Jennifer Bohnhoff's Blog, page 22

The Last Men to Die in WWI

The Armistice that ended World War I was officially signed at 5:45 a.m., but, to allow time for the news to reach combatants, it did not go into effect until 11am. In many sections of the front, fighting continued right up until the appointed hour. One reason this happened is because many soldiers did not trust the armistice and were sure that the war would continue on. Other soldiers wanted to reduce the stockpile of shells so that they wouldn’t have to carry so much back after the war.
The continued fighting resulted in 10,944 casualties on the last day of the war. 2,738 of those men died. Here are the last to die among some of the Allied troops: 
The last British soldier to die was George Edwin Ellison, a private in the 5th Royal Irish Lancers. He was killed by a sniper around 9:30 a.m. while he was scouting on the outskirts of Mons, Belgium. 40 years old at the time of his death, Ellison had been both a soldier and a coal miner before the war, and volunteered at the beginning of World War I. He left behind a wife and four-year-old son. He is buried in the British cemetery at Mons, close to the grave of the first British soldier to die in the war. ​
Also buried close to Ellison is Private George Lawrence Price, who was also shot by a sniper. Price, a Canadian, is recognized as the last Commonwealth, soldier to die. He was part of a force advancing into the Belgian town of Ville-sur-Haine, just north of Mons, when he was shot at 10:58, just two minutes before the armistice.
The last Frenchman to die was Augustin Trébuchon, who was a shepherd who played the accordion for village parties before he joined joined the 415th Infantry Regiment as a messenger in August of 1914. On November 11, 1918, he had been sent to deliver a message to the 163rd Infantry Division, which had been ordered to attack an élite German unit, the Hannetons at Vrigne-sur-Meuse, in the Ardennes. He was killed fifteen minutes before the Armistice was supposed to begin.  The message that was still in his hand when is body was found said that hot soup would be served at 11:30, half an hour after the ceasefire. Like many grave markers of French soldiers killed on the last day of battle, his says that he died on November 10th. ​ The last American to die was killed just one minute before the Armistice. Henry Gunther had recently been demoted, and may have been trying to redeem his reputation when he charged a German roadblock and was mowed down by a short burst of machine gun fire. This picture is the one that is on his grave marker.  On this Veteran's Day, we remember all who have served their country and been lost in war, and we pray for peace for the families and loved ones left behind. 

Robert Nichols, WWI Poet

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols is less well known today than he was during his lifetime, when he was hailed as the worthy successor of Rupert Brooke. Like his friends Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, his poems were graphic remembrances of his time on the battlefields of World War I. However, his writing was more idealistic than either of those poets.

Nichols was the son of a poet.  Educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford, he joined the Royal Field Artillery in late 1914 as a second lieutenant. He served in the Battle of Loos and the Battle of the Somme and was invalided home with shell shock in 1916.  In 1917, he was attached to the Foreign Office's Ministry of Information and was sent to New York on a publicity tour to drum up support for the war among Americans.

After the war, Nichols about. He was Professor of English Literature at the Imperial University of Tokyo from 1921 to 1924. After that, Nichols moved to Hollywood, where he advised Douglas Fairbanks and wrote plays and screenplays.  His Wings over Europe (1928), was a Broadway hit.

Nichols moved to Germany, then Austria in 1933 and 1934 before settling in southern France for six years. In 1940 he moved to Cambridge, England, where he died in 1944 at the age of 51. He left behind many unfinished works of poetry and fiction. A year before his death, Nichols edited the Anthology of War Poetry, 1914-1918. Of his own war poetry, Invocation (1915) and Ardours and Endurances (1917) are the most widely read.
​Battery Moving Up to a New Position from Rest Camp: Dawn Not a sign of life we rouse
In any square close-shuttered house
That flanks the road we amble down
Toward far trenches through the town.

The dark, snow-slushy, empty street….
Tingle of frost in brow and feet….
Horse-breath goes dimly up like smoke.
No sound but the smacking stroke

As a sergeant flings each arm
Out and across to keep him warm,
And the sudden splashing crack
Of ice-pools broken by our track.

More dark houses, yet no sign
Of life….And axle’s creak and whine….
The splash of hooves, the strain of trace….
Clatter: we cross the market place.

Deep quiet again, and on we lurch
Under the shadow of a church:
Its tower ascends, fog-wreathed and grim;
Within its aisles a light burns dim….

When, marvellous! from overhead,
Like abrupt speech of one deemed dead,
Speech-moved by some Superior Will,
A bell tolls thrice and then is still.

And suddenly I know that now
The priest within, with shining brow,
Lifts high the small round of the Host.
The server’s tingling bell is lost

In clash of the greater overhead.
Peace like a wave descends, is spread,
While watch the peasants’ reverent eyes….

The bell’s boom trembles, hangs, and dies.

O people who bow down to see
The Miracle of Cavalry,
The bitter and the glorious,
Bow down, bow down and pray for us.

Once more our anguished way we take
Towards our Golgotha, to make
For all our lovers sacrifice.
Again the troubled bell tolls thrice.

And slowly, slowly, lifted up
Dazzles the overflowing cup.
O worshipping, fond multitude,
Remember us too, and our blood.

Turn hearts to us as we go by,
Salute those about to die,
Plead for them, the deep bell toll:
Their sacrifice must soon be whole.

Entreat you for such hearts as break
With the premonitory ache
Of bodies, whose feet, hands, and side,
Must soon be torn, pierced, crucified.
​
Sue for them and all of us
Who the world over suffer thus,
Who have scarce time for prayer indeed,
Who only march and die and bleed.
—————————————-
The town is left, the road leads on,
Bluely glaring in the sun,
Toward where in the sunrise gate
Death, honour, and fierce battle wait.

And Now For Something Completely Different

It's November, and for many writers, that means something completely different than what it means for the rest of the population. 

When most people think November, they think Thanksgiving.
Unless they are crazily dedicated shoppers, when they might think of Black Friday. (I have NEVER done a Black Friday foray! Have you?) But for me, like many writers, November means NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Every November, a huge number of writers from around the world try to write a novel in one month. They begin on November 1 (the most dedicated at midnight. Me? I didn't start until 8 in the morning.). In order to win, each has to have 50,000 words written by the time December 1 comes around. What does one win? Bragging rights. Nothing more.

I've competed in NaNo many times in the past, sometimes on the regular NaNo site and sometimes as a teacher/mentor in their Young Writers Program. I don't think I've ever actually won. Most years I finish in the mid 30,000 range. Each year, including this year, I think will be different. 

Whether or not I win this year, it WILL be completely different, because I'm writing about a time period that is very different than anything else I've done in the past. I'm writing about Folsom man in New Mexico. 
Folsom man wandered New Mexico 10,000 years ago, a little after the last Ice Age. By the time he got here, the mammoths and a lot of the other megafauna were gone. The first evidence of his (and I use man and him in the more general sense of people of both genders) being here were bison antiquus  bones and spearpoints found near Folsom, New Mexico a little over a hundred years ago.

I started thinking about Folsom man in New Mexico years ago, when I first started teaching New Mexico history. I knew nothing about ancient New Mexico. Heck, I didn't know that much about recent New Mexico history. But Patrice Lewis, an experienced and excellent teacher, took me under her wing. She taught me a lot of history - and she taught me a lot about teaching as well. Patrice and I went to Wild Horse Arroyo, the site near Folsom where the bones had been found. The site is on private land and is inaccessible to the public except during biannual guided tours led by state archaeologists.  The road to Wild Horse Arroyo was little more than a trampled-down path through pasture. Once we arrived, there wasn't much to see; if there were any bones left at the site, they were buried.

But the tour guide was also a great story teller. We stood around by the side of his truck as he explained not only what had been found at this particular location, and the circumstances that led to the discovery, but what the people who had lived here thousands of years ago had been like.

By the time we were driving back to Albuquerque, ideas were swirling around in my mind.  Those ideas have been swirling for nearly a decade now. I've done a lot of reading and a lot of research, and now I'm writing the story of one of the boys who had been there, that late fall day long, long ago. Of course, I can't actually know him, but I have studied and I can imagine.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is a retired middle school English and Social Studies teacher who lives in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her most recent book, A Blaze of Poppies, was published in October 2021 and is a novel set in New Mexico and France during the First World War. Her next book, When Duty Calls, is a novel about the Civil War in New Mexico, and is written for middle grade readers. The one she is currently writing, tentatively titled The Bison Hunters, needs a lot more work before she can even consider publishing it.  

David Jones, WWI Poet and Painter

David Jones is not the most recognized of the World War I poets, but his work is considered among the finest.

Jones was born on November 1, 1895 in a suburb of London. His mother was a Londoner, but his father, who was a printer for the Christian Herald Press, was Welsh and had grown up in Wales. David’s father learned to speak English to help his career. However, he sang Welsh songs, and that stimulated his son’s interest in Welsh language and Welsh mythology.

His parents belonged to the Church of England. David Jones converted to Roman Catholicism after the war. Both his Welsh heritage and his religion are very evident in his artistic work.

Jones knew by the time he was six years old Jones knew that he wanted to be an artist. When he was 14, he entered Camberwell Art School, where he studied literature and the Impressionist and Pre-Raphaelite schools of art. His teachers had worked with Van Gogh and Gauguin, who both influenced his style. By the time the First World War broke out, he was already a very successful watercolor painter, focusing mostly on portraits and landscapes. His work as a wood-engraver was also well known. 

At the beginning of the war, Jones tried to join the Artists' Rifles, but they rejected him because his lungs were weak. Undeterred, he enlisted in the London Welsh Battalion (the 15th) of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He served on the Western Front from 1915 to 1918.  He was wounded at Mametz Wood, recuperated in England, then returned to the Ypres Salient, where he participated in the attack on Pilckem Ridge at Passchendaele. In 1918 he contracted trench fever and nearly died. He spent the rest of the war stationed in Ireland.

Like many men, Jones’ own personal war continued long after the Armistice was signed. Jones suffered from shell-shock, which is now called post-traumatic stress disorder. In order to combat it, he threw himself in to his art. In 1932, his work has risen to such a frenzied state that he finished 60 large paintings in just four months. He also worked on writing, including a first draft of his epic work In Parenthesis. But such drive could not continue, and in October 1932 Jones suffered a nervous breakdown. So profoundly was Jones shaken that he was not able to paint again for 16 years.  

During the period in which he could not paint, Jones work on In Parenthesis, an epic recalling his experiences in the war through the eyes of a fictional character. The title implies that the events take place in a parenthesis of life – during a period that was set aside and distinct from what came before and what came afterward. It is a long and lyrical poem that is at once specifically about one man’s experiences in a specific war and about war in general, and it is filled with Biblical allustions, Welsh folklore, and allusions to Shakespeare and Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.

Praise was heaped on In Parenthesis and on Jones when it was published in 1937. It won the Hawthornden prize, which at the time was Britain’s only major literary award. T.S. Eliot praised the poem for using words in a new way and W. H. Auden declared it "the greatest book about the First World War." The war historian Michael Howard called it "the most remarkable work of literature to emerge from either world war." Graham Greene thought it "among the great poems of the century." In 1996 the poet and novelist Adam Thorpe said "it towers above any other prose or verse memorial of ... any war." The art historian Herbert Read called it "one of the most remarkable literary achievements of our time."  Dylan Thomas wished that he had "done anything as good as David Jones." Hugh MacDiarmid announced that Jones was "the greatest native British poet of the century," and Igor Stravinsky thought him "perhaps the greatest living writer in English". Some have said that Jones did for England what Homer did for the Greeks.

Despite all the praise heaped upon Jones, he is not well read. His highly allusive poems are difficult and long; definitely not appropriate for including in a blog such as this. Reading one is a major undertaking. His visual arts have ascended even as his written ones have fallen in favor, and his paintings now command a hefty price.
​
In 1970, Jones fell and broke the ball of his femur. He never fully recovered and died on October 28, 1974. 
Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel A Blaze of Poppies is set in New Mexico and the battlefields and field hospitals of France during World War I. 

A Visit to Sleepy Hollow

This summer I visited family on the east coast. While there, I got to visit the Old Dutch Church, in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
​
The Old Dutch Church was built somewhere around 1685 by settlers to the area when it was still under Dutch control, and New York was still New Amsterdam. The church is part of the Lutheran branch of Christianity, and still has services.  The church was locked up on the day that I visited, so I didn’t get to see what it looks like inside. I did, however, spend several hours touring the cemetery.
I love cemeteries, especially old ones. The tombstones tell so many stories. This tombstone has the names of three children, Cornelius, Jacob and Catalyia, who all died on September 24, 1794.  
I took a picture of this tombstone because of the interesting use of English. It says the woman is the relict of a man. I had to consult a dictionary to learn that relict is an old word for widow. 
Many of the tombstones had American flags and badges indicating that the buried was a veteran. This is the grave of one of the many Revolutionary War veterans who were interred in this cemetery. There was a large area with Civil War dead, including one who, if I read the dates correctly, died during the war when he was only twelve years old. I assume he had been a drummer boy. There were World War I tombstones, like the one pictured below, and tombstones from later wars as well. 
When most people think of Sleepy Hollow, they think of Washington Irving, an early American author. He is buried here, too. 
Irving’s short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow put this little town on the literary map and into American consciousness. I think most people know the story of the pompous and prudish teacher Ichabod Crane, who meets his match in the strapping farmboy Brom Van Brunt as they battle for the hand of the fair and rich Katrina Van Tassel. (If you don’t know the story, you can read it here.)

​While the story may be fiction, Irving set it firmly within the real place he lived. The cemetery was filled with Van Tassels. This stone is written in Dutch, but others were in English. It’s clear that this was a prominent family in the community. ​The stream that is part of the story still exists as a little rill that runs right past the church, but the covered bridge is gone, replaced in more recent times by this concrete one.

  And the headless horseman? Supposedly a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during an unnamed battle of the American Revolution, he’d not been searching long for his head, since the story is set in 1790. If he’s searching still, tonight would be the night!
Wishing all of my readers a safe Halloween! 

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical fiction. To learn more about her and her books, go to her website. ​

Rupert Brooke, The Golden Boy of WWI Poets

In his day, the handsome and charming Rupert Brooke was a celebrity. In Dictionary of Literary Biography, Doris L. Eder calls him "a golden-haired, blue-eyed English Adonis." The Irish poet W B. Yeats called him “the most handsome man in Britain". But it was his poetry that made Brooke a national hero.
​
Brooke had his finger on the pulse of the nation. Before the outbreak of World War I, the British were proud colonialists, confident in their strength and proud of their ability to control an empire that stretched around the globe. But the Pax Britannia, the relatively peaceful world that Britain’s control had secured, weighed heavily on its restless and pampered youth, of which Brooke was one. Brooke was born into a privileged family on August 3, 1887. He attended Rugby, where he was a head prefect and captain of the rugby team. At Cambridge University he studied Classics and moved in intellectual circles. After college he traveled to America and the South Seas and spent a year in Germany. His first book of poems, published in 1911, were not well received. However, one of his poems written in Germany in 1912 touched the hearts of the English and catapulted him into the limelight. The speaker in "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," is a homesick Englishman who asks 
“Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?" When war broke out in August 1914, Brooke, like the rest of the nation, was ready to join. His sonnet, "Peace," demonstrates how war was welcomed by a youth whose life felt frivolous and void of meaning. Wanting to prove himself, he enlisted in the Royal Naval Reserve and saw some brief action at Antwerp in October 1914.
​
Brooke’s best-known poem, “The Soldier," was read from the pulpit on Easter Sunday 1915. The reader commented that “such enthusiasm of a pure and elevated patriotism had never found a nobler expression". On March 11, both the poem and the comment were repeated in The Times, and Rupert Brooke became Britain’s ideal handsome young warrior.   His poems expressed the idealism, patriotic fervor, and romantic sacrifice that the public wanted.  But Brooke would not live to hear the nation’s praises. He was sent east with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at the start of the Gallipoli offensive.  While sailing aboard the transport ship Grantully Castle, he was bitten on his lip by a mosquito. The bite festered, and he was transferred to a French hospital ship that was anchored off the island of Skyros. About a week after his poem was red, Brooke died, of septicemia or blood poisoning, on April 23 1915. His friends buried him in an olive grove on Skyros. He was only 27 years old.
A month after Brooke’s death, his friend Edward Marsh rushed the poems he had written in his last few months of life into print. Titled “1914 and Other Poems,” the collection included a romantic photo of him with bare shoulders and flowing hair that made many a woman swoon. Brooke became, according to Bernard Bergonzi, author of Heroes’ Twilight, the “quintessential young Englishman; one of the fairest of the nation’s sons; a ritual sacrifice offered as evidence of the justice of the cause for which England fought.” People as varied as Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill paid him homage. First published in May 1915, the book was so popular that it had been reprinted 24 times by June 1918.
​
Brooke had expressed the sentiments of a nation anxious to show itself in war. As the war dragged on, the nation realized that it was not the glamorous, heroic show they had expected. Critics began to call Brooke’s poetry foolishly naive and sentimental, and harsher and more realistic poems began to grab the public imagination. There is little doubt that, had he lived longer and experienced some of the horrors other war poets did, Brooke’s poetry would have changed as well.  
PeacE
Now, God be thanked who has matched us with his hour,
      And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping!
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
      To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary;
      Leave the sick hearts that honor could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
      And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
      Where there’s no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
            Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there,
      But only agony, and that has ending;
            And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
      That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
      In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
      Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
      Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
 
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
      A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
            Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
      And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
            In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Jennifer Bohnhoff lives and writes in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her latest book, A Blaze of Poppies, is the story of a young cowgirl struggling to keep the ranch during the tumultuous years leading up to and during World War I. It is available directly from the author and in paperback and ebook on Amazon. 

Why the Ladies Dance

Morris dancing is a type of English folk that has been around since at least the fourteenth century. The earliest record of it is from May 19, 1448, when a ground of Morris dancers in London were paid 7s (35p) for their services. By Elizabethan times it was already considered to be an ancient dance, and references appear to it in a number of early plays
The term 'morris' most likely came from the French word morisque, which means 'a dance.'

Usually, Morris dancing is accompanied by music, but sometimes it is unaccompanied. The dancers often wear bell pads on their shins and carry sticks, swords or handkerchiefs. And up until the twentieth century, the rhythmic stepping and intricately choreographed figures were always, exclusively,  performed by men.

World War I changed that. 

During the First World War, much of the English countryside was largely devoid of their menfolk. Unless women stepped in, fields lay fallow and crops weren't harvested. The situation wasn't much better after the end of the war. In some English towns and villages, male mortality rate approached seventy percent. Just like the fields, women needed to step in if the tradition of Morris dancing was to continue.  ​In 1972, an English folk singer named Austin John Marshall heard someone commenting rather derisively on all the older women who participated in Morris dancing, and his heart went out to them.  Marshall knew that many of the older ladies who participated in Country Dance Societies were war widows, or women who had lost fiancés or lovers during the Great War. Country dancing kept the memory of their young men alive, and it kept a centuries-old tradition from dying out. 

Marshall wrote Whitsun Dance as a tribute to the widows, sweethearts, sisters and daughters of the men lost in World War I. He wrote it fifty years after the war ended. Another fifty has passed since that time. May we continue to keep alive the memories. Whitsun Dance It's fifty long springtimes since she was a bride,
But still you may see her at each Whitsuntide
In a dress of white linen with ribbons of green,
As green as her memories of loving.
The feet that were nimble tread carefully now,
As gentle a measure as age will allow,
Through groves of white blossoms, by fields of young corn,
Where once she was pledged to her true-love.
The fields they stand empty, the hedges grow (go) free--
No young men to turn them or pastures go see (seed)
They are gone where the forest of oak trees before
Have gone, to be wasted in battle.
Down from the green farmlands and from their loved ones
Marched husbands and brothers and fathers and sons.
There's a fine roll of honor where the Maypole once stood,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.
There's a straight row of houses in these latter days
All covering the downs where the sheep used to graze.
There's a field of red poppies (a gift from the Queen)
But the ladies remember at Whitsun,
And the ladies go dancing at Whitsun.

Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel A Blaze of Poppies tells the story of a young rancher from Southern New Mexico who serves as a nurse in a French field hospital in a desperate attempt to keep her family's ranch from being sold, and to stay near the National Guardsman she has learned to love. You can read more about that novel here. 

Two Poems by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Poetry was much more widely read during the early part of the twentieth century. 

I am willing to be that few of my friends could name a contemporary poet, but at the time of World War I, many people could, and periodicals like the one pictured were common, making poetry accessible. 

The August 1915 edition featured two poems by Wilfrid Gibson, a poet who was popular in his day but largely forgotten now. He was a member of the Georgian poets at a time when the Modernists were becoming popular. Gibson almost missed World War I. The Army rejected his admission for several years because of his poor eyesight. When he finally entered, his experiences affected his poetry. A reviewer for the Boston Transcript said that Gibson’s battle poems were “nothing more than etchings, vignettes, of moods and impressions, but they register with a burning solution on the spirit what the personal side of the war means to those in the trenches and at home.” Jennifer Bohnhoff's historical novel A Blaze of Poppies is set in southwestern New Mexico and on the Western Front during World War I. 

A Poet looks back at World War I

Edmund Charles Blunden was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the British Army's Royal Sussex Regiment during September of 1915. He served on the Western Front for the rest of the war, taking part in the actions at Ypres, the Somme, and Passchendaele. With the exception of being gassed in October 1917, he managed to survive nearly two full years on the front line without physical injury. However, he bore the mental scars of his war-time experiences for the rest of his life. In his memoir of the war, Undertones of War, published in 1928, Blunden attributed his survival to his size. A small man, he states this made him "an inconspicuous target."

After he left the army in 1919, he returned to Oxford and resumed the scholarship work he had left when the war began. One of his classmates was fellow poet, author and literary critic, Robert Graves, and the two developed a close friendship.  Blunden was also a lifelong friend of Siegfried Sassoon.
Blunden ended his literary career with two years as Oxford’s Professor of Poetry, a position also held by Graves. He died on January 20, 1974.  1916 seen from 1921
Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags

Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.

I rise up at the singing of a bird
And scarcely knowing slink along the lane,
I dare not give a soul a look or word
Where all have homes and none’s at home in vain:
Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt,
The self-sown wheat around was like a flood,
In the hot path the lizard lolled time out,
The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood.

Sweet Mary’s shrine between the sycamores!
There we would go, my friend of friends and I,
And snatch long moments from the grudging wars,
Whose dark made light intense to see them by.
Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots
Spun from the wrangling wire: then in warm swoon
The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots,
We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.
A Blaze of Poppies, Jennifer Bohnhoff's novel about World War I, is available on Amazon and directly from the author. 

Italian Americans - and Cookies

This past Monday was the controversial holiday of Columbus Day. You may or may not celebrate this holiday any more, and I do understand why some people do not want to, but there have been many people with Italian heritage that have done good things for America. Here are just a few of them.  In 1914, a 16 year old boy named Ettore Boiardi came from his home town of Piacenza, Italy to join his brother, a waiter at New York’s Plaza Hotel. He later moved to Cleveland, where he had his own restaurant. By 1928, he realized that there was a market for Italian foods that people could make at home, so he opened a factory. He sold his packaged Italian foods under the name “Boy-Ar-Dee” so that Americans would correctly pronounce his last name. ​Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on radioactivity and the discovery of new elements in 1938. Soon after, the physicist left his position at the University of Rome and defected to the U.S. to escape Benito Mussolini's regime. Fermi oversaw the first controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago in December 1942, after which he became the associate director of the Manhattan Project. Fermi later argued against the creation of the hydrogen bomb on ethical grounds, but he remains one of the leading architects of the nuclear age. Ralph Fasanella fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. Later, the self-taught artist helped organize his fellow  workers for higher wages and a better life.

Many of his paintings reflect a nation of working people who took collective action to improve life on and off the job. One of his most recognized paintings is of the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. A schoolteacher who then earned her law degree and became a criminal prosecutor and then a congresswoman, Geraldine Ferraro was the first woman and first Italian American to earn the vice-presidential nomination on a major party ticket, when she joined Democratic presidential hopeful Walter Mondale in 1984. Although she and Mondale were soundly defeated by incumbent Ronald Reagan, she inspired millions of American women to enter politics.  Italian Anise Toast This may be easiest cookie to make, even if it does take two steps. It has no butter or shortening, so it's naturally low in fat, but the anise seeds pack such a flavor punch that you'd never realize it. These cookies are great for dunking into your favorite hot beverage. While coffee is probably the most traditional, I think here in October that spiced apple cider is a good choice! manga! 2 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon anise seed
1 cup flour

Heat oven to 375

Grease and flour a 9x5x3" loaf pan. 

Beat eggs and sugar thoroughly. Add anise seed. Mix in flour.
Use a spatula to scrape batter into the greased and floured loaf pan. If the batter is too stiff, get the spatula wet to smooth it out. It won't look like much batter, but never fear. It's enough!

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the loaf comes out clean.

Turn the loaf pan over onto a cutting board. Slice the loaf into 12-16 slices. The thinner the slice, the crunchier the cookie. 12 slices will result in chewy cookies.
Place the slices on a baking sheet and return to oven for five minutes. Turn them over (use a spatula if they stick) and toast for another five minutes on the other side. 

Cool completely on a rack before storing. 



​Want a little fancier cookie? Omit anise seed and add 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate minichips, 1/3 cup shelled pistachios, and 1 tsp. finely grated orange peel to the batter before baking.  Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former educator who now stays home and writes. Click here to see more about her and her writing.