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| Osgiliath Revisited by Bodkin | 2 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| lwarren | Reviewed Chapter: Prologue on 6/7/2004 |
| I just discovered your stories about 3 days ago and am still kicking self for not looking sooner. It is the day after D-Day and I am sitting in my classroom trying to dig out from year's end...took a break to read this and have been crying ever since. We never look at both sides of a battle, do we?...that the dead are someone's father, brother, son, husband, sweetheart, no matter who's side they are on. It didn't occur to me that the speaker was Haradrim - gave me quite a pause - then the conversation between him and the Gondorrian gave this story a whole new meaning. All I can say is thank you for such a poignant reminder! (Plan to review all of your lovely stories of Celeborn and Galadriel...they are too good to keep quiet about...but had to do this one first!) linda Author Reply: My mother was watching all the D-Day stuff yesterday. She was a Wren in Portsmouth at D-Day - she always talks about the masses of young soldiers crowded round everywhere at that time, and then they woke on the 6th and they had all gone. Shortly afterwards they had all the Wrens giving blood for the wounded. She has never forgotten a young lad by the name of Parker McKaskill from (I think) Prince Edward Island who longed for a piece of his mother's chocolate cake - she never knew what happened to him. I have never found this poem as good as, say, Wilfred Owen - but it is one that really saddens me. I have tried several times to read it out loud, but I can't - I now have to get a kid to read it. And the history of war is always written by the winners, who tend to demonise the enemy. (Wasn't yesterday the first time the German Chancellor was invited to the commemorations?) A few years ago, we went to see the grave of my mother's uncle, who died on the Somme, and also visited a German WW1 cemetery with a mass grave containing 12,000 dead, where the marked graves included headstones for Jews as well as Christian Germans. So sad. | |
| daw the minstrel | Reviewed Chapter: Prologue on 5/2/2004 |
| This was very moving, Bodkin. And you surprised me when you revealed that the Man I was sympathizing with was Haradrim. It was a very Faramir moment! Author Reply: Thank you. It's so easy to forget that every story has at least two sides - and, actually, probably as many sides as there are people involved. I think, too, that involvement in something extraordinary can detach those who were there from people who don't know about it, or know it only from history books. | |