| Summary: | Keepsake poster, printed in an edition of 200 numbered copies for the opening of the loan exhibition, 11 November 1997, "from materials loaned by the University of Virginia's Joseph M. Bruccoli Great War Collection. Penn State's copy is No. 39. The text is an excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Tender is the Night, describing the battlefield at Beaumont Hamel. Printed in black, with maroon initials, within a thin/thick/thin maroon border." On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, 801 soldiers of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment rose from the British trenches and went into battle at Beaumont-Hamel, nine kilometers north of Albert in France. After only thirty minutes the regiment was devastated. Beaumont-Hamel remains the most significant single military action fought by Newfoundlanders and a turning point in the history and culture of the island. Many Newfoundlanders mark the date of 1 July not as Canada Day, but as Memorial Day, the date of remembrance for the Beaumont-Hamel battle. Rare Books copy: Gift of Louis F. Peck, Professor of English, 1965.
|
|---|