[Uncle Miltie]

Resquiat in Pacem.

[Uncle Miltie]

[bigbob]

Thank you for posting this - it is most memorable to me.

I remember setting out a field of little crosses and poppies with my folks on Memorial and Veterans Day, a VFW project that I didn’t understand the significance of until later. My dad passed away last year, age 90, WWII - the Big Red One. Purple Heart, Silver Star, Bronze Star medal.

I appreciate you allowing me to use this thread to say thank you Dad, and to all veterans.

[Old Sarge]

The Eleventh Hour.
The Eleventh Day.
The Eleventh Month.

There is hardly anyone alive who remembers.

[rdl6989]

bttt

[outpostinmass2]

Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae died of pneumonia in 1918.

[Uncle Miltie]

[So Cal Rocket]

The genius of this poem lies in the last lines of verses two and three; the words “In Flanders Field”.

Every other line in the poem is written in Iambic Quatrameter. Each line has 4 Iambs (da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH), except for these two, which are cut short at two Iambs... signifying the lives cut short by the war.

[Company Man]

When it got to the part about feeling the warmth of dawn and the glow of sunset, the screen got real blurry. Almost couldn’t finish; but the final challenge from the dead to the living startled me out of that foolish reverie.

[BigOrangeI]

In Flanders fields the poppies grow

I think it “grow” not blow

[binreadin]

Alan Seeger

I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.

God knows ‘twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.

[VietVet]

“If you break faith with us who die, we shall not rest...”

I think I'll have that chiseled on my gravestone.