Our Flag Was Still There

Francis Scott Key Surveys Fort McHenry (Examiner.com)

“Our Flag Was Still There”

    I recently had cause to reflect on the subject of flag desecration, and the circumstances were anything but sacred. I was threatened with a “curb-stomping,” “beatings,” and other assorted threats of violence by members of the Armed Forces and at least one state prison guard over social media. My perceived offense was defending the Supreme Court’s ruling on flag burning, Texas v. Johnson (1989), which held that the desecration of the flag is protected by the 1st Amendment of the American Constitution.

      The Facebook post that I responded to was written by a lance corporal in the USMC. It read: 

       “Let me catch you trampling the flag…”

     This individual, someone with whom I have had plenty of disagreements but whose friendship I used to value,  threatened me yesterday over Facebook for my expressed views on the crisis in Baltimore. To his most recent post I replied with more honesty than tact (and without thinking to modify my language to clarify that those soldiers' sacrifices were in the name of American ideals, not flag-burning per se, which would surely have been abhorrent to perhaps all of our servicemen and women and was only made legal in 48 states after Texas v. Johnson):

      “If you catch someone doing that, then I hope that you'll remember the sacrifice of the men and women who fought and died for this country to guarantee that it would remain the kind of nation in which people are free to defile its flag without the fear of being arrested, battered, or killed. America is and always will be so much more than a flag, and if you don't understand that, then you need to reconsider the oath you swore to it."

       His reply:

      “You are a communist piece of shit Gilmer … It is a symbol of a beautiful country Do not disrespect what so many have sacrificed for.”

     This was followed closely by another individual (also a soldier) posting:

      “Gilmer you’re a sad little girl.”

     At this point I was blocked and unfriended (just days after I wrote a post about the danger of politically-motivated unfriending). The rest of the conversation continued without me, and I learned of its content from friends, the same people who defended my position upon seeing the “discussion” and for whom I'm always thankful.

     After I was called a “sad little girl,” the conversation rapidly devolved and concluded with threats of violence against both me specifically and more generally against any American citizens who would burn a flag (i.e many people, but not me). "Sad little girl" is not a particularly effective insult against someone who believes that the saddest thing about being a girl in America is that so many of them grow up with fathers, brothers, and eventually boyfriends and husbands who think of their sex as an insult and a handicap, boys and men who treat both girls and women as inferiors.

     I'll spare y’all the rest of the exchange here. I will, however, eventually make them public as a warning about a pernicious sort of violence that lurks just beneath the surface in certain individuals, even those we have thought of as friends and those who sometimes work as public servants.

     Again, I don’t want to talk about those individuals, thugs who would use violence against those who do not believe as they do. They disgrace their offices and the country they claim to serve.  Tonight I want to talk about flags.

      When I was 13 years old, I read James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers. The book is a vital and justly acclaimed account of the Marines who raised flags (there were indeed two) over Mt. Suribachi---even as Imperial Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima continued to resist fanatically from bunkers, caves, spider holes, and the few remaining trees left on the sulfurous island where 6,821 servicemen would die. Indeed, many more would suffer grievous wounds, and more still endured often permanent psychological trauma. Corpsmen died shielding the wounded, sergeants died leading charges against Japanese fortifications, and thousands of others died performing feats of courage seen and unseen, each of which distinguished the conduct of American boys and men on Iwo Jima (from the very act of boarding the open-topped LVT’s to acts of heroism “above and beyond the call of duty”).

      Those men were my heroes, and they always will be. I memorized the names of the flag raisers and would test myself under my breath while walking around summer camp:

John Bradley (James’ father)
Ira Hayes
Harlon Block
Rene Gagnon
Mike Strank 
Franklin Sousley

     Their names could have been many other names, but theirs I chose to memorize (my list grows as I age). As is true of all these men, they would deny their heroism out of hand: “I was doing it for my buddies. I didn’t want them to die, and I didn’t want to fail them” they might have said, something other men did indeed did say. (See: Studs Terkel’s oral history of World War Two, The Good War)

    The flags that they raised over Mt. Suribachi have become emblems of American bravery, tenacity, and resilience in the face of suffering and death. We fittingly memorialize the Raising and the flag(s) that was (were) raised. The bolts of fabric unfurled there were far, far more than woven fibers and dye. They stood for the nation whose men, women, labor, and principles would, alongside those of other Allied nations, free the Pacific from Imperial Japan and Western Europe from Nazi Germany (though the flag flown over the Reichstag must always remind us of the nation whose people paid, by far, the greatest cost for that victory).

     Flags, the objects in themselves, matter. They always have. They always will. They are a physical reminder of identity, nation, and purpose. We hang them from tens of thousands of poles outside of homes, offices, and parks. They fly from the White House to our soon-to-be reopened embassy in Cuba.  We emblazon the Stars and Stripes on uniforms, vehicles, t-shirts, bandannas, album covers, and countless other places including our skin and our gravestones. I own a single American flag, a small one I bought in France, a nation I've grown to love, and a nation whose often mocked flag does not bear red, white, and blue by coincidence. Their flag, despite a host of counter-factual jokes and “anecdotes,” has often been defended with the same blood and sacrifice as the American flag. My previous post was on Verdun and worth the read for those who do not know the name.

     I wore that little flag as an armband/cape when I  played rugby for the first time, in France, and on a co-ed team. Our squad was composed of Frenchwomen, an Englishman (Will Heslop, I miss you dearly) , an Irishman (Jim, our co-captain), an American man (me), and an American woman (Rachel Williams, I miss you dearly). We played against mostly male teams, and we lost far more than we won, but we fought on for several hours. I scored my first 3 tries (and Rachel hers), and I made sure to never let that flag touch the ground. After 6 matches, I was exhausted and furious at a well-trained men’s team that both mocked us and ran up the score in a final match. My friends, however, reminded me of what finally counted, them, that moment, and, for me, the flag on my arm. My friends reminded me that I was loved and had loved in turn, and the flag reminded me of the country I represented.  "American boys hate to lose," Jason Isbell correctly notes in "Dress Blues," perhaps the most important song to come from the Iraq War (a ballad that memorializes the fallen Cpl. Matthew Conley, a father, husband, son, and Marine). We're also supposed to be loyal allies and faithful friends in victory and defeat. 

     I still have that flag hanging in my room, and I look at it when I wake up the morning in a country whose freedoms, though imperfectly embodied and expressed, allow me to lead a life by my own lights and free from private violence and government coercion. Police officers and soldiers protect those rights, and our governing documents secure them (though not without failures and abuses, as we've seen over and over again in our nation’s storied, but deeply flawed history).

     One day that flag will deteriorate. In fact, its colors are already fading, and I’ll never know for sure if it was made by a small child’s calloused hands in a sweatshop. The object is as imperfect as they come. Thousands of flags with more respectable provenance and made of sturdier materials will last and have lasted for centuries. Still, all flags will eventually fall apart. Moths, warfare, fires (accidental or intentional), or mere entropy will see to that in the fullness of time.

     Flags have been obliterated from and along with the patches of our soldiers: paratroopers, rangers, infantrymen, marines, medics, and sailors, on American battlefields and battlefields around the world. The merciless work of shrapnel, bullets, explosive shells, incendiaries, and grenades has seen to that. American flags have surely sunk beneath oil-slick waves flapping from the superstructure or sterns of burning warships, and they have sunk invisibly with submariners drowned or crushed hundreds of feet beneath the Pacific Ocean. I do not know how many flags were destroyed during the September 11th Terror Attacks, but I do know that the flags we raised in their place testified to something indestructible in American culture, something far more important than the objects themselves.

         

      In America, we are allowed to desecrate American flags that we own. We may trample them, shred them in art displays, or subject them to any number of abuses and do so legally. I hate seeing those things---that's certainly not how I would choose to protest, and it's not what I'm about----but I would defend and have defended the Freedom that those expressions represent with all that I am. The sacred personal freedoms upon which The United States of America were founded cannot be burned, torn, or trampled. They can, however, be embodied or abandoned.

       Anyone who would threaten another American with violence for their choice to exercise a 1st Amendment Freedom is a disgrace to the flag that they claim to be protecting. Soldiers, police officers, and oath-bound servants who would do, do so not only to the disgrace of their country (and their own dishonor), they also do so in open defiance of the vow they swore by law and on their honor. I cite the oath sworn by all members of our Armed Forces:

      "I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."    
          
        Our Constitution protects its citizens’ freedoms, and our Supreme Court has declared that flag desecration is one such protected speech act; it declared as much even as American flags flew over and stood inside of it chambers. Therefore, anyone who abridges, restricts, or attacks the free exercise of that right has violated the Constitution and demonstrated a willingness to betray the very foundations of our country’s lawful governance. When that individual is a soldier or police officer, such an offense  is not only a civil liberties violation, it’s treason. It’s an affront to the Constitution and consequently to the courage and sacrifice of those men who died on Iwo Jima and a thousand other hells, often alone and in agony, and it should be understood as such. Soldiers who would beat, maim, or kill a flag-burner are the very "domestic enemies" against whom they swore to protect us. 

       To be sure, burning a flag is an extraordinarily disrespectful act, and those who do so undoubtedly give great offense, often to individuals who have served the country loyally or whose loved ones died in its service. Still, it is sometimes an understandable one. Flag-burnings are often a manifestation of civil rage at governmental injustice, sometimes governmental disregard for the Constitution. Indeed, our governments, state and federal, too often fail to serve their citizens, particularly those disadvantaged by their skin color, income, sexual identity, or a dozen other traits that should never provoke discrimination at all, much less institutionalized discrimination. Our governments have, at many points throughout history, flown the flag over atrocity: Native American "reeducation" schools, Slave ships, Japanese internment camps, the medical offices of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments,  Abu-Ghraib,  and so many more, many of which will remain unrecorded in history. Still, whatever their motivation for burning the flag, to threaten a flag-burner with imprisonment, death, or any other form of judicial punishment or extrajudicial violence is a criminal act, and something objectionable on another order of magnitude altogether; flag-burning and violence against flag-burners are hardly comparable.

     The first act merely destroys an object and offends our sensibilities, but the second perverts the object itself and undermines our ideals. Before we raise a finger to chastise (or condemn) a flag-burner, we should look first to those who would use flag-burning as an excuse to carry out violence (often racially targeted) against “offenders.” Flag-burning  is usually a sign of governmental abuse and a symptom of the resultant unrest, but violence (threatened or real) against flag-burners and their defenders warns of something far more menacing, tyranny sanctioned under the auspices of “patriotism.” 

     I’m not writing this because I was called a little girl or because Marines threatened to "curb-stomp" me. I’m writing this because I'm so worried for this nation, its children, and the America that they will inherit that I must write. I can no longer remain silent, and I hope that you’ll join me when you see it in your own lives, too.

       Springsteen sings in his wildly popular "We Take Care of Our Own" that  “wherever this flag is flown, we take care of our own.” The song is less a hymn to American success and more a rallying cry for a return to truly American ideals on the level of the individual, all the way to the highest offices ("from the shotgun shack to the Superdome"), a call to recommit ourselves to liberty and to look at those who disagree with us (even those who burn flags) as fellow American rather than enemies, to respect the rights of others.The "flags" that we bear in our actions are beacons that glow more brightly than the flag that flew over Fort McHenry, illuminated by British rockets and waving in defiance of reconquest. When Francis Scott Key, a prisoner (and a lawyer) aboard a British prison ship saw that flag, he enshrined it in our anthem. We’d do well to enshrine it in our hearts, far beyond the reach of flame, where the Freedom that it represents can be seen unfurled in our words and deeds, including the defense of flag-burning.

     Our flag is and always will be there if we value its principles more than its fabric.

       I love a number of songs that feature flags prominently, but I only know of one with a little girl: Caroline Herring’s account of her and her daughter's trip to see Obama's inauguration, “Maiden Voyage.” 

       Herring, equal parts courage and grace, sings: 

“My girl cried for a flag, something she could understand, and we marched in the street as I held her hand.”

      Her daughter will not remember the miniature flag just because of its colors or its synthetic fabric,  but because her loving mother taught her that the flag stands for the best things in this world: freedom, justice, and hope. 

      Herring’s chorus (a proud echo of Woody Guthrie's):

      “It goes like this, Honey, you take your hand, you lift it up, and you put it on your heart, and there you stand singing ‘this land is your land, this land is my land.'” 

      We must not let anyone take that sacred hope from us. We must stand up and speak out when the violent come screaming about “liberty” and “patriotism,” baying for blood, and waving their flags. When they come (they're already here), we must unfurl our own, and ours, we know, is made of sterner, nobler stuff than fabric.   


May this land always be your land and mine, no matter how different we may be,

Gilmer, an American

Verdun

« Celui qui n’a pas fait Verdun, n’a pas fait la guerre »- Jacques d’Arnoux

                                                                                           62e régiment d’infanterie 

(Any man who didn’t fight at Verdun didn’t fight the war....almost 75% of the French military would serve at Verdun before the War's end)

I want to preface this post with an apology. I have not written in this blog for almost half of a year, and although a great many things worth reporting have happened, I’ve been living in the present at the frequent expense of recording things for the future. Seeing Verdun has changed that. During my senior year, I wrote a 40 page mémoire on the historical and cultural significance of the Battle of Verdun (Feb. 21^st, 1916- December 18^th, 1916), something I was inspired to write in no small part by a book Lee shared with me, The Price of Glory, written by one of England’s premier war historians, Alistair Horne. Two dozen books and essays later, I am still studying it as passionately as I did as a student. This past weekend, I finally made my pilgrimage to the small city on the Meuse River and the shell-scarred battlefield that spans 40 square miles of its eastern bank. I made the trip on the 98^th anniversary of the battle, and the “chapters” below tell the story of my 12 hours hiking (and sometimes running or climbing) from site to site.  This trip was as important to me as any I've ever taken, and I invite you to read on about it here. It's a story I must tell. 

                                        Abri 320 (Fortification 320)

Mud

« Ah! Non, les civils. Vos gueles! » -Roland Dorgelès, writer, journalist, and veteran of the Argonne

(‘Shut the hell up, civilians!’)

                                  Ruins of Fort de Souville, 3km outside of Verdun

I felt the branch give way as I moved to mount the top of the ridge. My stomach dropped, and the rest of me followed, sliding 20 feet down into a waterlogged shell hole. The fall had left my shoes and pant legs caked in mud and my hands filthy. Rapid assessment: Unscathed? No. Blood dripped from a small cut on my little finger. Nausea rushed over me; I imagined bacteria poisoning my blood, an emergency room, a hospital bed, a surgical ward. GILMER, John Marshall, final casualty of Verdun.  The fear was not entirely irrational. “ATTENTION!  Les armes de guerre peuvent tuer toujours!” the signs had read (Be careful! Weapons of war can still kill).  So many thousands of shells fell here that I could very well have cut myself on a tiny piece of metal buried in the mud, perhaps one carrying on it endospores of a hideous strain of Tetanus evolved beyond the scope of the modern vaccine. In that morbid prognostication, however, I felt a perverse pride. If I become a “casualty” will I gain some small fragment of justification, a basic right to speak about the battle?

As I struggled to right myself and cast out thoughts of a French ICU (USI)---I noticed my cut had come from a nearby vine, not from shrapnel---my mind turned to my own past. I had written about la boue (mud) in a short-response question during a course with George Poe, specifically of “des hommes qui sont morts dans la boue, très loin de leurs camarades et de leurs familles et” (men who died in the mud, far from their comrades and families).  In that instant, I imagined one such man.

A little under 98 years ago, a 23-year-old corporal leading a night relief squad through a sinuous communication trench at could have fallen in that exact hole and drowned in putrescent water before his friends could reach him. Weighed down by rifle and kit and with his helmet flooding, he’d have struggled to rise or even call out for help as the mud swallowed him.  Like over 300,000 others, he’d lose his life to the mundane made lethal by mankind: mud, concrete, iron, water, wood (when there were still trees), and smoke. A fetid crater, a bunker roof obliterated by a 400mm shell, a shard of grenade shrapnel, a machine gun bullet, a mouthful of gas-tainted water, an oak splinter, or suffocating lungfuls of smoke inside of a burning fort. All ground men down as the implacable cogs of “industrialized warfare” and left their ruined bodies in cheap caskets or mass graves.  

No, no amount of mud will ever give me the “right” to tell of the Battle of Verdun, and to pretend that rifles, grenades, cannons, gas canisters, and bayonets are the stuff of adventure and glory is to serve the same nameless evil that helped to drive both sides to their Calvaries, the hills and ridges that saw so many brave men killed in the name of national honor. I’ll try instead to tell you about “Ceux de Verdun,” (the men of Verdun), husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, not one of whom came home the same if he came home at all. They were the reason for my pilgrimage to this small city in Lorraine, and if sharing my story can serve their memory in some way and provide a spark of living dignity to deaths devoid of it, then I will gladly risk sinning to do so.

Memory

« À mon fils- Depuis tes yeux sont fermés, les miens n’ont cessé de pleurer» -Inscription on a memorial plaque

(To my son- Since your eyes closed, mine have never stopped crying)

                                 Cemetery in front of the Douaumont Ossuary, 6km outside of Verdun

            

             Verdun is a city of both memory and memorial; the city and its suburbs are home to thousands of plaques, statues, site markers, tombs, bouquets of flowers, as well as the tens of thousands of individual grave sites marked with white crosses, stars of David, and crescent moons of Islam. Almost every single one of these monuments is dedicated to the victims of the 1916 battle, the longest and costliest of the entire war. The men from both sides who died in the area collectively called “The Verdun Fortified Region (RFV)” came from all around the world: from Algiers to Aachen, from Troyes to Tangiers, from Weimar to Washington, from Paris to Berlin. On the French side, some monuments are paid for the by the State to honor the men who “died for France,” others by units or organizations to honor the contributions made by their members, and others still by family members hoping to memorialize their child or husband and mark where he fell. They line the roads, adorn street posts, fill parks, crown ridges, and, in the case of the Douaumont Ossuary, tower over the horizon---the cruciform Ossuaire contains the remains of over 100,000 unidentified German and French soldiers, and the field in front of it contains 15,000 additional marked graves and collective monuments to Jews and Muslims killed at Verdun.

The buildings, crosses, and markers are physically impressive, but what of the men these monuments honor? In France, they are publicly remembered as Poilus (French “GI’s, ‘bearded ones’) with their Adrian helmets, Lebel rifles, and bleu horizon tunics, men who held at all costs, including life and sanity. Reflecting this idealized martial memory, statues often honor them as proud soldiers at attention, glorify them as fearless warriors holding the line defiantly, or mourn them as martyred heroes embraced by angels. 

 To their loved ones, friends, and neighbors, however, they were bakers and bankers, poets and priests, carpenters and chefs, lawyers and librarians, writers and waiters, gamblers and grocers, boys of 16 and men of 65. They did not belong at Verdun, and I will forever wish that at least one statue would show them not as war made them, but as they were: a smiling lover proposing to his future wife, a writer at his desk, a violinist at concert, a cook serving his guests, or a father carrying his daughter on his shoulders. To forget that these men were, overwhelmingly, not soldiers by choice, trade, or nature is to strip them of their identities and to severe their families from their true son, brother, or father.

 I think now of a recipient of the Legion d’Honneur (the highest French military award), Capitaine Georges Tabourot, who, though mortally wounded, defended a tunnel in Fort Vaux. In his final minutes of life, he told his commander and friend, Major Raynal, that his company did “all that could be asked of them” and then asked the doctor to dictate a letter to his wife. Bleeding to death in a sweltering infirmary with no water and the stench of poison gas and death surrounding him, Tabourot told his wife and daughter how much he loved them. I can imagine no act more deserving of a memorial.

«Ma chérie, je suis blessé à mort, j'ai été tué en faisant mon devoir. Soignes bien Maman, je t'aimais bien, je vous embrasse, toi et ma petite fille »-Capitaine Georges Marie Albert Tabourot                                                                                               124e régiment d’infanterie 

(My dear, I am dying and was killed doing my duty. Take good care of mama. I have loved you so much and send my love to you and to my little girl)

Courage

 «Nous tenons toujours…» –Major Sylvain Eugène Raynal, commander of Fort Vaux

(We are still holding)

                                      Fort de Vaux, 6km outside of Verdun

            Still muddy from my fall, I had run 3 miles from Souville to get to Fort Vaux before the museum closed, and as I saw it in a clearing ahead, I felt like a child meeting a superhero. My tendonitis was momentarily forgotten in a rush of endorphins. There it was, the fort that held out for 7 days against overwhelming odds, partially filled with poison gas and with an empty cistern, an Alamo on a greater scale whose final optical message to French lines was an undaunted“Vive la France!” I scouted out the entire fort, its galleries and turrets, but I realized quickly, however, that the weapons’ mounts and surviving pieces of superstructure were of far less interest than the personal accounts left behind by Raynal, Tabourot and many others.

I already knew of some but learned about many others. The tale of a critically injured soldier who volunteered to rebuild a sandbag barricade during a flame-thrower attack or of the young officer, Léon Buffet, who volunteered to run a message from French lines to the surrounded fort on the condition that he not be given a medal for doing so (he would later die from a gunshot wound to the thigh and, in death, was admitted to the Légion d’honneur despite his protests). My time in Vaux set me to thinking about heroism throughout the battle. Although the vast majority of these stories are lost to us, even in well-documented engagements like the Defense of Vaux, we still retain some of the most celebrated: the story Emil Driant, the Chasseur (Ranger) commander who led a successful stalling action against nearly the entire German force during the first days of combat and died carrying one of his wounded men to safety, of Charles De Gaulle, who decades before he would rise to lead France, personally led a (failed) charge to retake Fort Douaumont, and of Lattre de Tassigny who, like De Gaulle, is said to have done his duty without hesitation. These men were not demi-gods, but, as Jean Norton Cru writes, « frêles machine de chair qui avancent sous une pluie de fragments d’acier, qui surmontent le tremblement et la panique» (frail machines of flesh who advanced under a steel rain and overcame trembling and panic).

            Those bakers, carpenters, lawyers, and poets held their positions, often dying to do so, and the now world-famous expression, part of a communiqué from General Nivelle, «Vous ne les laisserez pas passer, mes camarades! » or simply «On ne passe pas! » (They shall not pass!) has become the literal embodiment of the sum total of personal courage that defended Verdun.  The next time you hear someone make a shameless joke about the French military, remember those words and the tens of thousands of men who died proving them true.

Rest

 “Well how do you do, young Willie Mcbride? Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside and rest for a while ‘neath the warm summer sun? I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done. I can see by your gravestone that you were only 19 when you joined the Great Fallen in 1916. Well, I hope you died quick and I hope you died clean; oh Willie McBride, was it slow and obscene?”- Eric Bogle, “The Green Fields of France”

                            Thiaumont Fortification Ruins (adjacent to the Ossuary)

            I had already walked, run, or climbed about 12 miles by the time I reached Douaumont and Thiaumont. Two crosses---the only clear proof that the villages ever existed---stand in memory.  The emotional weight and physical fatigue of the past 6 hours hung heavily; I had seen miles of cratered land, the Tricolore unfurled above Fort Vaux, and thousands upon thousands of white crosses. I needed to rest. I refilled my Nalgene in the Ossuary rest area and set out to see the bunkers of Thiaumont across the field. I walked from crater to crater until I reached a mossy mound that once was an armored cupola. It is now a mass of crumbling concrete and steel wires that snake out at all angles; a direct hit from a heavy German gun had destroyed the fortification instantly and killed its defenders. Among those lost there was Raymond de Fontaines, a Dragoon sergeant. His tombstone sits atop the destroyed bunker. I sat down next to him and rested for the first time all day.

            I thought about Raymond, how old he was, where “Fontaines” was located, and what his family was like. Was he a father? An uncle? A brother? Was there a family military tradition ? Did the dragoons pay the best? Did he love horses? What did he look like? Did he die instantly? Would we have gotten along? Everything. I received no further answers from the stone and its inscription.

A French memorial database has since given me some of those answers. He was 27, from south of Dijon, and both an uncle and brother whose father, too, had served in the dragoons. I also learned that his wife was a volunteer nurse at Reims and his father was a senator from Vendée and decorated dragoon, too---and, most importantly, an account of his heroism: 

« Excellent sous-officier, n'a cessé pendant près d'une année de remplir la fonction d'agent de liaison avec un calme complet et un dévouement absolu, assurant son service dans les circonstances et les conditions les plus difficiles - a pris part aux combats du commencement de juin et au courant d'un violent bombardement a été enseveli par l'éboulement du poste de commandement du colonel, près duquel il assurait la liaison ». 

(Excellent NCO, not once during his year of service did he cease to perform his duties with complete calm and absolute devotion, even under the worst possible circumstances and conditions. He took part in the combat at the beginning of June and during the course of a violent bombardment was killed by a cave-in at the command post of the colonel he served as a liaison officer).

I propped my camera on the tombstone to take a single picture of myself at Verdun, a reminder of the peace I found atop PC 118 knowing that Raymond de Fontaines is not forgotten. Nor are the tens of thousands who, like him, fought at Verdun. In a culture and world that so often casts combat as glory and death as a fitting end for a hero, we'd do well to remember Verdun and all that was lost for a few miles of mud and concrete. I will almost certainly be a civilian until the day I die, but I won't shut up when I can use my voice to tell the stories of those who were not; they were fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers, and their memories deserve something more than "glory."  

John

Raymond

Tell My Mother I Miss Her So

"Out on the range, outrunning them trains..."
(Over there in Nantes, out running for trams)
- Ryan Bingham, "Tell My Mother I Miss Her So" 

If anyone wants to take a look into one of the world's greatest bureaucracies (I say this literally, haha), here's an excerpt from my visa-renewal request: 

"CHAQUE DOSSIER INCOMPLET SERA REFUSÉ SYSTÉMATIQUEMENT!!!"-Marianne ;)







RÉPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE

RECRÉPISSÉ DE DEMANDE  DE CARTE DE SÉJOUR

Préfecture: Loire-Atlantique
Dossier No. : 2012SALARI
Entrée en France; 28/08/2012

NOM: M. GILMER
PRÉNOM(S): JOHN MARSHALL
Né(e): 19/05/1990 A: Alabama (États-Unis)
PÈRE:  GILMER  WALT
MÈRE: (WRIGHT) GILMER  ELISABETH
NATIONALITÉ: Américain

Life in le Système:

               It includes taxes, electicity bills, work contracs, visa renewal, insurance, and a collection of cards, codes, and calls. No one tells you that you're an adult, but somewhere between the Préfecture (Regional Admin. HQ) and University of Nantes' HR department, you better damn well start acting like one. Now I won't bore you further with excerpts from the various official documents I handled last Thursday in order to remain a legal resident of the Republic. They are legion, duplicate, and uniformly uninteresting (unless you love stamps). Suffice it to say that my dossier was accepted, and my papers, God-willing, are en règle. One thing, however, did stop me (and maybe you) in my (your) mental tracks about that excerpt: the official listing of my parents' names.

                Living across the Atlantic Ocean entails leading a life that can be (and often is) entirely separate from your existence back home, and with that separation (literal and figurative) comes not only the inconvenience of time differences and incongruous schedules, but the very real danger of forgetting who you are and whose you are (GiG). What a shame that would be for someone like me, the son of two incredible parents whose love and name(s) I've been blessed with since birth (I should thank them for that, too).

               To tell of the things my parents do (and have done) for me and taught me me to do myself (and for others) would require a novel twice as long (but only half as revolutionary) as Les Misérables. That said, since it is a story eminently worthy of the telling no matter the occasion, I'll see if I can pare it down to a (very) short story here, haha.

              When Lee and I were little, we used to sit around in our old dining/playroom while dad played the Jayhawks, Neil Young, The Band, Warren Zevon, and a dozen other bands that formed the basis for my taste in music and my love of the art. Of all the many songs whose words we learned by heart 15 or so years ago ("I'd run away with you, baby..."), my memory returns most often to "Heart of Gold."  As Lee and I were obsessed with the idea of sunken treasure at the time ("Shipwrecks" was our go-to show), I loved the song because I figured that it was the tale of a tireless miner questing for a mythical heart-shaped nugget of gold. My dad, as he often did and continues to do, taught me otherwise, but I secretly preferred my dubious interpretation. Now that I'm 23, however, I'm starting to come around. I realize that as appealing as however many thousands of dollars that "heart of gold" might be worth, the figurative heart is the real treasure, and, as I'm sure my dad will tell you, he found one in my mom (and was raised by a woman with one himself).

GILMER (WRIGHT),  ELISABETH:

                    Honey Dog might have been the most popular Gilmer, but it's safe to say that our mom is the most beloved, above all for the fact that she, more than anything else (except maybe laughing), loves (as Honey would have told you through barks, licks, and paw gesturing). I can count the number of people I've met who are as kind as her on one hand, and if I ever do anything sweet for anyone, I can assure you that it's because she taught me how. She's the sort of mom who will wake you up (and take orders) for breakfast daily; put notes in your lunches AND pack them all the way through senior year of high school (they were the envy of many, particularly their homemade peanut butter crackers that were often the thin brown line between me and total exhaustion at cross-country/track practice); and perform countless other acts of kindness for you without expecting anything in return (though she did raise us to always say "thank you" and "yes m'am, haha). She's the sort of mom who patiently put up with (and broke up)  full-blown twin fights and hundreds (actually, thousands) of middle/highschool/college breakdowns, arguments, and shouting matches. For my entire life she has, without fail, done nothing but love the people around her (even when they...we...don't deserve it), and I could write pages telling you everything else about her and not say anything more important than that. She sent me a package last year with two pieces of paper reading "Love you" (since the first note was late!).What a blessing it is to be her son.

GILMER, WALT:

                 Now Lee and I got our dad's eyes, his smile, (excellent) music taste, propensity for writing (and debating...and running), and a hundred other things genetic, recreational, and intellectual. Justin Townes Earle (whose concert dad took us to at the Saenger) wrote a song called "Mama's Eyes," and it's one of the most beautiful tributes to a mother I've ever heard from a man whose mother who never stopped loving him even when he "went down the same (rough) road as [her ex-husband and his dad, Steve Earle]":

"Now it's 3 A.M, and I'm standing in the kitchen holding my last cigarette.
I strike a match, and I see my reflection in the mirror in the hall, and I think to myself: 
'I've got my mama's eyes, her long, thin frame and her smile
And I still see wrong from right because I've got my mama's eyes.' "

                  As much as I like to empathize with songs, I have to accept that the song doesn't apply to me if we're being literal, as I do not have my mama's eyes (and have yet to go down the road of Steve Earle, nor do I have immediate plans to do so, haha).  That said, I think that to say that "I see right from wrong right" through my father's eyes is dead on. I can also edit written English on professional level with them, too, even if it did take him (and a few teachers) coating a dozen of my first essays in red ink to correct my proof-vision, haha. My dad's a lawyer, and as the To Kill a Mockingbird shrines around our house attest, is a living counter-point to lawyer jokes. Though perhaps not the best shot with a rifle in Mobile-Baldwin County (though formerly bespectacled like Mr. Finhch), he has been Atticus-like to his sons and has a near-perfect attendance record for cross-country/track meets and DBT concerts, haha. I think back to the lyic-filled letter of encouragement (which I read with our green eyes, haha) he gave me before leaving Sewanee and do my best to remember his (and Bill Mallonee's) advice about life. What man to have as a father.

BINGHAM, RYAN:
                 
                    If you've read all of this, then I thank you so much for taking the time learn about two people I love with all my heart and have the great fortune to call "mom and dad." Since I have indeed been "taken to France" (and have done my share of wine-drinking and dancing), I'd surely appreciate if everyone back home would tell my mother and father I miss her them so (and that I look forward to Christmas, haha).

(Lot of things I love about and in this picture, haha)

P.S: Next week's (early Halloween) "song of the week" for my students (complete with crudely MS Paint-ed photos): 

"Werewolves of London"-Warren Zevon 

(Does this count as a dog picture?)

Daylight

"While we still have the daylight, I might look these lessons in the eye...."-Jason Isbell, "Daylight"

               

                  (the afternoon sun at Arcachon's Dune de Pyla during my March break trip with Simon).

            It's been 8 months and 3 days since I last updated this blog, and despite the long trail of unpublished blog drafts and stopgap Facebook updates behind me, I must confess that I feel nothing but shame for having so utterly failed to maintain this site. As a matter of fact, the only other time I recall feeling this way was the day I went out to the Hodgson bike shed to remove the lock from my rust-flecked and flat-wheeled Trek and replace it with a sign reading "Donate to Sewanee PD." Neglect is voracious, and every day it's fed will only whet its appetite for two more. That is, unless you stand your ground, stare it down, and start typing (exercising, calling home, repairing your bike, or cleaning your apartment). So here I stand, and here I type, and if there's one thing I know for sure about life right now, it's that Nantes is running out of daylight.

           Indeed, with Day's gradual capitulation to the Nocturnal Empire (despite its glorious victory at the Battle of the Summer Solstice), it's hard to be an enthusiastic supporter of Fall. Though I suspect Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook hashtags will beg to differ, I am inherently skeptical of a period of time that heralds longer nights and dropping temperatures. Still, we have a rakable ember of Summer left here in Nantes, and I plan on enjoying every spark, so without further ado, I'll stop waxing (now waning) philosophical about the seasons and tell y'all about the wonderful people I have the privilege of working with this semester.

           Returning from last year are my dear friends Colin Riley, Rachel Williams, and Shoshana Sullivan (Baltimore, Tulsa, and Jamaica), so between the four of us, we have a solid squad of  "veteran" lecteurs. not to mention several dozen inside jokes, a fine circle of extended (boy/girl)friends, one dog (Ty Loup, Rachel's beloved "House Wolf"), and a successful working year (and at least one KFC meal) under our belts.  We even have the great fortune to have Mhairi Mackintosh (Inverness) and Simon Scutt (Bath) in Nantes for another year, with Mhairi still teaching courses at the University (having her around the office is as good for morale as it is for the tidiness of our now "masculine" office). What a blessed peace of mind I had when returning to a city with such people in it, and what a pleasure it is to live and work with them (Louise Dixon and Katie Rose, we miss y'all all the time).

          I had thought that it would be statistically impossible for our 5 new coworkers to get along as well as we all had last year, but I can't recall the last time I've been so happy to be proven wrong; all 5 of our new lecteurs and lectrices are getting along like long-lost siblings. We have 2 from Ireland, 2 from England, and one from Spartanburg (and perhaps more importantly, Sewanee, haha). I'll write about them in order of their proximity to my apartment (still #1, Boulevard 94 Ernest Dalby, despite a flooded floor---now repaired!--- and a bomb crisis courtesy of late-war British strategic bombing---resolved without incident by the French EOD).

            First, past our shared Super-U there's Aoife "Wifi (password-protected)" Fitzgerald (if you can pronounce her name correctly on your first try, then you're either Irish or should take up Phonetics professionally). I got it right on my second try, haha. Ee-fah. She comes from outside of Limerick and is, along with Shaun, a living reason people love the Irish. She's teaching me how to banter as the Irish do....and perhaps speak Gaelic and (I can only hope) dance as they do, too. I must say though that I feel bad for her poor students who somehow think that her name is pronounced "wifi" (wee-fee, the French pronunciation of our word for wireless internet). I do love nicknames, haha, and Aoife's is readymade.

          Across the train tracks from me is Nicholas/Nick "Superman" Pawley (also a patron of our Super-U) who comes from Northampton (an otherwise fine city with a clown problem....story here). All it took was a few late night walks home (and a few close encounters with some of Nantes' less savory inhabitants) for us to forge our international bonds of fraternity, haha. He bears more than passing resemblance to Clark Kent and is the first lecteur I know of to get his students to turn in homework on time AND confront casual misogyny in pop music (#whydopeoplelikeRobinThicke?). We might be playing Gaelic football together, too, but more on that later. Good --some might say "super"---man for any occasion.

          Down in her Centre Ville chateau is Gabrielle "Gabby" Freeman, a Sewanee girl (a current trivia partner) I should have gotten to know better while we were on the Mountain together (I think we did say "hello" to each other at least twice, maybe even three times, haha). Gabby is the Sewanee chosen one of 2012, and it's great having someone else who understands my otherwise incomprehensible references to all the strange things we seem to do at Sewanee (haha, or is it Suwanee, Nick?). She was a camp counselor, too, and as all camp counselors know, we have our own little language. Gabby has taken up a position at our former bar-headquarters, Fleming's, so we try to end our weekend nights by paying her a visit.  YSR, Gabby.

          Down near a charming park called Procé one can find the abode of the bearded Kerryman, Shaun "Warrior of the Dawn" Brennan, our resident Gaelic football coach, law student, pugilist,  musical talent, and enthusiast of hurling, Breaking Bad, and sharing good food and literature.  He lives there with his bandmate, Emma, and together they are an incredible act that I suspect will take Nantes by storm (or rather by charm). Shaun, along with Gabby, Shoshana, and I wake up for the 7:00 AM train to La Roche-Sur-Yon (where I may or may not have spent a night sleeping on a bench after a perfect storm of failed plans), and Shaun's banter keeps us (or at least me) sane. I'm very much looking forward to many more shared meals, rounds of beer, and stories (particularly when I accompany him to Ireland for our Fall vacation). Here's to hoping I can learn to play Gaelic football, too, haha.

        Finally, a mere tram stop from the Fac is our side-burned friend and another Englishman (and trivia partner), Will Heslop, our resident artist and jack of all trades (one of them being wine, haha). Will's an expert with the perfectly-timed joke, wink, or appearance (usually by bike), and his only welcome departures are those that involve his turning around dramatically and leaping back into a party after opening the front door as if to leave. Will has graciously designed our first English Night posters, and I'm sure they'll be quite the hit (perhaps as much as the sideburns, should he keep them). I think Shaun, Will, and I will need to work something out for No-Shave November, as it should prove quite the showdown of Anglophone facial hair.

      What a group. I really am so thankful for each and every one of my coworkers, and that's not something you often hear in the working world. In any case, I should not neglect to mention les trois filles de Sewanee, Sarah Flowers, Anne Carter Stowe, and Katie Keith,  members of the Class of 2015, students of International European Studies, and wholly welcome additions to the lecteur social family, haha. We're working out a dinner night to ensure we "profite" from Nantes' culinary offerings more than we would on our own, and they're all becoming FC Nantes enthusiasts with me (even if we miss a game or two and just hang out on the field next to Beaujoire Stadium, haha). So glad y'all are here.

      So even as the sun sets on Nantes earlier and earlier, it's never a problem when the lengthy evenings are spent in the company of such a group. Still, as this is my last year in Nantes, I'm running out of, not into, time here, and in light of that and the lessons of the past 2 months I've lived (and grieved), I must make the most of the time I have here, day and night, among such excellent friends.  Part of that, as I see it, involves writing about these people and the things we do together, so as I promised Anne Carter, I'm restarting this blog. I'll share with y'all the best things about my (our) time here (and sometimes the worst, haha). By way of apology for 8 months of delay, here are some long neglected pictures I owe y'all. I hope you like them (there are 3 Golden Retrievers, so I'm playing with a few too many aces, here, haha).

Bien Cordialement,

John

(Beloved by textbook writers everywhere,  Bordeaux's most famous sculpture, the Monument aux Girondins, revolutionary Republicans)
 

                                         

(Simon and me at Pyla, rare photographic evidence of our having been there and my being in France, haha. It was a wonderful trip.)

(The Pont d'Avignon...from the song, haha. Great to see Aunt Margaret and Uncle Phil in the (weakly) fortified medieval town)

(A picture taken from the (Anti-)Pope's Fortress at Avignon)

(A view from the rocks of Les Sables d'Olonne...it's not Gulf Shores, but not at all without its own charm. So glad our old crew got one last vacation hurrah somewhere like this, even if we never did find Yombo, haha)

and finally......Two French Golden Retrievers

(No caption can do these creatures justice. This Golden was helping his master "fish" for rocks, haha)

(Not bad camouflage at all, haha. He boldly hiked to the top of the 112 meter dune and then settled up here to think dog thoughts, perhaps wondering just how many smells are in that forest)

and a bonus Ty Loup picture:

(A "fetching" wolf indeed, haha)

And finally, our American Honey dog, forever Queen of the Monkey Grass, Shredder of Kleenex, stealer of hearts and socks, and winner the "most popular Gilmer" for 14 years

(We miss you, sweet girl). 

Moonshiner

Let me eat when I'm hungry. Let me drink when I'm dry. 2 dollars when I'm hard up, and religion when I die. The whole world is a bottle, and life is but a dram; when the bottle gets empty, Lord, it sure ain't worth a damn...

-"Moonshiner" (Unknown author, made popular by Uncle Tupelo and Bob Dylan)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppiol9oetOk

In the Book of Mark, Christ tells his disciples that "the poor will always be with you, and you can help them whenever you wish." Even atheists would agree with this if they were to spend a week in Nantes. Until I was reminded of that yesterday, however, the last time I had shared a long conversation with a homeless man was back home in Mobile's Bienville Park.

America

My friends were understandably horrified that I would answer when a dark figure begged us to "help a man out," but trusting my safety to the streetlights above and my feet below (thought encumbered by dress shoes), I asked the man what I could do to help. I'd meet my group at the next bar.   

My memory fails me as I try to remember his name (I think it was Charles), but I doubt I'll ever forget his story. He wanted money; I wanted to know why. Before I could ask, he fired off a question of his own:

"Y'all been at a party?"

"Yes sir, it's called the Nutcracker Ball. About as fancy as Mobile parties come," I said.

"You have fun?"

"Yes sir, and everyone's heading out to the bars now."

He nodded in approval, and I took the opportunity to ask my question:

"How'd you end up out here?"

He smiled, and I half expected the stock "Hell, even I don't know." He surprised me.

"I joined the Navy when I graduated high school...."

"What'd you do in Navy?" I asked, my own voice rising with scholastic enthusiasm

He was a fire control technician on a destroyer in the early 90's, a seaman who helped to control the vessel's "Close-in Weapons System," a defensive tool called Phalanx (it's a effectively a massive, computer-targeted machine gun that shoots 75 20mm bullets a second to detonate an incoming anti-ship missile before it can strike the vessel). He said he enjoyed his work and the places it took him, and we bonded when he said how much he had loved the short period of shore leave he'd had in Provence and that he sometimes thought of trying to go back. His final year of service ended sometime during the Clinton presidency, and since his job was already being replaced by computers, he didn't reenlist.

His story went on, taking turn after turn for the worse. His mother died shortly after he left the Navy, and when he went back to his family homestead in Selma it had already been stripped clean by thieves (after copper wire in particular) and was no longer inhabitable.  He had no money to repair it and no money to rent a place to live, so he joined a carnival that was hiring and spent the next few years of his life working as a manual laborer. He hated the menial minimum wage work and described the people who ran the show as "crazy." He ended back up in Mobile soon enough and took to the shelter/labor finders circuit. He said he'd stopped drinking and had rarely used drugs. I believe that to be true even today; clear eyes and decent clothing testified on his behalf.

I told him that I wished I could buy him a nice dinner, but since it was 12:30 at night, I would just give him $20 instead. He was speechless for a moment and then simply said "You're a good man, John." I told him that I was only going to spend that on overpriced beer and that I knew he could make good use of it. "You're a good, man, too," I added. We shook hands and said goodbye. For a moment, there we stood: I in my Mardi Gras ball tuxedo, and he in his Goodwill shirt and work jeans on a cool December night. I had made a trifling sacrifice, but I hope that I can at least grant him the dignity of having his story told here.

That experience did nothing to prepare me for what happened a year and a month later in Nantes, France.

France

 My Saturday began with misfortune; the family laundromat I frequent (run by a kind old Chinese man who cordially asks how my laundry and I are doing whenever we cross paths) had its payment terminal crash right after I finished loading my laundry and detergent into machines 12,13, and 9. I also managed to spill fabric softener all over hands at some point, adding floral-scented insult to injury.  Half a Nalgene bottle of water did little to remove the film of soap from my hands, and I had to hold my laundry bags in a deathgrip during the half-mile trek to the inferior "Lavolux" (there's no luxury there, I assure you).

With my laundry reloaded at last in two of the (foul-smelling) Lavolux's semi-functional machines, I'd finally settled into reading a characteristically sordid passage in Cormac McCarthy's Suttree about kind, but disgusting drunkards. Then, as if magically summoned from the alcoholic aehter of McCarthy's Southern Gothic universe, two haggard Frenchmen---one disheveled and unnaturally plump for a homeless man, the other emaciated and jaundiced---staggered into the tiny coin laundry carrying bread, Camembert, and Old Nick white rum in a reusable grocery bag. They reeked, their cheese reeked, the laundromat reeked. Everything reeked. After several heroic pulls of their milk-white liquor, the first thing they asked me after "Do you have any friends here?" was "Would you like to eat with us?" A kind offer excepting the fact that I despise Camembert and was already feeling ill. Then, just as I began to think "Well maybe they aren't so drunk after all," it happened. The larger, more coherent of the two coughed, sputtered, and then vomited all of the rum he'd been drinking into the sack he from which he had just removed his lunch.

Now I've been in the fraternity world, so this was not my first rodeo, but I nearly followed suit into my own grocery sack when he, at last finished vomiting, blew his nose into his. "These are literally Cormac McCarthy characters" I thought to myself. I confirmed I was not dreaming as I mentally recited a line from Child of God that depicts---in vile detail---a moonshiner blowing his nose on to the ground. Mustering my last reserve of calm, I suppressed my nausea long enough to escape the laundromat in good order. I headed to my kebab restaurant to buy two bottled waters, ran back to my apartment to grab paper towels, and then returned to the Lavolux with my cleaning supplies. He was grateful and entirely unashamed. Once again I heard "You're a good man," only this time it was slurred and in French. The sickly man agreed.

I managed to pretend that this all hadn't happened, and the three of us spoke as my clothes dried. The fat man first asked (appropriately) about my book and was disappointed when I told him it wasn't in French. He set about eating his lunch while I spoke to his companion. The jaundiced man told me it was his birthday today (something his friend didn't seem to acknowledge) and that he wanted to know what I thought of the war in Mali. Before I could articulate my opinions, however, he began telling his own story about his time in Bosnia serving during the NATO mission in the early 90's:

"I was there in Sarajevo. We were there to help people...everyone forgets that, but we were there to help people. I was there to help people...."

He trailed off, and soon our conversation drifted once again back to their lunch offer.

"Eat, it's the best kind!" the first said. I tried to refuse politely. "Eat!" My final reserve of patience wavered, and I tried one last time to decline. "I will be insulted if you don't eat." Now the Camembert covered bread was nearly in my face, and my patience shattered.  "I think that unpasteurized cheese is disgusting, and I cannot make myself eat it. I apologize." I collected my half dry clothes and prepared to leave as he stood there, shocked that someone would refuse his cheese. I composed myself, apologized again for rejecting the cheese, and wished them a final good luck and farewell. "If you ever end up on the streets, find us. Good luck and take care." was their reply.

I walked home and struggled to conjure up images of the former soldier in his uniform, healthy and strong, rifle in his hands and his nation's flag sewn on to his shoulder. The distorted images that came to mind were of that same man, sallow and feeble, bottle in his hand and someone else's discarded jacked around his shoulders. I thought of Twelfth Night's pitiful drunk knight Sir Andrew Aguecheek, poor and alone (exploited by the one man who could pass for his friend, a fat knight named Sir Toby). "I was adored once, too," he says, and no one but the audience cares. 

Sometimes comedies aren't funny at all, and I guess that applies to everything from Shakespeare plays to this lowly blog.