Friday, April 14, 2017

For This!

Overheard at Lem's:
Chip Ahoy said...I don't get that sense at all. Not from this poem.

The dead are saying pick up our dispute we died for and continue because even though flowers grow here, if you don't, we won't rest and that means we'll haunt you.*
It's a very good poem. Gave me the shivers.
April 14, 2017 at 5:26 PM
This is the final version of a moving tribute to the men -- mostly dead -- who fought at The Somme in the summer of 1916. I blogged a preliminary version on the centenary.

It is stunning in concept and well done. Bravo!
______________________
*The WW I dead haunted me and still do, which explains my ongoing fascination. Remember to remember.

[Added: There is a 1916 version of MOAB beginning around the 18 min mark]

7 comments:

chickelit said...

Note that the original 1916 film speed has been normalized -- something I worried about in Slowing Down The Past.
Rhhardin set me straight.

Jerky old footage is a relic of the present and not of the past.

edutcher said...

That's a mine. They'd actually dig a tunnel and place explosives under the enemy positions.

Sometimes it even worked.

The poppies, of course, are the symbol of remembrance Day in Britain.

PS Chip's take on Flanders Fields is reminiscent of the old Kipling poem "The White Man's burden", which doesn't brag about British colonialism, but urges the US not to let the Philippines go, but to colonize and develop them.

Had we not done so, WWII and the subsequent history may have taken a very different turn.

chickelit said...

The story of Monk Eastman actually.

A perfect character name for one of your "Eastern" genre Westerns. You can make up the truth.

ampersand said...

The BBC did a 26 part documentary,"The Great War" in 1964. Someone has posted it on You Tube. I don't think it was ever broadcast here.

Trooper York said...

Both Eastman and Lovett were very interesting characters. New York gangsters who went Over There and became military heroes.

Lovett in particular had a very interesting life.

chickelit said...

Both Eastman and Lovett were very interesting characters. New York gangsters who went Over There and became military heroes.

Like the protagonist in "Peaky Blinders": Thomas Shelby was a "tunneler" at the Somme.

chickelit said...

I don't get why this sort of video/film effort doesn't win anything.

Meanwhile, SJW stuff piles up the awards.