Veteran's Day, Remembrance Day, Armistace Day

11/11/18, the guns fell silent, leaving a generation dead, crippled, stunned.



We need to remember the consequences of our actions, care for who have been hurt in our service. To all of you who served, I salute you. Until there is no more war, we should be mindful of those who gave, and not just those who gave everything.

Armistice Day, Yet Again. What Have We Learned?

It's Armistice Day, or Veterans' Day, depending on your personal point of view. Some people have the day off, and there's probably a big sale going on.

Just take a moment and think about what today is for. Remember those who have served in the military. What did they see, what have them done? Remember those who didn't come back, whose mothers and brothers miss them. And remember those who didn't come back whole, those with post-traumatic stress disorder, or brain damage. Remember those missing an arm, a hand, or a leg. Make sure you voted to send them out for something worth that.

I don't usually post songs, but Carbon Leaf's "War Was In Color" is a good, solemn tribute, and appropriate for the day.

ANZAC Day

As far as I can tell, ANZAC Day is the last memorial day specifically dedicated to World War One. Which is sad. Nothing defined the Twentieth Century more than WWI: The rise of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and WWII, and the arising Cold War all have their roots in the the Great War of 1914-1918.

Most of us would rather remember WWII. It was a more clear-cut war, with the Nazi atrocities making the opponent easier to demonize than the Central Powers of World War One. The victors could feel good about winning WWII. But the Great War was a quagmire, an enormous mess that scarred the "lost generation" and wiped out entire British neighborhoods, thanks to the Pals Battalions, sometimes in a matter of hours. Ah, the glory of war.

Rather than my usual mournful trench poetry, this one is a touch more playful:

"The General Inspecting the Trenches"
by Alan Herbert

The General inspecting the trenches
Exclaimed with a horrified shout
'I refuse to command a division
Which leaves its excreta about.'

But nobody took any notice
No one was prepared to refute,
That the presence of shit was congenial
Compared to the presence of Shute.

And certain responsible critics
Made haste to reply to his words
Observing that his staff advisors
Consisted entirely of turds.

For shit may be shot at odd corners
And paper supplied there to suit,
But a shit would be shot without mourners
If someone shot that shit Shute.

Armistice Day

On 11/11/1918, the guns fell silent.

War is a quintessential human sport. It is such a tremendous undertaking, so inconvenient and difficult that if we did not love it so much, it would never happen. And when we wage, we want to keep the reality of it from the people in whose name we do so. Strange, isn't it?

The Secrecy News website found or assembled a PDF of this report on why certain photographs from the Great War were censored. It's quite an amazing read, loaded with pictures and explanations of why such pictures were not released. What great pains militaries take to make sure that those who are not involved in the fight do not see what soldiers do, see how soldiers die. Even as they act in the name of those who should not be exposed to these horrors.

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

It's 11/11, Armistice Day, or Veterans' Day, depending on your sense of history. So I present you with a poem by WWI soldier Wilfred Owens. To some, Dulce et Decormum Est is an old saw, something we studied in school. Personally, I've never been able to escape the hard imagery of the poem, the haunting despair, the vivid sense of the narrator's exhaustion, terror, endurance, and humanity in the face of the overwhelming.

Writing is memory, and there are something we need to remember, even if it's on a single day out of the year. World War One was an colossal, senseless mess in which some nineteen million soldiers were sent to their deaths for little or no gain, and perhaps ten million more civilians died. As an event, it overshadows the rest of the twentieth century. The Second World War and the Cold War, the two great conflicts that dominated world politics for the latter half of the twentieth century, both have their roots directly in the Great War.

Not that the author, Wilfred Owen can tell us this himself. He was killed a week before the war ended. It is said his mother received word just as the church bells rang out to celebrate the Armistice. Many poets died in the Great War, just as I must assume great politicians, scientists, surgeons, and inventors did. But we'll never know, because they died young.

On this Armistice Day, I reflect that should be more careful with peoples' lives.

Dulce et Decormum 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.