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My Boy Jack


Jerry

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This isn't exactly Book & Film review, more like stage play and TV Special review but..... I enjoyed the Masterpiece Theater presentation on Public TV here in the states -- Rudyard Kipling's and the world's loss of lives in the First World War.

 

I didn't know it had been staged a few miles from where I lived: in Long Beach in 2006! Both stage and TV version written by the same David Haig, (isn't that a scottish name? Haig & Haig?)

 

Didn't know Jack had an American mother. Didn't know he was 18 years plus 1 day when killed. Didn't catch all the nuances of The Irish Guards. Didn't know they MIGHT have found his body 52 years after he went missing. I guess it is still controversial.

 

Didn't know Daniel Ratcliffe is an extremely fine actor.

 

Very thought provoking and excellent dramatization of history and important events.

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Wow - can you imagine helping your child get into the army and then him dying? On top of that never finding his body? It must have been pure hell for his father. Very sad.

 

Thank you Jerry for pointing this play out and thank you Captain Chaos for the link.

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Thanks, Didn't know Conan Doyle and Theodore Roosevelt also lost sons there, although I knew T.R. Jr. was killed on D-Day at Normandy. Or T.R. III, I forget.

 

I missed the introduction of Capt. Chaos to this forum -- is this in honor of Dom DeLouise of Cannonball fame? I'm happy to see Mike Steele's blog and access to the Kipling poems. I remember in his poem The Betrothed, Maggie tells him 'it's either cigars or me, you must choose'. He says he's only known Maggie a short time, but he's been a Priest of Partagas for much, much longer. And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.

 

I love politically incorrect statements these days.

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Correction to my earlier post. President Teddy Roosevelt's son did die at Normandy as a Brigadier General, but it was a month after the landing. After the war his body was placed next to his brother Quentin Roosevelt, who had died in the First World War.

 

Like young Kipling, Quentin was a nearsighted chap who had to memorize the eye chart in order to be accepted. He joined the Army Air Corps and served with distinction until shot down by Germans. His body was buried by the Germans at that time with military honors.

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I just went over to Capt. Chaos' blog to read some more Kipling and Robert Service poetry, and SURPRISE, SURPRISE, in the Kipling collection there was a poem dedicated to President Theodore Roosevelt, upon the death of that particular leader.

 

How did I get so lucky? It almost makes me believe in Guardian Angels again.

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