In Flanders Fields the Poppies Grow.

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

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 the cannons boom
And fitful flashes light the gloom
While up above, like eagles, fly
The fierce destroyers of the sky
With stains the earth wherein you lie
Is redder than the poppy bloom
In Flanders’ fields

Sleep on, ye brave! The shrieking shell
The quaking trench, the startling yell
The fury of the battle hell
Shall wake you not, for all is well
Sleep peacefully, for all is well

Your flaming torch aloft we bear
With burning heart and oath we swear
To keep the faith, to fight it through
To crush the foe, or sleep with you
In Flanders’ fields

Fear not that you have died for naught
The Torch you threw to us, we caught
and now our hands will hold it high
It's glorious light shall never die
We'll not break faith with ye who lie
On many a field.

Sorry to be so late in posting back to you on your thoughtful comment.

War is an odd employment for man, as it simultaneously appeals to the best and worst in his character, often demanding the most noble courage and sometimes subjecting him to the most cruel of deaths. It is a conflicted existence.

It was General Douglas MacArthur who said:

"This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." http://www.nationalcenter.org/MacArthurFarewell.html

Here is another poem from the Great War; written by one of its most famous poet-soldiers, Wilfred Owen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen).

Unlike MacAuthur's final reflection on many decades of service, Owen's poem is raw with the emotion arising from one of the many moments that must have made up the final years of his short life. Owen was killed while leading an attack on 4 November 1918, just a week before the end of the war.

The Latin means: "It is sweet and proper to die for one's country."

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.

It is a lie and yet, it is not.

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