In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks still bravely singing fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead: Short days ago,
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved: and now we lie
In Flanders fields!
Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields
John
Wilfred Owen, who is buried in Flanders F##king Field after having been killed on Nov 4, 1918 won the WW1 poetry contest for me with his poem Dulce et Dulcorum Est. Not an invocation to hold the torch high against the foe, but a warning about an ancient lie.
gnokgnoh
Dulce et Decorum Est
By Wilfred Owen
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 gas-shells dropping softly 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.
Stephen
For me, the poem is “Disabled”. Neither exhortation nor condemnation, nor even about the dead, the poem brings tears for the wounded survivors, who must live with the horror and its effects.
The last three lines, I think, of the second stanza are the saddest to me. The saddest loss in a loved one’s death is the loss of touch, never to hug, embrace, kiss. Sadder yet the loss while still young and alive.
Synoia
Rupert Brooke, another poet, also died in WW I, on the Gallpoli Expedition.
The average life expectancy of a UK subaltern was 2 weeks on the Flanders fronts, until the uniform identifying the officer was changed.
After WW I there was a shortage of “eligible men” and many women remained unmarried.
Everybody at my school had family members killed in WW I and WW II.
The RFC (Royal Flying Corps) provided no parachutes, to encourage their pilots to fight and not jump.
When I asked my father if Douglas Haig was a famous WW I general, he though for a while and answered, “Yes, he killed as many men as the others.”
WW I ended at least four empires: German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman. The Japanese ended in WW II, the French and British Empires limped on until the ’50s.
The US, as an Empire, became the successor to the imperial period.
Ian Welsh
Yes, I don’t actually like the politics of “In Flanders Field”. But I like the poem.
Hugh
Jan Gotlib Bloch wrote a book Is War Now Impossible? published in 1898 in which he went into great technical detail: economics, industrial capacity, food, population, military weaponry. His conclusion was that a great war was impossible because it was unsustainable. Its costs would destroy the participants. He was right about the consequences, but he didn’t factor in human gullibility and stupidity. So it happened anyway.
I would also note that WWI did not creep up on people unawares. There was a whole turn of the century genre of popular literature dedicated to it. In the English versions, Britain was attacked and/or invaded variously by the French, Germans, and Russians. I see this as analogous to our present situation. We discuss here many of the grave threats we are faced with: overpopulation, climate change, environmental destruction, animal loss, pollution, wealth inequality, kleptocracy, class war, and the proliferation of failed and failing states (my incomplete list). But like people of 100 years ago, knowing didn’t save them, and it won’t save us.
Synoia
“Britain was attacked and/or invaded variously by the French, Germans, and Russians. ”
Yes, all of whom had mastered the act of walking on water.
highrpm
In the English versions,… ah, don’t you just love the study of history. like religions, it’s embedded with narratives. choose a side first. and no way to avoid crushing the tulips as one attempts to tiptoe over the circuitous/ littered/ eroded paths of time. but hey, the easy out, at least for hollywood? blame the germans.
steeleweed
Final verse of Nightmare with Angels
– Stephen Vincent Benet – 1935
…. another angel approached me.
This one was quietly but appropriately dressed in cellophane, synthetic rubber and stainless steel,
But his mask was the blind mask of Ares, snouted for gas-masks.
He was neither soldier, sailor, farmer, dictator nor munitions-manufacturer.
Nor did he have much conversation, except to say,
“You will not be saved by General Motors or the pre-fabricated house.
You will not be saved by dialectic materialism or the Lambeth Conference.
You will not be saved by Vitamin D or the expanding universe.
In fact, you will not be saved.”
Then he showed his hand:
In his hand was a woven, wire basket, full of seeds, small metallic and shining like the seeds of portulaca;
Where he sowed them, the green vine withered, and the smoke and the armies sprang up.
Hugh
It’s called invasion literature:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_literature
Classic invasion literature begins with the “Battle of Dorking” in 1871 and goes through to the beginning of WWI in 1914. I know about this stuff because I started collecting digital editions of this stuff a few years ago. Popular literature often gives insights into the hopes and anxieties of a period.
Hugh
Precursors to invasion literature include the Napoleonic examples: Jean-Corisandre Mittié’s La descente en Angleterre (1797) and the anonymous Invasion of England (1803). The German August Niemann wrote The Coming Conquest of England at the turn of century in which Germany (and France and Russia) take out the perfidious English.
Dan
Bad poem, bad war, bad ideas all around. Canada should quit rooting around the old imperial sty looking for a Westphalian identity that fortunately never stuck.
Stirling Newberry
Before The War
(Penny Rock )
I wonder what’s the matter with him.
He’s not the way he was before.
He’s not the way he used to be.
The way he was before the war.
He had no way of knowing
What horrors were in store.
Then communication ceased
When he went off to war.
He left while only in his teens.
Now he’s so much older.
The warmth of his youth is gone.
His spirit’s so much colder.
His eyes look deeply haunted.
He has no joy anymore.
He doesn’t laugh and rarely smiles.
He stares down at the floor.
He speaks in cryptic code.
He talks of blood and gore.
Then lapses into silence
Since he came back from war.
I wonder what he saw there
That fills his eyes with fright.
All those unknown terrors
Keep him awake at night.
Certain sounds will startle him
And send him out the door.
Will he ever have peace again,
As he had before the war?
He turns away from mirrors.
Who he sees must frighten him.
There’s no respite in his mind
Because all his thoughts are grim.
I don’t know what to say to him.
I can’t talk as I did before.
He’s not the person that I knew
Before he went to war.
He doesn’t even look the same,
So pale and so thin.
It’s like another person
Came back inside his skin.
He used to be such fun,
So easy to adore.
It’s like he disappeared
When he returned from war.
I wonder what became of him.
I never see him anymore.
He’s not the person he once was.
I mean, before the war.
Copyright 2003 Penny Rock All Rights Reserved.
Hugh
It’s from a different war but pretty sums up my attitude.
“Fortunate Son”
John Fogerty
(1969)
Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no
Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don’t they help themselves, oh
But when the taxman comes to the door
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no millionaire’s son, no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no
Yeah!
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! Yo
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no military son, son
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, one
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate one, no no no
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son, no no no
Andaréapié
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.
Andaréapié
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner. Randall Jarrell.
Tom W Harris
After the Goldrush – Prelude
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armour comin’
Sayin’ something about a queen
There were peasants singin’, drummers drummin’
And the archers split the tree
There was a fanfare blowin’ to the sun
That was floating on the breeze
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the 1917
I was lyin’ in a burned-out basement
With a full moon in my eyes
I was hopin’ for a replacement
When the sun burst through the skies
There was a band playin’ in my head
And I felt like getting high
Thinkin’ about what a friend had said
I was hopin’ it was a lie
Well, I dreamed i saw the silver spaceships flyin’
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children cryin’ and colors flyin’
All around the chosen one
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flyin’ Mother Nature’s silver seed
To a new home in the sun
Flyin’ Mother Nature’s silver seed
To a new home in the sun
Stirling Newberry
Goodnight Saigon
(Billy Joel)
We met as soulmates
On Parris Inland
We left as inmates
From an asylum
And we were sharp
As sharp as knives
And we were so gung
ho to lay down our lives
We came in spastic
Like tameless horses
We left in plastic
As numbered corpses
And we learned fast
To travel light
Our arms were heavy
but our bellies were tight
We had no homefront
We had no soft soap
They sent us playboy
They gave us bob hope
We dug in deep
And shot on sight
And prayed to Jesus Christ
with all of our might
We had no cameras
To shoot the landscape
We passed the hash pipe
And played our Doors tapes
And it was dark
So dark at night
And we held onto each other
Like brother to brother
We promised our mothers we’d write
And we would all go down together
We said we’d all go down together
Yes we would all go down together
Remember Charlie
Remember Baker
They left their childhood
On every acre
And who was wrong
And who was right
It didn’t matter
in the thick of the fight
We, held the day
In the palm of our hands
They, ruled the night
And the night, seemed to last
as long as six weeks
On Parris Island
We held the coastline
They held the highland
And they were sharp
As sharp as knives
They heard the hum of the mortars
They counted the rotors
And waited for us to arrive
And we would all go down together
We said we’d all go down together
Yes we would all go down together
dbk
I found this song a few years ago. The group (Great Big Sea) became one of my favorites.
“Recruiting Sargeant”
Two recruiting sergeants came to the CLB,
for the sons of the merchants, to join the Blue Puttees
So all the hands enlisted, five hundred young men
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me
They crossed the broad Atlantic in the brave Florizel,
And on the sands of Suvla, they entered into hell
And on those bloody beaches, the first of them fell
[Chorus]
So it’s over the mountains, and over the sea
Come brave Newfoundlanders and join the Blue Puttees
You’ll fight the Hun in Flanders, and at Galipoli
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me
Then the call came from London, for the last July drive
To the trenches with the regiment, prepare yourselves to die
The roll call next morning, just a handful survived.
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me
[Chorus]
The stone men on Water Street still cry for the day
When the pride of the city went marching away
A thousand men slaughtered, to hear the King say
Enlist you Newfoundlanders and come follow me
[Chorus x3]
Willy
Yours Is No Disgrace, too cryptic. Generals and Majors, too upbeat. And of course War Pigs, but far too Ozzie. Too Many Puppies?