In A FAREWELL TO ARMS, Ernest Hemingway famously wrote about the dim possibility of adequate commemoration for those lost in the slaughter of World War I:
“I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.”
When Hemingway wrote, war poetry was still poised between the old and durable need to honor the dead and acknowledge with both regret and proper gratitude the dire nature of their civic contribution, and the second and more unsettling need to voice the sometimes dishonored and dishonoring terms of that sacrifice — the anguished appearance of war guilt for crimes perpetrated during the course of war by some of these sacrificial victims, the soldiers.
By the second half of the last century, war poetry came to embody an antiwar ideology. Judgments about politics and history have thoroughly rearranged the conventions of the war poem and have changed the way we look at courage and honor, as well as sacrifice. Part of what has happened is also an awareness of the bastardizing of public language, although I shrink from any judgment that things are any worse now for words than they ever were.
“By the second half of the last century, war poetry came to embody an antiwar ideology. Judgments about politics and history have thoroughly rearranged the conventions of the war poem and have changed the way we look at courage and honor, as well as sacrifice.”
But the most moving of all anti-war poems—and the most scathing about sacrifice—was written during World War I by a British officer who fell one week before Armistice Day:
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.
— Wilfrid Owen, 1893-1918
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
March The Heroes Home
Blackmore’s Night
Under a Violet Moon
I sing the praise of honored wars of glory and of kings
The bravery of soldiers, The joy that peace can bring
The captains on their way home, The ribbons on their chests
They’ve packed away the firearms the trumpets lay to rest…
They’ve taken in the battlefields with one last weary breath
And set their sights on something new while there’s still something left
The poets and the dreamers thank the stars above
For leaving hatred in the dust and bringing back the love…
Over land and over sea
March The Heroes Home
For the faithful, for the free
March The Heroes Home
We’ll be waiting when you
March The Heroes Home
All the night and day through
March The Heroes Home…
The flowers laughing in the fields boast colors bright and new
A hint of freedom in the air, the chimes are ringing true
They’re bringing in the New Year and ringing out the old
Beckoning the springtime though winter winds blow cold…
hmmm, formatting didn’t work out, trying it again, elves please delete above post:
March The Heroes Home
Blackmore’s Night
album: Under a Violet Moon
I sing the praise of honored wars of glory and of kings
The bravery of soldiers, The joy that peace can bring
The captains on their way home, The ribbons on their chests
They’ve packed away the firearms the trumpets lay to rest…
They’ve taken in the battlefields with one last weary breath
And set their sights on something new while there’s still something left
The poets and the dreamers thank the stars above
For leaving hatred in the dust and bringing back the love…
(Chorus) Over land and over sea
March The Heroes Home
For the faithful, for the free
March The Heroes Home
We’ll be waiting when you
March The Heroes Home
All the night and day through
March The Heroes Home…
The flowers laughing in the fields boast colors bright and new
A hint of freedom in the air, the chimes are ringing true
They’re bringing in the New Year and ringing out the old
Beckoning the springtime though winter winds blow cold…