By Steve Hynd
We call today Remembrance Day in the UK, to mark the "11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month" of 1918, when the guns finally fell silent on a war which had eviscerated the young men of every city, town and village of Europe. It's a day to remember all the fallen of all the wars - not just our own veterans - and to remember the horrid truth of what war is.
So....two poems to help us remember. The first is the work of the great Wilfred Owen, a poet of the Great War. The other is a contemporary work by a veteran of Afghanistan.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
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.
REALITY IN AFGHANISTAN
My pain feels cold and selfish
My anguish very small
My reality insignificant
Compared to ones that fall
Young men with broken bodies
Their Comrades lie in sacks
Devastated parents
Their sons will not come back.
My pain will ease and lessen
My anguish slip away
Reality in Afghanistan
Two brave men died today
Young men with shell shocked faces
Growing old before their time
Are living breathing testament
To this shallow pain of mine.
Phil Williams
Bastion 1 July 2009
I still prefer the name "Armistice Day," myself. But thanks - I'll include this one in my 11/11 roundup.
ReplyDeleteI do still today called it Armistice Day & I still call the War Memorial in the centre of Ottawa the Cenotaph. Re the latter most people wonder what I'm talking about. The name seems queer to them. For me It's a hangover from my grandmother one of the few war brides from WWI. A nurse from St Dunstan's - gone from Hyde Park now - who married a Canadian, blinded at the last battle of Cambria a month before November 11th, & likely, I think now, because all her bothers (3) were killed by the time she nursed my favourite third generation Irish Canadian. She belonged to that specific next-of-kin club the entry into which requires having 2 or more sons or brothers killed on the same day. Quite a few entries on July 1 1916: http://www.1914-1918.net/brothers1916.htm .
ReplyDeleteAh, the almost unimaginable past. Seems we now only inflict this horror on innocents we must consider sub-human in order to be able to sleep soundly at night.
Good US poems out of the US military from the latest adventures Brian Turner's Here Bullet. Here is a link to him being interviewed on ABC - the down under place eh. He reads at about minute 36: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2008/2117121.htm
Now going to have a few whiskeys while thinking of my great uncles, grandfather, my da, uncles and ex-shipmates.