We may all be another lost generation. But let’s work as if none of us were.

World War 1 poetry always gets me.

World War 1 poetry always gets me.

Me too. The whole war fascinates me, actually, much more than WWII even.

Yeah, the fascinating part about WW1 is that it involved states and societies that no longer exist in any recognizable form today, especially the big three empires that bit the dust. It really did destroy civilization as it was.

My favorite poem of his: 

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.

Yeah, the fascinating part about WW1 is that it involved states and societies that no longer exist in any recognizable form today, especially the big three empires that bit the dust. It really did destroy civilization as it was.

That and the moral ambiguity of it. It wasn’t a simple good vs. evil thing like WWII, and there was really no point to the conflict. By 1918 the very existence of the war became its own justification for fighting.

WWI didn’t end with the end of hostilities - the 1918 flu epidemic raged in its wake, spread across the planet by the war migrations and killing millions, mostly young adults.

War doesn’t end with the armistice.  The sooner it ends, the better.

AlanB, that poem gets me every time.

Rebecca,

That poem and Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” always get me.

  “Had he and I but met
      By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
      Right many a nipperkin!

      “But ranged as infantry,
      And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
      And killed him in his place.

      “I shot him dead because –
      Because he was my foe,
Just so – my foe of course he was;
      That’s clear enough; although

      “He thought he’d ‘list perhaps,
      Off-hand like – just as I –
Was out of work – had sold his traps –
      No other reason why.

      “Yes; quaint and curious war is!
      You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
      Or help to half-a-crown.”

WWI didn’t end with the end of hostilities - the 1918 flu epidemic raged in its wake, spread across the planet by the war migrations and killing millions, mostly young adults.

Yes, to the point where more Americans were killed by the flu than by the fighting.

I like these two I posted over at Pat Lang’s place:

Herbert Reed
“The Happy Warrior”

They ask me where I’ve been,
And what I’ve done and seen.
But what can I reply
Who know it wasn’t I,
But someone just like me,
Who went across the sea
And with my head and hands
Killed men in foreign lands…
Though I must bear the blame,
Because he bore my name.

Perfect bookends I think to the initial thrill of war and (to those of us who’ve had friends and relatives survive combat and return not quite whole in mind and spirit) the crushing aftermath of the same. Friends and relatives who’ve come home to substance abuse, guilt, and endless pain.

I think of my grandfather, a veteran of 3 wars (WWII, Korea, and early Vietnam) and how much of a giant he was to me. Rough around the edges, but always there with a trip to the doughnut shop or McDonald’s and a story about his early childhood. I think of his alcohol stash and the occasional tears of events and people long gone. How could “they” whomever they were do this to that giant of a man.

What right did they have to break him down and make him weep.

The lyrics to the old Irish song “Willy McBride”

Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I’ve been walking all day, and I’m nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916
Well I hope you died quick
And I hope you died clean
Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart you’re forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard that’s still no mans land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man’s blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation were butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And I can’t help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the fore

The Veteran’s that I know (my grandparents are, sadly, no longer with us) are Vietnam veterans and to a man, they are mostly unwilling or simply WILL NOT talk about what they went through. That they went through something so tragic that it would damage them in that way kills me. These are great men who have meant so much to me throughout my life. Who could send other people’s children to go through such a thing?

Nice post.  I once read a right-wing ode to veteran’s day that I actually thought was quite good.  It was direct praise of the things soldiers actually DO in war - digging ditches and pissing on themselves and eating horrible rotten food and, yes, killing.  The author was thanking veterans (I assume he was one himself, thought I don’t remember for sure) for having the guts to fight war.  I don’t really share that visceral sentiment, but I understand it and respect it.

I wish if we were going to turn Veteran’s Day into a pro-war holiday we would at least do it with a shred of honesty and forthrightness, the way that now-forgotten poem did.  At least then we wouldn’t have to listen to so much self-congratulatory pablum about how we’re so grateful for some vague sacrifice that no one can even deign to glance at, much less actually contemplate.

APS

Magis, just a nitpick: that’s not an ‘old Irish song’. It was written some fifteen or twenty years ago by the Scotsman Eric Bogle, and its actual name is ‘No Man’s Land’.

I’ll add Some Mother’s Son by the Kinks to this list, too.

I think I’m going to watch some BlackAdder Goes Forth tonight. Not as starkly beautiful as the poetry, but full of the bitter farce of WWI.

Ms Kate—amusingly, exactly the same nitpick as before applies here. “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” isn’t an old Australian song—it was ALSO written by (expatriate) Scotsman Eric Bogle, who moved to Australia sometime in the Eighties.

Lyrics are here: http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=5817

And while i’m at it, better-transcribed lyrics to No Man’s Land are here: http://www.mudcat.org/@displaysong.cfm?SongID=4251&Title=NO MAN’S LAND