{"id":2957,"date":"2014-07-11T15:12:53","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T19:12:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2014\/07\/11\/war-and-remembrance\/"},"modified":"2023-02-21T13:33:55","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T18:33:55","slug":"war-and-remembrance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/war-and-remembrance\/","title":{"rendered":"War and remembrance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Olivia Haase \u201915 knew her great, great uncle had died on a World War I battlefield in France. What she didn\u2019t know was how powerful the feelings would be when she saw his nearly century-old grave at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made it so much more personal for me,\u201d Haase, a health science major from Princeton, N.J., said. \u201cThe fact that I got to visit a relative\u2019s grave is incredible . . . It was very somber. I wasn\u2019t expecting any of that stuff to hit me as hard as it did. So many of the soldiers who died were my age, so that was a tear-jerker. It made it very real and made me appreciate soldiers in general.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of the staff at the memorial of the Battle of Chateau-Thierry<\/a> gave Haase information on her uncle and led her to the site, where she honored tradition by rubbing sand from the beach at Normandy (used as a symbolic connector of the two World Wars) over his marker to highlight his name: Thomas Dabney Kern. He was one of approximately 67,000 Americans to die in that battle alone during the awful summer of 1918.<\/p>\n

Haase\u2019s \u201conce-in-a-lifetime opportunity\u201d came about because she was one of the fortunate students selected by Furman history professors Carolyn Day and Marian Strobel to participate in the \u201cWar and Remembrance\u201d May Experience (May X) class that spent 17 days touring battlefields, cemeteries and memorials in England, France, and Belgium.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the new fields in history is how are historical events remembered. Not just what happened,\u201d Strobel said. It\u2019s a safe bet her students will never see war the same way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we were all shocked. Even when you hear the numbers of all the people who have died, it kind of doesn\u2019t hit you until you\u2019re standing in the middle of the cemetery,\u201d Mary Kate Buchanan \u201916 said. \u201cWe also went to Omaha Beach . . . You can see how awful it was on that beach, and then we\u2019re standing there and there was no one on the beach at all, and we were told that people go out there and just hang out. I just couldn\u2019t imagine doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

World War I and its 100th<\/sup> anniversary this summer was the primary focus, but in addition the students stopped at Normandy during the 70th<\/sup> anniversary of D-Day, saw the Bayeux Tapestry<\/a> in France, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, and visited Waterloo in Belgium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was most moving was when we moved into the French countryside and went to the location of the Battle of Somme<\/a> in Verdun and saw all of these various memorials that were for the missing,\u201d Strobel said. \u201cThat is unbelievable\u2014the number of names on monuments\u2014and they don\u2019t know where these bodies disappeared to. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands. It\u2019s hard to get your mind around all of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The competition to be selected for the trip was stiff. There was a formal application process run through the student-away office followed by personal interviews because Day and Strobel wanted serious candidates only. \u201cThese (students) were very carefully vetted,\u201d Strobel said. \u201cWe had 53 applications and 21 went with us, so we were very careful to pick students that we knew were really interested or had some connection to the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first info session was packed 10 minutes before the thing even started. I thought, man, there\u2019s no way I\u2019m getting into this,\u201d Buchanan, a religion\/sociology double major from Hudson, Ohio, said. \u201cBut lucky me!\u201d<\/p>\n

Buchanan, who said that her favorite memory was seeing what WWI soldiers had engraved in trench walls, realized what a different experience Europeans have had with war.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we have to learn about it through textbooks whereas the kids over there can go out into a battlefield and still see where a land mine was blown up. I don\u2019t think we can really learn about it as well as they can,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost good in a way that they can learn properly what happened and actually know the realities of war. . . I think it\u2019s kind of interesting the difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leah Barngrover \u201916, a history major who was excited to visit Europe for the first time, also noticed a significant difference in war remembrance depending on your side of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States we really don\u2019t commemorate a lot of our wars. It\u2019s more we just talk about it . . . In Europe there are hundreds of cemeteries and monuments dedicated to fallen soldiers, even American ones, and it\u2019s just so different,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if we just don\u2019t want to think about it a lot or if we\u2019re caught up in other things. We have holidays, and maybe that\u2019s our way of dealing with it instead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students were left with little choice to think during their jarring visit to the Douaumont Ossuary<\/a> in France. The memorial contains the skeletal remains of at least 130,000 French and German soldiers who died in 1916 on the Verdun battlefield, and it sparked quite a debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw a lot of really beautiful places, and it\u2019s that total irony because when you\u2019re fighting those wars it is a completely different atmosphere and it just really hits you. Definitely,\u201d Barngrover, a native of Cleveland, Mo., said. \u201cThere were thousands upon thousands of bones thrown in there. I know some people thought that was disrespectful because you shouldn\u2019t be able to see that, but I thought it was really powerful and impactful and I kind of liked it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trip wasn\u2019t all serious. Buchanan found that Belgian waffles live up to their reputation for excellence, and there were cultural tours of London, Paris, and Brussels. The sum of those parts was a unique experience that may just stay that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about that, and we\u2019re not sure we would,\u201d Strobel said when asked if the class will be offered again. \u201cNot for the obvious reasons, because we learned a great deal, but we don\u2019t think we would ever have a group of students as wonderful as this group and we would be disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n

To illustrate her point, Strobel shared an entry from Buchanan\u2019s journal. \u201cThank you so much for planning this trip and for allowing me to be a part of it,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI will never forget the friendships I have made. I think this trip was the definition of what Furman calls engaged learning. I learned so much about the countries we visited, the cultures, the war obviously, and myself than I ever imagined that I would. I don\u2019t think I will ever be able to go on another May X because it won\u2019t even come close to this. I thank you both from the bottom of my heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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