilyn Fenn of Detroit. Her imperial breakthrough came with Twin Peaks (1990-1991). She made the cover of Rolling Stone, too. Suzi Quatro, her aunt, hails from Detroit as well. Ms. Quatro is reportedly ready to return from self-imposed exile. Let's hope she avoids a personal Waterloo with the new album. If you knew Suzi . . .

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

Birthdays: Hippolyte Delaroche, James Cagney, Art Linkletter, Phyllis Diller, Woodrow Wilson "Red" Sovine, Diahann Carroll, Donald Sutherland, Ali Khamenei, Ron Asheton (Stooges), Phoebe Snow, Cécile de France.

That's all right, I still got my guitar / watch out, now . . .

At Waterloo, Napoleon Did What?

David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986). Anyone seen INLAND EMPIRE yet? I'd like to, if I can find it. Isabella Rossellini's birthday.



Thanks to the public sphere, anything is possible! Public sphere, private sphere, spin control, rational discourse. Inclusion of the other without obliteration. Jürgen Habermas' birthday. Hamas on Rye. Abba's "Waterloo." Napoleon did not surrender just yet. The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" -- about the London train station named after Wellington's victory on this day in 1815.


Greta Garbo as Maria Lączyńska, Countess Walewski in Conquest (1937) with Charles Boyer as Napoleon I, who also loved the Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais (b. Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie), but things didn't work out so well for any of them. Times and demands change, especially in the public sphere.


Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Birthdays: Anastasia Nikolayevna Romanova, E. G. Marshall, Richard Boone, Jürgen Habermas, Roger Ebert, Paul McCartney, Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini, Carol Kane, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain, Jemma Griffiths, Alana de la Garza. Paul McCartney is 65!

Bon voyage!

Shocking Blue: Send Me A Postcard, Darling

I had an ideal setting as a kid: my parents provided for the family a house, a warm, stable setting, regular family meals, lots of books and music and a color TV, a yard and game room to play in, pets, and our own rooms. I was ideally situated with two older sisters and a younger brother. It was the perfect milieu for learning and exposure to ideas, sports and general culture, all encouraged by my parents.

One of my favorite things besides reading and watching movies and world news was exploring my sisters' record collections and talking about music. Now, when I listen to the Shocking Blue compilation Singles A's and B's, I feel like those halcyon days are in the present once again.

Besides "Venus," which I'm always thrilled to hear, Shocking Blue evokes a synthesis of a big chunk of the sound of the late 60s and early 70s. Robbie van Leeuwen (b. The Hague, Netherlands/Holland, 10/29/1944), the band's guitarist and primary creative artiste, had an excellent sense of what makes a catchy, well-performed pop song of the slightly rough variety. Hearing the songs performed with the powerful vocals of Mariska Veres makes them still a tasty aural treat. A song like "Send Me A Postcard" stands on its own right, replete with high drama; it also brings to mind Jefferson Airplane, Iron Butterfly, Creedence Clearwater Revival, T. Rex, The Band, The Lovin' Spoonful, Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and countless others. Active and catchy guitar licks, big bouncy drums, organ, with zany additions of sitar, bongos, harmonica, echo and occasional extra flourishes like mandolin and Spanish guitar. Plus some country twang, some girl group dewop, ballads, and so on.

Mariska Veres' singing is potent, more akin to Grace Slick than Janis Joplin in that she is singing a song, not putting her whole life on the line while singing it; it is also exotic. Her English is good, with interesting inflections -- like van Leeuwen, she was born in The Hague (ca. 1949), but has German, Hungarian, and Gypsy lineage that's apparent in photographs. Van Leeuwan wrote his lyrics in English, making them quirky and refeshing, even when delving into pop cliche. Combined, there are endearing oddities -- Veres beginning "Venus" with "A Godness on a mountain top . . ." and, I still swear by this, singing "Making every man you met" instead of the printed lyrics, "making every man mad," a slight rewording of the more typically American "driving every man mad." One of the interesting aspects of Shocking Blue is how much they turn to America for their inspiration, even when the results are slightly off-kilter.

Shocking Blue had great success in Europe (less so in the USA) between 1969 and the mid-1970s; once van Leeuwen left the band, it was bye-bye time. Abba was in the wings, though. Both bands had their own version of "Waterloo."





Some of the coolest songs on Singles A's and B's besides "Venus:"
Mighty Joe
Send Me A Postcard
Long And Lonesome Road
Never Marry A Railroad Man
Ink Pot
Rock In The Sea
Dream On Dreamer
Hello Darkness
Shocking You
Sally Was A Good Old Girl
Blossom Lady
Out Of Sight Out of Mind
Eve And The Apple (cheesy! "Well, she took the apple and we lost Paradise!")
Oh Lord
Roll Engine Roll
Harley Davidson
Keep It If You Want It
Give My Love To The Sunrise
In My Time of Dying (traditional)
Everything That's Mine

Today's Rune: Partnership.

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby! Here's to the Detroit Tigers in Game One of the 2006 World Series.

The Power of Place

I'm always astonished to see places in person, especially ones with names I've heard or read about since childhood. War sites are particularly good reminders of our collective past and the human condition.

I've seen so many, yet there are always more to see.

The most mind-blowing in scale have been the First and Second World War sites, places like Verdun, The Somme, Dieppe, Normandy, Belleau Wood, Bastogne and the Ardennes, Arnhem, Berlin, Dresden. And from the Napoleonic Era, a smaller area but just as epic in its nature: Waterloo. In Scotland, Culloden.

In the US, I've ranged far and wide, for instance walking the grounds at Guilford Courthouse, King's Mountain, Yorktown, Brandywine, Germantown, Charleston, Bentonville, Fort Fisher, Fort Sumter, Fort Donelson, Fort McHenry, The Alamo, the Little Big Horn, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Cold Harbor, Chattanooga, Savannah, New Orleans, and Shiloh.

At Shiloh, I walked around the patches of fields and woods where Samuel France, infantryman in the 31st Indiana Regiment, fought on April 6 and 7, 1862, was wounded but survived to fight out the rest of the war before being mustered out in Victoria, Texas. I recently came across a searchable archival database and found Sam listed, sometimes with a "J." as middle name.

Place names are branded in conciousness by association, memory, and imagination. Which is probably why, one day, I'd like to see Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City.

Today's Rune: The Blank Rune.

Bon voyage!

He's Dead. I'm Crippled. You're Lost.

And now for something completely different: epic war movies. There are many, but the best ones are able to let history speak on a grand scale, without simplistic renderings or overly partisan agendas. The ones I prefer try to get at all sides of war, not just the immediate victors' or -- as is the case with most Vietnam movies, losers' -- angle.

Irish-born Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), a young war correspondent during WWII, knew how to show the many faces of war with both deftness and fairness; he provided the basis for two excellent film adaptions. His books The Longest Day (1959), The Last Battle (1966), and A Bridge Too Far (1974) look at D-Day, the fall of Berlin, and Operation Market-Garden with a clear, wise eye.

Something of Ryan's generous spirit is reflected in the following movies:

The Longest Day (1962). Today's header is derived from the Richard Burton character's final assessment of D-Day at the end of this great film, produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, who utilized no fewer than four directors in the field. All sides are given their due, which is incredibly refreshing.

Zulu! (1964). Rorke's Drift. Michael Caine is superb. Zulu Dawn (1979). Depicts the Battle of Isandlwana, in which the Zulus defeated the British; not bad, either, but not as exciting as the earlier film.

Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). Pearl Harbor from multiple perspectives.

Waterloo (1970). Napoleon vs. Wellington. A little ragged in parts, but a great story. Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, Orson Welles.

A Bridge Too Far (1977). Near the end of WW2, Netherlands. Sean Connery, et al.

There are, of course, zillions of war movies, and I'm not even including documentaries. The caveat for the above films: viewers can learn a bit of narrative history in an entertaining way. There are also spectacular scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Paths of Glory (1957), and particularly the air assault on the VC village in Apocalypse Now! (1979). Two unconventional but extraordinary war films also worth mentioning here: Gillo Pontecorvo's La Battaglia di Algeri / The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Queimada / Burn! (1969) with Marlon Brando. Most of the war movies of the past twenty-five years either suck or carry a transparent agenda (eg., Oliver Stone) -- or I simply don't like the director/film. An excellent exception is: Der Untergang / Downfall (2004), about the collapse of Nazi Germany from the German perspective.

Today's Rune: Signals.