Memorial Day(Christopher Hitchens)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 29, 2006 | CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

[kellynla]

LONDON--In the Cotswold hills, in deep England, there is a pair of villages named Upper Slaughter and Lower Slaughter. In addition to its rather gruesome name, Lower Slaughter possesses a unique distinction. It is the only village in all of England that does not possess a First World War memorial. In the remainder of the country, even the smallest hamlet will have--I almost said "will boast"--a stone marker with an arresting number of names on it. In bigger towns, it wouldn't be possible to incise all the names in stone, though at the Menin Gate in the Belgian town of Ypres a whole arch is inscribed with the names of those who fell along the Somme. Every year on Nov. 11--anniversary of the 1918 "Armistice"--the rest of the English-speaking world gathers, with Flanders poppies worn in the lapel, to commemorate the dead of all wars but in particular to feel again the still-aching wounds of the "war to end all wars": the barbaric conflict that shook peoples' faith in civilization itself.

Though the carnage of that war was felt much less in the United States, it was only after the doughboys returned in 1918 that the former Confederate states dropped their boycott of America's original "Memorial Day," proclaimed by Union commander Gen. John Logan in May 1868. And here one can note the bizarre manner in which war--which is division by definition--exerts its paradoxically unifying effect.

[taxed2death]

I still have my Grandfathers WW1 Army "trunk" (looks kinda like a musicians road case) I guess you would call it, complete with all the stickers plastered on the outside from all the ports of call and stops he made in Europe. Inside on the underside of the lid are various pics of Ladies in various stages of dress with their ankles exposed!!!!....pretty racy for that day...and a newspaper clipping of a dough boy charging forward with his rifle.
I wouldn't part with it for all the money in the world.

[CarolTX]

The finest WWI memorial I ever saw was in Paris, France.(don't hit me, fellow FReepers....!)

It was not in my guidebook...I just came upon it walking around the Latin Quarter. It astounding...a huge stone carving, covering the entire wall of a building at the end of the street.
A liberty-goddess sort is in the center, holding a sword over her head, obviously ready for the down-stroke. Crushed under her foot...about to be beheaded... is a large snake. Details of both figures are very nicely executed in the stone, and the symbolism of Victory over the Enemy was NOT...as they say..."subtle".

Around this tableau are lists of French units that served and a slogan (exact wording escapes me) to the effect of "the honored dead who fought for Liberty."

The piece obviously was created when WWI still was thought to be the War to End All Wars. Very moving...

[G.Mason]

Christopher Hitchens is many things, no doubt, but I confess I have never heard him described in quite that manner.

Still, what you say has merit.

I believe others have stated that he suffers from pretentious diction. ;)

"... And of course, since the fish rots from the head (and also the guts, the heart, the leaping piscine genitalia and the most extreme and flapping fins, in a positive orgy of moral and linguistic deliquescence)" ... Christopher Hitchens

May I have another, please?

[x]

When Dalton Trumbo wrote his leftist antiwar classic "Johnnie Got His Gun," he little expected that it would be used as a propaganda tool by pro-fascist isolationists in the late 1930s, and that he would be protesting in vain that this was not what he had really meant.

First of all, those isolationists may not have been "pro-fascist."

Secondly, they did get Trumbo's message alright. Dalton Trumbo published "Johnny Got His Gun" (note spelling) in 1939. He knew what he was after. Opposition to war against Hitler was the Communist Party line before the Soviet Union was itself attacked.

[Erasmus]

So, you're saying that when it comes to survival of the species, we're all thumbs?

< ]B^0)

[G.Mason]

"So, you're saying that when it comes to survival of the species, we're all thumbs?"

Of course. How else would we be able to bowl?

[Old Professer]

I once watched him being interviewed with an obvious hangover of Olympian proportions; while sipping liquid fortification he deflected every barb and stone flung his way with that selfsame linguistic deliquescence until the interviewer was reduced to single-syllable protestation.

[G.Mason]

"I once watched him being interviewed with an obvious hangover of Olympian proportions; while sipping liquid fortification he deflected every barb and stone flung his way with that selfsame linguistic deliquescence until the interviewer was reduced to single-syllable protestation."

Truly amazing.

I had the great fortune of being stationed in GB in the early '60's, and have had the pleasure of imbibing with Englishmen such as he, but none as articulate or well versed. (as I remember) ;)

[Savage Beast]

Of course I meant Todd Beamer. I think I was also thinking of Rachel Scott. The wonderful thing about both of them is that they were people just like the rest of us, but they were both heroes.