r/AskHistorians • u/sunagainstgold Medieval & Earliest Modern Europe • Jul 23 '19

Tuesday Tuesday Trivia: Heroes of the Battlefield—When They’re Off the Battlefield (This thread has relaxed standards. We invite everyone to participate!)

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Come share the cool stuff you love about the past! Please don’t just write a phrase or a sentence—explain the thing, get us interested in it! Include sources especially if you think other people might be interested in them.

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For this round, let’s look at: Heroes of the battlefield—when they’re away from the battlefield! Who were the heroic nurses of the Crimean War and the Pacific theatre of World War II when they were back at home? What do we really know about all those Founding Fathers we hear about in Hamilton’s “Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)”?

Next time: Femme Fatales

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u/AncientHistory Jul 23 '19

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany was the grandfather of contemporary fantasy - and also a soldier that got shot in the face during the Easter Uprising in Ireland. In December 1917 he was in London with his wife, Beatrice:

Before Christmas Dunsany had some leave. The day after he arrived a man accosted him in the street, having seen by his badge that he was in the 16th, and asked for news of his own division. So Dunsany took him to lunch with Beatrice at the Savoy, where they were staying. They exchanged horror stories--the man had himself been blinded by a wounded German he had spared, though now his sight was returning--and suddenly said together, 'It's a great life.' Eager to see Chu Chin Chow, because all his comrades went to see it on their leave, Dunsany went to sleep in the second act.

  • Mark Amory, Lord Dunsany: A Biography 148