Marines Study Poetry as They Prepare for Battle

ABOARD USS PELELIU (Reuters) - U.S. marines poised for battle are taking time off between keeping fit and cleaning their guns to study anger management and World War One poetry.

``(The war poetry) gives them an outlet to maybe express what they're going through right now,'' said Captain Chris Picado, who teaches an English class to 18 marines on board the USS Peleliu warship in the Arabian Sea.

``If anything it'll make them better writers to their wives,'' said Picado, keen to be a high school teacher after she leaves the marines where she works in intelligence.

British poetry from World War One has been a popular choice, with Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est among the favorites.

``The way some of the poets describe some of the wars, it's very graphic,'' said Lance Corporal Garret Clapp from Michigan who prepares weapons for Harrier jets based on the ship.

``You look at the movies and the way they make things very horrific and lifelike with blood and guts -- to be able to take those same images and describe them so that I, the reader, can get the same effect, it's really amazing,'' said Geoff Newson, 23, from Portland, Oregon, a sergeant in the military police on the Peleliu.

``Just by what he said you actually can feel it, or you can get a mental picture of the death or the awful sights and sounds and smells that they were going through during that time.''

The Peleliu and two other ships in a marine expeditionary unit carry around 2,200 marines trained for lightning missions in hostile territory, from seizing airfields to emergency evacuations and raids.

The U.S. military will only say the unit is supporting Washington's ``Operation Enduring Freedom'' anti-terror campaign, now focused on Afghanistan (news - web sites). It has confirmed involvement in just one incident ``in country'' -- the recovery of a downed helicopter in Pakistan.

But few doubt the marines will play a role. The marines on the Peleliu say they are ready for anything.

That means the Peleliu is a stressful place, according to one of the ship's chaplains, Donald Troast, who teaches an anger management course to 17 marines on board.

``We don't judge anger as negative or positive,'' Troast said. ``It's an emotion that we all have. The folks who come to the class realize they are not acting it out as healthily as they could.''

Others have their own ways of dealing with the pressure of long periods on ship with little or no privacy and long working days.

Staff Sergeant Kion Clark from Philadelphia likes to go up on the flight deck at dawn each day to greet the sunrise for a few moments of solitude.

Colonel Thomas Waldhauser, commander of the marines on board, likes to run around the flight deck for an hour to gather his thoughts, while William Jezierski, navy commodore of the marine unit, reads Tom Clancy novels when he has a spare moment.

``I don't know anybody who actually writes poetry,'' said William Griesmeyer, 33, from Kettering, Ohio, another student of the English class.

Newson, who plans to join the police back home in Oregon when he leaves the marines, agrees that poetry is ``lost in our generation.''

``I don't really write it down. Nowadays we can e-mail, that's how to document how you feel, keep in touch with the outside world,'' he said.

``E-mail is pretty much my poetry -- writing my thoughts, my feelings so other people can understand what I'm going through.''

Yes the guns fell silent on the 11 of November, and he was killed in action on the 4th of November.

I am not one for poetry myself but there was something about his poems.

My favourite is DULCE ET DECORUM EST

the last verse I think is very fitting for today

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 sweet and meet (fitting) to die for one's country."

Change country to religion and I think it would be a good message to give to those young Muslims who want to go of and die for their religion.

Tony

The Last Laugh

'Oh! Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain, vain!
Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.

Another sighed,-'O Mother, -Mother, - Dad!'
Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured,-Fool!
And the splinters spat, and tittered.

'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till slowly lowered, his whole faced kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
And the Gas hissed.

Read this and tell me that THIS doesn't get your blood flowing:

KING HENRY V
Gloucester: Where is the King?
Bedford: The King himself is rode to view their battle.
Westmoreland: Of fighting men, they have full three-score thousand.
Exeter: There’s five to one; besides, they all are fresh.
Salisbury: God’s arm strike with us! ‘Tis a fearful odds.
Westmoreland: O that we now had here but one ten thousand of those men in England that do no work to-day!

King Henry V: What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold;
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires;
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour,
As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, throughout my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the Feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say, To-morrow is Saint Crispian:
Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouths as household words –-
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester -–
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day!

Some may not consider this poetry .. as it's from a Shakespeare play .. but most any passage extracted from KING HENRY V contains some of the most blood-rousing words in the English language, particularly this one and the "Once more unto the breach"/Harfleur "half-time" speech.

Yes, good point. It's only since the 1960s that poetry (like almost everything else) has turned into PC girly mush and become largely irrelevant to most Americans. Prior to that, any even rudimentarily educated person in this country used to have a large stock of "basic poems" at his command, including bits of Shakespeare and also including a number of patriotic poems.

Incidentally, I once read a study of POWs who spent a long time in captivity. Those who had more things to remember - particularly poems, songs and other texts that they could recall and recite to themselves - emerged in better mental condition than those who had more limited supplies. After all, the mind needs ammunition, too. That said, I hope they're giving these Marines the right type of ammunition, and not the PC multi-cult garbage that has virtually destroyed poetry in this country.

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