“Vestiges of the Great War’s Bloody End” and “Les Americains”

The New York Times has been publishing an occasional series in its Travel section on World War I sites in France, written mostly by Richard Rubin, the author of Last of the Doughboys, a remarkable oral history (and remarkably recent) of the last surviving American soldiers who had seen action in the war.

The latest piece–a huge two-page spread in today’s Travel section–describes the remains, often stunningly preserved, of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the “deadliest battle in American history,” with more than 26,000 Americans killed in just 47 days.

By the time it abruptly ended at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, between 15 million and 20 million men had perished in the First World War. That statistic can be difficult to grasp, much less believe; but hike through a couple of forests in the hills of Lorraine, and you begin to see how it happened.”  

Hike around these woods, and you quickly come to understand that this was a war unlike any other when it came to murderous ingenuity, and that the Germans had a distinctive technological edge. They also had better weapons, better-trained soldiers, better generals, better spies, better maps, better barbed wire, better barbed wire cutters. They always seemed to hold the better ground; their strategy was better. You can’t help but wonder: How did they lose?­  

Rubin has been here often, and describes, wonderfully, his encounters with the locals.  When he asks them that question:  “How did the Germans lose?”

the answer is always– always– the same:  Les Americains. 

“Silent Night” and the Christmas Truce of 1914

So much has been written–and debunked– about the “Christmas Truce” of December 1914 on the Western Front that it’s hard to separate truth from sentiment, fact from art.  There have been movies and TV shows and novels and theatre pieces– all drawn to the undeniably powerful idea that, for one brief moment, as the world was plunging into a devastating catastrophe, sanity and human understanding might have prevailed.

I’ve just caught up–three years late–with the extraordinary “Silent Night,” an opera  by American composer Kevin Puts, produced in 2011 by the Minnesota Opera.  It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for composition in 2012, and has been produced by several other opera companies since then– probably more than any recent new operatic work, most of which fade away after the first production.

But “Silent Night” not only has a great, often-told story going for it– it’s also a truly powerful, moving theatrical and musical experience.

Here’s an extended clip from a production in Philadelphia.  The whole production– broadcast on PBS’s “Great Performances,” is worth seeking out.