A class project on a fallen pilot I'll never forget

[Storico]

We're getting close to November 11th, which is this Sunday. On November 8th, classmates I graduated with this spring got together with our old professor to see the culmination of the work we'd done for the term. We'd spent most of the 2006-2007 academic year researching one pilot from WWI in particular: Captain Alfred "Eddie" McKay. We knew very little about him at the start of last year, and by the end of the school term we'd amassed a HUGE file full of what we knew about his personal life, his career, his school records, everything. There are still details we won't ever know, details that have been lost to history.... but we spent the year looking through old archives, records, microfiche of old stored newspapers from 1916 and 1917... and we came up with a lot. So on November 8th, we had a ceremony on Main Campus at the university we graduated from, and we put up a marker there to honour Eddie's life, the way he served during the war, and that he was a student just like any of us had been.

Here's the news story: http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/tale_of_flying_ace_rescued_from_history_by_king%92s_students_20071108440519/

I don't know how long it'll stay linked there, so if that link doesn't work, I'll email them and ask permission to re-produce the article in full here.

This was an amazing project, for me. The hours I spent looking through old newspapers gave me a window into a world that was entirely foreign, but very welcome, to me. To see this come together just before Remembrace Day is wonderful. It puts a face on one of the soldiers who could so easily have passed into history without being known or remembered at all.

Here are a couple of photographs, also. The first one is of Eddie. The second one is of our class, or the few of us who were in the city, and our professor in front of the marker we had placed on campus.

[Paintbucket]

That's pretty interesting. A good way to honor one of your own.

[Tladatsi]

Grass
by Carl Sandburg (1918)


Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.


We're getting close to November 11th, which is this Sunday. On November 8th, classmates I graduated with this spring got together with our old professor to see the culmination of the work we'd done for the term. We'd spent most of the 2006-2007 academic year researching one pilot from WWI in particular: Captain Alfred "Eddie" McKay. We knew very little about him at the start of last year, and by the end of the school term we'd amassed a HUGE file full of what we knew about his personal life, his career, his school records, everything. There are still details we won't ever know, details that have been lost to history.... but we spent the year looking through old archives, records, microfiche of old stored newspapers from 1916 and 1917... and we came up with a lot. So on November 8th, we had a ceremony on Main Campus at the university we graduated from, and we put up a marker there to honour Eddie's life, the way he served during the war, and that he was a student just like any of us had been.

Here's the news story: http://communications.uwo.ca/com/western_news/stories/tale_of_flying_ace_rescued_from_history_by_king%92s_students_20071108440519/

I don't know how long it'll stay linked there, so if that link doesn't work, I'll email them and ask permission to re-produce the article in full here.

This was an amazing project, for me. The hours I spent looking through old newspapers gave me a window into a world that was entirely foreign, but very welcome, to me. To see this come together just before Remembrace Day is wonderful. It puts a face on one of the soldiers who could so easily have passed into history without being known or remembered at all.

Here are a couple of photographs, also. The first one is of Eddie. The second one is of our class, or the few of us who were in the city, and our professor in front of the marker we had placed on campus.

[Storico]

Sandburg packed a punch, and he couldn't have imagined how true that poem would be. Just about 90 years later, the grass has done too good a job. In a way, I think the essence of being a practicing historian is simply to not let the grass win.

[Tladatsi]

So much of history lies beneath the grass. But when we read history books and look at old photographs the wars we see through them seem so neat and clean, so sterile and clinical. When we look at the stories of individual, real flesh and blood people who lived through them, it all comes alive. The sarrow, chaos, pain, suffering, and madness of war grabs hold of us. The grass would be doing us a favor really, except that if we are going to learn from history.


Sandburg packed a punch, and he couldn't have imagined how true that poem would be. Just about 90 years later, the grass has done too good a job. In a way, I think the essence of being a practicing historian is simply to not let the grass win.

[jesusfreak]

So much of history lies beneath the grass. But when we read history books and look at old photographs the wars we see through them seem so neat and clean, so sterile and clinical. When we look at the stories of individual, real flesh and blood people who lived through them, it all comes alive. The sarrow, chaos, pain, suffering, and madness of war grabs hold of us. The grass would be doing us a favor really, except that if we are going to learn from history.
That is very true alot of true history does lye beneath the grass because media has made the appearance of history. Maybe that is why I like history so much is becuase there is so much the average person doesn't see. The main thing is that all war is very bloody and not pretty. Back in the earlier wars it use to be very easy to make it look all nice and pretty because there was no video. The main reason Vietnam was so bad with the public is because they could finally see what war is like while sitting in front of their TV and they didn't like it at all.