Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend of World War I Dog Story Will Make You Cry (and not just with his fine acting)

When i learned some details about the Famous Rin Tin Tin: German Shepherd, Actor, World War I orphan,
 i cried a little. Seems this dog was rescued as a pup by a soldier, Lee Duncan, in a bombed out kennel in WWI. The man himself had been partially orphaned, and his relationship with the dog was one of true love.

 The dog was an amazing actor; when he limped in one movie the studio got letters asking if he had been deliberately injured to make him limp so convincingly... when Rin Tin Tin died, there was a National News Broadcast that interrupted all other programming.

I heard about this due to a book out, and the author was being interviewed on NPR.

Hear the interview and buy the book HERE. before you listen to this 9 minute interview, get just one kleenex for the end...When i listened to this interview, it made me want to rent all the movies...

from npr 

"...Author Susan Orlean's new book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life And The Legend, traces the history of Duncan and "Rinty," as Duncan called him, exploring both the career of a very famous dog and the relationship he shared with the owner who adored him as a pet..."


Loyal dog stories HERE
Rin Tin Tin Official Page for serious fans page HERE
at THIS part of the Official Rin Tin Tin Page, you can read how this little puppy was found, his amazing entry into acting, and see some great pics you won't see anywhere else.

Spirit of War

"If the spirit of war isn't killed, you'll have struggle all through the ages." Under Fire: The Story Of A Squad Henri Barbusse.

Tell It How It Is

With his mouth full, and wafting me the odor of a sweetshop, he stammers—"Tell me, you writing chap, you'll be writing later about soldiers, you'll be speaking of us, eh?"

"Why yes, sonny, I shall talk about you, and about the boys, and about our life."

"Tell me, then"—he indicates with a nod the papers on which I have been making notes. With hovering pencil I watch and listen to him. He has a question to put to me—"Tell me, then, though you needn't if you don't want—there's something I want to ask you. This is it; if you make the common soldiers talk in your book, are you going to make them talk like they do talk, or shall you put it all straight—into pretty talk? It's about the big words that we use. For after all, now, besides falling out sometimes and blackguarding each other, you'll never hear two poilus open their heads for a minute without saying and repeating things that the printers wouldn't much like to print. Then what? If you don't say 'em, your portrait won't be a lifelike one it's as if you were going to paint them and then left out one of the gaudiest colors wherever you found it. All the same, it isn't usually done."

"I shall put the big words in their place, dadda, for they're the truth."

"But tell me, if you put 'em in, won't the people of your sort say you're swine, without worrying about the truth?"

"Very likely, but I shall do it all the same, without worrying about those people." from Under Fire: the story of a squad by Henri Barbusse.

A Fantastic Road

"It is a fantastic road enough, in truth. On both sides of it are crouching armies, and their missiles have mingled on it for a year and a half. It is a great dishevelled highway, travelled only by bullets and by ranks and files of shells, that have furrowed and upheaved it, covered it with the earth of the fields, scooped it and laid bare its bones. It might be under a curse; it is a way of no colour, burned and old, sinister and awful to see." - Henri Barbusse, Under Fire : The Story Of A Squad.

The painting is The Mule Track by Paul Nash.

"Where I come from," interposes the poor Southerner, "holiday feasts last so long that the bread that's new at the beginning is stale at the end!" - Henri Barbusse, Under Fire : The Story Of A Squad.

Gassed

Gassed by John Sargent

He Swallowed...

Image via Wikipedia"He swallowed a pulpy mouthful of bread as if there went with it the disordered and suffocating mass of his memories" - from Under Fire: The Story Of A Squad by Henri Barbusse.

"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen (poetry reading)

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Image by Parksy1964 via Flickr

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!---An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,---
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

- Wilfred Owen

A Soldier’s Cemetery

Image via WikipediaBehind that long and lonely trenched line
To which men come and go, where brave men die,
There is a yet unmarked and unknown shrine,
A broken plot, a soldier’s cemetery.

There lie the flower of youth, the men who scorn’d
To live (so died) when languished Liberty:
Across their graves flowerless and unadorned
Still scream the shells of each artillery.

When war shall cease this lonely unknown spot
Of many a pilgrimage will be the end,
And flowers will shine in this now barren plot
And fame upon it through the years descend:
But many a heart upon each simple cross
Will hang the grief, the memory of its loss. -John William Streets (killed and missing in action on 1st July 1916 aged 31)

Anthem For Doomed Youth - Wilfred Owen - Kenneth Branagh

Hymn Of Hate

French and Russian, they matter not,

A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
And the time that is coming Peace will seal.
You we will hate with a lasting hate,
We will never forego our hate,
Hate by water and hate by land,

Hate of the head and hate of the hand,

Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
Hate of seventy millions choking down.
We love as one, we hate as one,
We have one foe and one alone
– ENGLAND!
 
- Ernst Lissauer (1914)
 
"The hymn was distributed in the German army, taught to German school children, set to music and sung in concerts. Lissauer was decorated for it by the Kaiser. It was also quickly used as counter-propaganda: translated into English and published in Britain and the U.S.A. to show how hateful those beastly Huns were and also to turn it round, by training English readers to hate the Germans back." - Friendship and Emnity in the First World War, Max Saunders, Literature & History Third Series Spring 2008 (Manchester University Press), 17 1, p62-77.