He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jeweled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

The one thing I learned while getting a degree in history and then spending five years teaching it in college courses was that Americans know basically nothing about World War I. I never learned anything about that war when I was in school and even in college, even while getting a degree that focused on American military history, there was never a single course offered on WWI. I studied the hell out of WWII, the US Civil War and Vietnam, but getting anything other than a few weeks attention for WWI was rare. There just wasn't enough time to study everything (there never is) and most general history professors are far more interested in the obvious conflicts and WWI is....well, it's not obvious.

Here's a question my students always asked: Who were the good guys and bad guys in WWI? Can you answer that like you can for WWII? Heck, you can answer it easier for the American Revolution and Civil War than you can for WWI. And yet, even though it's not a good vs evil war (oh how we Americans love those wars), it is the most important conflict in the 20th century. That's because so many other conflicts come directly from what happened at the end of WWI. The Second World War was born in the Treaty of Versailles (and it gave birth to Korea and also, Vietnam). The communist movement in China gained in popularity due to the treaty and all the borders for the Middle East (with the exception of modern Iran which was formerly the existing country of Persia) were drawn after WWI. Iraq is not even 100 years old people - not as it exists today. And don't even get me started on Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Syria or Kuwait or Lebanon or the fun that is Palestine and Israel.

World War I - they all go back (one way or another) to World War I.

The problem with WWI is that it is so long ago, and so big and so bitterly, awfully sad, that it just doesn't get most people excited. It's also hard to wrap your head around the numbers: hundreds of thousands dead in one battle; tens of thousands dead in one day. It doesn't seem real. That's why a book like Geert Spillebeen's amazing Kipling's Choice is so important. It is the story of one soldier, John Kipling, and how he came to die for his country. It is also the story of his famous father, Rudyard Kipling, and why he urged his son to go off to war, and how much he suffered because of his naive ideas about glory.

Kipling's Choice is a story about a boy and through him, it is a story about a nation and a world and all the young men who died for nothing. As Rudyard Kipling later wrote in "Epitaphs of the War ": If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.

I first read Kipling's Choice last year. Here's a bit from my review:

The narrative form that Spillebeen has chosen to use is quite unorthodox, but it works brilliantly. In the opening pages John is engaged in what we later learn is the Battle of Loos. He is quickly and horribly injured and as he lies helpless in the mud, hoping to be saved and uncertain of his physical condition, his mind takes him through random moments in his life. These flashbacks provide the author with an opportunity to explain how John came to be in battle and what it was like for him to be the son of a world famous author, (at a time when that was like being the son of a movie and rock star combined.) As he suffers great pain and loneliness in the time before his death, John does not reflect philosophically upon his life or his loss of it. Mostly he cries for his parents and his home, and wonders what has happened, what will happen, to him. It is one of the more realistic and emotional portrayals of a death that I have read and shows far better than any movie just what dying in a war is all about. It is worth noting that in the Battle of Loos the British army sent their men out to be little more than cannon fodder. They marched them into German guns, hoping they would overwhelm their defenses; they were wrong.

Spillebeen does an excellent job of humanizing John Kipling, and through him, every soldier in the war. He is just as brave and bold and then scared and lonely as so many others before and after him. And his father was like so many other fathers; eager to send his son off to become a man, foolish enough to believe that war was a necessary step in growing up.

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

I know that war is hard to read about - believe me, I know. But Kipling's Choice is not a hard book - it is a heartbreaking one. Rudyard Kipling had wanted to join the military when he was young but could not because of bad eyes; John had the same problem. But once the war started, it was possible to get John through, to get him off to the front lines where Rudyard was convinced John would become a better man. He thought - he really and completely believed - that he was doing a good thing for his son by getting him in the Army (Something many many others believed then and now). Spillebeen writes about the father and son so well that it becomes clear early on that as much as this book is about a soldier in the field, even more so it is about a father and a son; it is about a father who loved his son so much he sent him off to war.

It is one of the saddest books I have ever read.

If you are a fan at all of Rudyard Kipling then you must - you must - read Kipling's Choice. It is here that you will discover how he went from being one of the greatest supporters of empire to a voice bitterly opposed to war. It is in the life and death of John that Rudyard learned his harshest lesson and lost all desire to write more of the adventure stories he was famous for. In 1917 he joined the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and became the official author of inscriptions on many war monuments. On one of them he wrote, "Their Name Liveth Forever More." The words were for his son and all the others; for all the boys who went away to fight because their fathers told them so.

Kipling's Choice has a beauty like few books I have read; a sad kind of beauty that burns your very heart.

Now he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and how late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?

[Post title from "Grostesque" by Frederic Manning. Excerpts all from "Disabled" by Wilfred Owen. First picture of Lt John Kipling, second of the Battle of the Somme, last picture of Rudyard and Carrie Kipling, visiting the cemetery at Loos, France. You can read about their long search for news of John, here. John was 18 years old when he died.]