In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
4 comments:
For the Limeys, it was a very personal war similar to our Civil War. Many battalions were "Pals battalions", people from the same place, same field of endeavor (one of the reserve SAS regiments is still known as the Artists' Rifles).
You could lose everybody you had known in one attack. For some, any desire to get at the Hun withered; for others, it was a war of annihilation.
ed, I appreciate your historical commentary on this as well on as other subjects. 60,000 casualties in one day at Somme, and close to 20,000 of them killed seems unbelievable for a country that now seems destined to become Muslim.
Socialism.
If you type in Intellectual Squared at Youtube you can access a lot of debates, most of them between Brits, and one of the debates is: Resolved, Britain should not have entered WW I. Really passionate stuff with good points made by both for and against. The Brits felt they had to go in after the rape of Belgium, which was a rape, no doubt about it. Few at the time anticipated anything but a short war, not the war that broke Western Civ.
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