Lest We Forget

[champagne1982]

Time's Blanket

They wind beneath the verdant green,
merely gentle curves and rounded
rises in the cloak time has lain
over these gnarled scars and ulcers
cut through to the heart
of a once innocent age.

Memories of crying children
swamped in fetid puddles, feet
sloughing off, there's no place
dry to rest. No quiet. Rest
until the call moves
through those too-close walls
cut in mitochondrial tracks
across No Man's Land.

Up! Up! Freedom waits
across that fearsome grey
of concertina and razorwire.
The first one there becomes
the way across
for those who follow.

A bullet makes a man
a stile over the fence.
A bullet makes a comrade
fertilizer for the verdant green
yet to blanket those rounded rises
and gentle curves time has sculpted
from these scars.

 

[WickedEve]

great lines

A bullet makes a comrade
fertilizer for the verdant green

 

[Reltne]

I Served!

And am damn proud of it!

God Bless all who have served and all who are serving now, and Lord save those who have fallen!

 

[BooMerengue]

Go read Erich Maria Remarque's All's Quiet On The Western Front. It is the ultimate soldier story.


Go!

 

[My Erotic Tale]

(~_~) bows humble

(~_~) bows humble




Soldier

Grit and grime caked in boot laces
fear struck, dirt smudged faces
chin strap taught and binding
staring down a dirt road whinding
Shuffling for room shoulder to shoulder
glances at the faces of other soldiers

A marching beat from drumming rolls
'here comes the enemy down the road'
with breaths held and heads pulled low
waiting along the grass near an apple grove
hearts pounded while peering over a boulder
lay in anticipation was the 'minute man' soldiers

for freedom to be, a musket bullet must fly
tis a sad day when any war takes lives
waiting in a time when time stands still
every man dreaming of how freedom will feel
It may have been a long time ago and colder
when rifles were fired by 'Minute Man' Soldiers

Ambush was the key to a line of men marching
when a handful of men sent bullets soaring
when freedom is strangled a search for freedom begins
history remade over, again and again
Now a country's pride waves in a flag much bolder
sitting in the sand, dirt and grime is our soldier

 

[bogusbrig]

We remember heroes for killing each other. We remember our heroes and our enemies and former enemies remember their heroes.

British politicians love Remembrance Day 11th of the 11th. I bet American politicians love Veterans day too, it gives them the opportunity to assosciate themselves with the heroic dead.

My great uncle who was a WWI hero said, we were not heroes, none of us were, we were fools for not saying no to the slaughter.

'It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.'

Simone de Beauvoir

While remembering heroes we should also remember why they fought and not have this foolish belief if was for freedom.

WWII is isolated as a war fought for freedom but WWII wouldn't have happened without the arms build up that led to WWI and the resentment of the peace.

Let's remember the dead, they deserve it but let's not get dewey eyed. Most wars should never have been fought and are not fought for freedom.

 

[champagne1982]

We remember heroes for killing each other. We remember our heroes and our enemies and former enemies remember their heroes.

British politicians love Remembrance Day 11th of the 11th. I bet American politicians love Veterans day too, it gives them the opportunity to assosciate themselves with the heroic dead.

My great uncle who was a WWI hero said, we were not heroes, none of us were, we were fools for not saying no to the slaughter.

'It is not in giving life but in risking life that man is raised above the animal; that is why superiority has been accorded in humanity not to the sex that brings forth but to that which kills.'

Simone de Beauvoir

While remembering heroes we should also remember why they fought and not have this foolish belief if was for freedom.

WWII is isolated as a war fought for freedom but WWII wouldn't have happened without the arms build up that led to WWI and the resentment of the peace.

Let's remember the dead, they deserve it but let's not get dewey eyed. Most wars should never have been fought and are not fought for freedom.

Forgive me. You have misunderstood the freedom that my trench soldiers were seeking. Theirs is the freedom from the deplorable conditions they were forced to survive in, from the pains and fears of the fighting and of the petty familial arguments that put them there in the first place. I do not deify the soldiers of WWI who went dewy-eyed into battle, seeking glory and instead learned the carnage of cannons they were fodder for. They didn't really know any better. What's the modern army's excuse?

I was told, growing up, that our national day of remembrance was kept not to salute heroes but to memorialize those who died in these terrible battles, to make a promise that we shall never forget the dead, to make no more families weep, widows mourn and children orphans. It is only more recently that the commercial and political exploitation of this ritual has taken over the simple reasons behind it. Cynics will continue to say that it holds no purpose to remember the dead, others simply cry at the loss.

 

[twelveoone]

It's a shame they had to change the name , eh?

 

[champagne1982]

It's a shame they had to change the name , eh?

A damned shame.

Sometimes it takes a lot of lessons to learn a simple truth.

 

[bogusbrig]

Cynics will continue to say that it holds no purpose to remember the dead, others simply cry at the loss.

In a rather convoluted way I was trying to say, that to remember the dead and forget why wars are fought and why they died, is to do a disservice to those that died.

Like many families, my family had a lot of members that fought in various wars and members that died for reasons they couldn't have understood at the time. On Remembrance Day I gladly wear my poppy (a British symbol of remembrance) and remember the dead.

I inherit my anger from members of my family that fought, not from smug politics. The dead deserve to be remembered, for who they are and what they did and to enlighten the living, since we still fight stupid wars.