Category: History

November 11^th, 2018

It’s the centenary of Armistice that ended the fighting in World War I. As a boy in both England and Canada, I gathered with my classmates under the flags—Union Jack and Red Ensign—and observed a Minute of Silence. We stood, knowing that all who could pause in their work throughout the land was doing the same. It was outdoors, and often it was raining or even snowing, chill and damp, but nobody ever dared complain. From as soon as we were able to understand what war was, we were told of the fantastic hardship and sacrifice the Tommies paid (and, as time passed, speeches included the Yanks, the Froggies and finally the Boche). We wore poppies and thanked the survivors. And honoured the dead.

Yesterday Trump’s flacks announced that he wouldn’t attend a service at the cemetery where many of the American troops who perished lay. It was the weather, you see. And scheduling. Trump may or may not have any reasons to be in Europe other than to see a big parade, but apparently someone forgot to mention that at 11:11 am on 11/11/18, Trump might think about something other than Trump.

As for the weather, well, the fallen in those graves would certainly understand. Bone spurs can really throb on wet days, and with a forecast of showers and temperatures in the fifties, Trump certainly deserves to be inside, warm and cozy, where he can think about the soldiers in comfort. Lord knows the troops knew that being exposed to the elements in France in November could be deucedly inconvenient, what ho?

Still, Trump is a shitstain, composed of the same substance the soldiers squelched their way through in the trenches. He is nothing.

Today, the soldiers who died in that horrific war are everything. I won’t try to honour them; I can’t. I can only respect them. Only those who have given as much as they did could honour them.

Instead, I’ll simply post some of the poetry written by those courageous men who sacrificed so much:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
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
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.

The Latin title of this poem means:
“Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”
(From Horace, Odes, III. ii. 13)

NOTE: Owen was killed on 11/11/18, hours before the Armistice took
effect. He had served in the trenches for four years.

Break of Day in the Trenches
Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918)

The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver — what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe —
Just a little white with the dust.

June 1916

For The Fallen
Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

The Rainbow
Leslie Coulson

I watch the white dawn gleam,
To the thunder of hidden guns.
I hear the hot shells scream
Through skies as sweet as a dream
Where the silver dawnbreak runs.
And stabbing of light
Scorches the virginal white.
But I feel in my being the old, high, sanctified thrill,
And I thank the gods that dawn is beautiful still.

From death that hurtles by
I crouch in the trench day-long
But up to a cloudless sky
From the ground where our dead men lie
A brown lark soars in song.
Through the tortured air,
Rent by the shrapnel’s flare,
Over the troubled dead he carols his fill,
And I thank the gods that the birds are beautiful still.

Where the parapet is low
And level with the eye
Poppies and cornflowers glow
And the corn sways to and fro
In a pattern against the sky.
The gold stalks hide
Bodies of men who died
Charging at dawn through the dew to be killed or to kill.
I thank the gods that the flowers are beautiful still.

When night falls dark we creep
In silence to our dead.
We dig a few feet deep
And leave them there to sleep –
But blood at night is red,
Yea, even at night,
And a dead man’s face is white.
And I dry my hands, that are also trained to kill,
And I look at the stars – for the stars are beautiful still.