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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.

Thank you
Wilfred Owen

In the US there is something knhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Dayown as Veterans Day
once known as Armistice Day
which didn't quite work out the way they thought it should, bringing greater evils to the world
Thank you
von Stauffenberg
(a wounded Vet)
for the attempt

Thank you John Kerry, that one wasn't such a good idea, keep that in mind.

Georgie boy, AWOL from the Air National Guard, and that host of shirkers and evaders.
No Thanks

The Great Soul Gandhi
technically not a vet (no uniform)
paid the price more than once
Thank you

The unknown friends of friends
together gone down in faux glory
thank you

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57611297/bruce-springsteen-roger-waters-play-for-wounded-soldiers/
and this guy Roger Waters
I just fucking like.
Not a US citizen, pays taxes in the US, said he wouldn't mind seeing more of it go the Vets.
Neither would I, but someday in the distant future it would nice if there were no more Vets added.

with respects the those gone down, those left behind... no wilfred owen, just my own poor ghazal, but the emotions are honest

Brothers in Arms


I look across the hills past all the beers gone by
the setting sun sits softened by the years gone by

And through the outward calm my skin still chills and bumps
a judder of the heart recalling cheers gone by

My lonely courage shivers, but it's just the light
that's bleeding from the land still seeping fears gone by

My eyes, not once they were, drink shadows' cool refrain
the landscape's stained blood-red with all the tears gone by

Beneath the sleeping mounds and ghosting poppy fields
the distant drums still rumble for my peers gone by

May they find peace beyond the living's hot torment
of living yet; brothers in arms - my dears - gone by

butters said:

with respects the those gone down, those left behind... no wilfred owen, just my own poor ghazal, but the emotions are honest

Brothers in Arms


I look across the hills past all the beers gone by
the setting sun sits softened by the years gone by

And through the outward calm my skin still chills and bumps
a judder of the heart recalling cheers gone by

My lonely courage shivers, but it's just the light
that's bleeding from the land still seeping fears gone by

My eyes, not once they were, drink shadows' cool refrain
the landscape's stained blood-red with all the tears gone by

Beneath the sleeping mounds and ghosting poppy fields
the distant drums still rumble for my peers gone by

May they find peace beyond the living's hot torment
of living yet; brothers in arms - my dears - gone by

Click to expand...

Wonderfully done, butters; sad but wonderfully done.

If I may,......

Stille Nacht

The moon, the snow,
Stille Nacht and Silent Night
filled the trenches

before calloused hands
lifted barbed wire
to meet calloused hands

exchange cigarettes
or bibelots whittled
from Maginot's forest,

but for the makeshift teething ring
for the begat
or to begotten,

at least until a corpsman came
to empty
corporal pockets.

In solid rows the gravestones stand
their march is stark across the land,
each one a Mothers bitter blow
grown from greed politicians sow,
a wind of hate righteous fanned.

Always the youngest to command
and lead across the bloody strand,
meets just like him the enemy foe
in solid rows.

Throughout the history at hand
no lessons learnt, no death is grand,
these wasted lives will never grow
to manhood underneath the mow.
Grassed over see the gravestones stand.
In solid rows.

Thank you all for those......my contribution and one of my first efforts on arriving at Lit.

....To End All Wars

They grew up together.
He’d known her all his life,
watched her changing from a child
and knew she’d be his wife.

Too young to make that solemn vow,
agreeing they would wait;
they made their plans for marrying
and set an April date.

Then war broke out across the sea
the whole world taking part.
First soldiers went, then all young men
and with him went her heart.

He fought horrendous battles
always carrying her love,
lying in the trenches
with bombs bursting above.

Surrounded by the carnage
he managed to stay calm
knowing he would have her
once more on his arm.

Wounded by some shrapnel
he lay blinded and in pain,
he wept at the injustice
of never seeing her again.

She went to meet the ship that bought
her lover home once more.
Anticipation turned to dread
as the wounded came ashore.

She took his hand so he would know
that she was standing near.
He drew away and turned his face
to her it looked like fear.

Scars had changed his handsome looks
and gas had wrecked his chest.
She still could see the soul of him
the part she loved the best

but he was now a different man,
silent and withdrawn.
Nightmares shook him every night,
awake, he'd pray for dawn.

Yet daylight did not reassure
or take away his guilt,
so many of his friends had died
and he had not been killed.

To her it was a god-send that
her lover had not died
but all this broken man could do
was think of suicide.

He drank to block the memories,
to try and feel again
but nothing seemed to be the thing
to take away his pain.

One night he took his service gun,
she was upstairs in bed,
he loaded it and took his life,
a bullet to the head.

Wars decreed by distant men
still rage on today
and young men in the prime of life
are yet the ones that pay.

UnderYourSpell said:

In solid rows the gravestones stand
their march is stark across the land,
each one a Mothers bitter blow
grown from greed politicians sow,
a wind of hate righteous fanned.

Always the youngest to command
and lead across the bloody strand,
meets just like him the enemy foe
in solid rows.

Throughout the history at hand
no lessons learnt, no death is grand,
these wasted lives will never grow
to manhood underneath the mow.
Grassed over see the gravestones stand.
In solid rows.

Click to expand...

each one a Mothers bitter blow
grown from greed politicians sow,

bitter, bitter, a little simplistic, but either way save us from the politcos

for them - the politicos

next to of course god america i
e.e. cummings

``next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?''

He spoke. And drink rapidly a glass of water


Thank you ee cummings
who was a vet, but spent a large part of the time in a french prison for insubordination

Most Vets I have met, did not come back without scars and Viet Nam vets, some of them will never be whole. Dying homeless. I am sorry for this bitterness. But why the fuck are we still in Afghanistan? To fight the Taliban? Which american dollars created? Or at the very least financed indirectly.

*Broken man*

clichéd to say that he was in hell
but they were his words,
spoken in drunken slurs,
Dutch courage was needed
to repeat the defeat he felt,

dishonourable discharge,
upheaved from his birth place,
for having the nerve to
disgrace his commanding officer
from England to Australia
outcast,

not shooting the child that he
was ordered to shoot,
he swallows another draught
of draught to steady his narration
this drunken contemplation on
why?

when he refused his officer did the deed
pulled the trigger,
for the boy was a rice-nigger
not a real human,
and grandfather wept for that boy as if he
were his own,
disowned the army

in violent rage and angered protest
he laid his officer out to rest
in the brains of the child he'd killed
and bet him near to death,

at this point is when he would break down
real tears, revealing his fears
memories that wont cease,
so he drank them and himself
to death

miss you granddad

My father was a member of the US Army's Third Auxiliary Surgical Group, trained at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and sent to England in 1942 to train for a European landing. They got their first combat experience in Tunisia and Sicily before landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day. My dad was in the third wave of landing boats to reach the beach and always said the most frightening moments of his life were spent waiting in those boats and watching the first two waves get mostly killed. He did not carry a gun but instead was identified by his red cross and the full medical-surgical pack he had to carry--this weighed about 60 pounds and included equipment to set up field hospitals, pieces for IV poles and pieces that fit together to make operating tables as well as drugs and bandages, instruments, etc. After clearing Omaha Beach of the dead and wounded (an operation that took over a month) his team moved east through France and Belgium to Germany, operating on soldiers who were too sick to be evacuated to established surgical units. So if you can imagine a MASH unit, my dad was with the surgeons who operated on the people near the front who were then moved to MASH type units.

Some of you have read poems I've written here about my dad, but as you see he was a hero to a lot more people than me.

On Flemish Polder

the cloying hands of the dead
sprout up through the sodden earth
strong as briars knotted about my ankles
pulling me down into the shitty clumps
of history

each year the ploughs root up
more bones and artefacts
undoing the work of earthworms
whose constant churning of the soil
deepens the past

the bitter wind like icy breath
penetrates my winter overcoat
nothing escapes death’s cold hand
a century after this futile harvest
he still hangs around for more

geschiedenis wordt hier begraven
bewaard in vlaamse polders
geen kussen, maar tranen en bittere wind
en de dood hysterisch gelach
zij zal niet meer hun adem halen

my feet sink into the mire
upping my heel I fight to pull free
half expecting to unearth some bony grin
to remind me history’s in the future too
repeating repeating repeating

gritty reading, face right in the dirt. unforgiving as is only fitting, as is Owen's. exceptional.

Angeline said:

They got their first combat experience in Tunisia

Click to expand...

Was that operation Sword? My father's eldest brother died in that battle. He doesn't have a grave, just a name on a memorial in Tunsia. My brother went to vist the memorial once but was advised to turn back, with him being blond haired and blue eyed. Too obviously a European.

bogusagain said:

Was that operation Sword? My father's eldest brother died in that battle. He doesn't have a grave, just a name on a memorial in Tunsia. My brother went to vist the memorial once but was advised to turn back, with him being blond haired and blue eyed. Too obviously a European.

Click to expand...

Possibly. I know his unit was transferred from Oxford to southern Tunisia on March 18th, 1943 and that they handled near 1,000 casualties there. Does that sound right? Anecdotally I only recall my father saying that they went from England to Spain and on to North Africa.

Angeline said:

Possibly. I know his unit was transferred from Oxford to southern Tunisia on March 18th, 1943 and that they handled near 1,000 casualties there. Does that sound right? Anecdotally I only recall my father saying that they went from England to Spain and on to North Africa.

Click to expand...

Like an idiot I got the name wrong. It was Operation Torch but that was the one I was thinking of. The allies chose Tunisia because of the nearness of Sicily.

bogusagain said:

Like an idiot I got the name wrong. It was Operation Torch but that was the one I was thinking of. The allies chose Tunisia because of the nearness of Sicily.

Click to expand...

I don't know the names unless I look it up myself.

I was just reading some history and I would guess from the dates I have that my dad's unit was sent in to assist around the time of the Allies setbacks at Kasserine. That must be right because I know the 3rd Surgical Division was part of the First Army. I love having this info! Thanks for questioning me into finding it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGMwNe9WWmE

so beautiful

Can there be a more apt song that Lili Marlene? Written as a love poem in WWI, then put to music in WWII and adopted and loved by both sides?

Lili Marlene in Deustch, Lili Marlene in English

Underneath the lantern by the barrack gate
Darling I remember the way you used to wait
Twas there that you whispered tenderly
That you loved me
You'd always be
My Lili of the lamplight
My own Lili Marlene

Time would come for roll call
Time for us to part
Darling I'd caress you and press you to my heart
And there 'neath that far off lantern light
I'd hold you tight
We'd kiss good-night
My Lili of the lamplight
My own Lili Marlene

Orders came for sailing somewhere over there
All confined to barracks was more than I could bear
I knew you were waiting in the street
I heard your feet
But could not meet
My Lili of the lamplight
My own Lili Marlene

Resting in a billet just behind the line
Even tho' we're parted your lips are close to mine
You wait where that lantern softly gleams
Your sweet face seems to haunt my dreams
My Lili of the lamplight
My own Lili Marlene

When we are marching in the mud and cold,
And when my pack seems more than I can hold
My love for you renews my might
I'm warm again
My pack is light
It's you Lili Marlene
It's you Lili Marlene