Posted on 08/04/2014 3:16:50 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Lights across Britain were being switched off for an hour on Monday night in a tribute to the dead of World War One, inspired by the prophetic observation of Britain's foreign minister on the eve of war 100 years ago.
"The lamps are going out all over Europe," Edward Grey told an acquaintance, shortly before Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914. "We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."
British landmarks, including the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and St Paul's Cathedral, went dark from 10 p.m., and Prime Minister David Cameron had asked Britons to switch off all but a single light in their homes for an hour.
The "war to end all wars" spread carnage across Europe, especially northern France and Belgium, killing 17 million soldiers and civilians in 1914-18. ....
Prime Minister Cameron and Prince William, second in line to the throne, attended 100th anniversary ceremonies in Scotland and Belgium on Monday. Speaking at an event in Liege, William paid tribute to those who died. He noted that the current fighting in Ukraine showed instability continued to stalk Europe.
"We were enemies more than once in the last century and today we are friends and allies," the prince said, alluding to Germany and its cohorts in the first and second world wars.
"We salute those who died to give us our freedom. We will remember them," he told Belgium's King Philippe and other heads of state attending the Liege ceremony at the Allies' Memorial, near to where German troops invaded Belgium in the early hours of Aug. 4, 1914 - the event which brought Britain into the war.
Commemorations in Germany are understated, with no national initiative to remember the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
And apropos of gun-grabbing governments, this bit of news:
James Brady has died, having been for much of his life a tool of that shrill harridan Mrs. Brady in her attack on our rights and liberties.
I’m not going to miss you much, James.
17,000,000 dead, that is terrible.
On The Wire
O God, take the sun from the sky!
It’s burning me, scorching me up.
God, can’t You hear my cry?
Water! A poor, little cup!
It’s laughing, the cursed sun!
See how it swells and swells
Fierce as a hundred hells!
God, will it never have done?
It’s searing the flesh on my bones;
It’s beating with hammers red
My eyeballs into my head;
It’s parching my very moans.
See! It’s the size of the sky,
And the sky is a torrent of fire,
Foaming on me as I lie
Here on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Of the thousands that wheeze and hum
Heedlessly over my head,
Why can’t a bullet come,
Pierce to my brain instead,
Blacken forever my brain,
Finish forever my pain?
Here in the hellish glare
Why must I suffer so?
Is it God doesn’t care?
Is it God doesn’t know?
Oh, to be killed outright,
Clean in the clash of the fight!
That is a golden death,
That is a boon; but this . . .
Drawing an anguished breath
Under a hot abyss,
Under a stooping sky
Of seething, sulphurous fire,
Scorching me up as I lie
Here on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Hasten, O God, Thy night!
Hide from my eyes the sight
Of the body I stare and see
Shattered so hideously.
I can’t believe that it’s mine.
My body was white and sweet,
Flawless and fair and fine,
Shapely from head to feet;
Oh no, I can never be
The thing of horror I see
Under the rifle fire,
Trussed on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Of night and of death I dream;
Night that will bring me peace,
Coolness and starry gleam,
Stillness and death’s release:
Ages and ages have passed, —
Lo! it is night at last.
Night! but the guns roar out.
Night! but the hosts attack.
Red and yellow and black
Geysers of doom upspout.
Silver and green and red
Star-shells hover and spread.
Yonder off to the right
Fiercely kindles the fight;
Roaring near and more near,
Thundering now in my ear;
Close to me, close . . . Oh, hark!
Someone moans in the dark.
I hear, but I cannot see,
I hear as the rest retire,
Someone is caught like me,
Caught on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
Again the shuddering dawn,
Weird and wicked and wan;
Again, and I’ve not yet gone.
The man whom I heard is dead.
Now I can understand:
A bullet hole in his head,
A pistol gripped in his hand.
Well, he knew what to do, —
Yes, and now I know too. . . .
Hark the resentful guns!
Oh, how thankful am I
To think my beloved ones
Will never know how I die!
I’ve suffered more than my share;
I’m shattered beyond repair;
I’ve fought like a man the fight,
And now I demand the right
(God! how his fingers cling!)
To do without shame this thing.
Good! there’s a bullet still;
Now I’m ready to fire;
Blame me, God, if You will,
Here on the wire . . . the wire. . . .
If I live to be 100. I’ll never forget my great uncle, my hero, sitting in his rocking chair at the farm house smoking his pipe and suddenly, out of the blue, starting to tell me about trench warfare in WWI. He hadn’t ever spoken if the war before that day. He lied about his age to get in. He was so badly gassed that when he came home they told him he had maybe a year to live. He lived to be 84 years old. HewNted me to memorize this poem as a young man, and I did. It still makes me, an old man now, cry just like my uncle did, but with no where near the justification.
And in a relatively small area too v. what was going on in WWII, even though it had more overall casualties.
Thank you for the post.
Tons of entire families probably wiped out.
And together with WWII it created a vacuum in Europe’s population that was filled with the immigration of muzzies starting in the early 1960’s just when Europe’s industry started to bloom.
And, of course, America did not want to look homophobic and had to invite them in also, although they have nothing to offer mankind but misery, violence and death.
This is a dim memory and I can’t footnote it, but I read an account that Charles de Gaulle was the one who turned to the Muslim world, big time, and France is being overrun with Muslims.
Died for no reason at all. A completely useless war.
Great post, thanks for the poem. I could never coax much conversation from my grandfather about his service. He did mention a July 4th march through Paris, though - to Lafayette’s tomb, I believe.
I think the French involvement with the Muslims goes much further back, at least to the days of the Napoleonic Wars.
The British have chosen to welcome the Muslims with open arms today. I will not send them a dollar or a single round of ammunition to fight for England of years gone by.
Memory Eternal!
WWI gave us some outstanding poetry. My favorite has been:
“I Have a Rendezvous with Death”
Alan Seeger. 1888–1916
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.
I was taught in some class in the army, many years ago now, that Longstreet, one of Lee’s 2 go-to generals (and also a friend of US Grant), invented what became trench warfare at the defense of Richmond, Virginia. Without the gas, without the machines that killed, they still killed very well.
Both of those wars amaze me. That living men would rise up in huge mass formations and rush into certain death is a testimony to something. If nothing else, it’s a testimony to a man’s resolve not to be seen as weak, as the weak link, in the eyes of his friends.
This is a great bit of writing. I hadn’t looked at the title, Kolo, so was unaware it was a thread about WWI. I had it hit me quickly...at the 2d repetition of “the wire..the wire”
All of Robert Service’s war poetry is like that. There was an Englishman, Wilfred Owen who, I believe, was killed in action a week before the Armistice at the crossing of the Sambre-Oise canal. His poetry was equally intense:
“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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I 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.”
Motorhead - 1916
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqFoqtpUFY8
16 years old when I went to the war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side, and a gun in my hand,
Chasing my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled and I died,
And I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time that a year in the line,
Is a long enough life for a soldier,
We all volunteered, and we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history’s pages,
And we brawled and we fought and we whored ‘til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun, we were food for the gun,
And that’s what you are when you’re soldiers,
I heard my friend cry, and he sank to his knees,
Coughing blood as he screamed for his mother,
And I fell by his side, and that’s how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud and the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother and she never came,
Though it wasn’t my fault and I wasn’t to blame,
The day not half over and ten thousand slain,
And now there’s nobody remembers our names,
And that’s how it is for a soldier.
I have read over the verse and pause and once again to damn that war. I know of the raw deal that followed the armistice, for returning soldiers. Politicians had made many promises. Unemployment was rife in England. I do remember the many veterans of that awful war during the war years of 1930-1945. Naturally the talk was all about the "boys' serving at that time.
As a child I remember how it seemed that nobody wanted to hear the stories of the "Old Contemptibles". The British Expeditionary Force to France. The Kaiser had been deliberately misquoted, to have people believe he meant Britain had a "contemptible little army". Of course, the propaganda against Germany in Britain was deliberate and a tactic.
I remember the glances on the buses at the time on seeing certain older men who twitched and jerked. "Shell shock" was the whisper. I knew my maternal grandfather who was called up in 1916. He was in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He never claimed any heroics. Nobody would listen to him about that war, being all too engrossed in current events.
How easily were those veterans forgotten, though that is my view.
Whoops! War years of 1939-1945.
Why bother turning them on again? They’ve pretty much DESTROYED their country, even more so that WW1 (or WW2) did.
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