Viewing 22 posts - 1 through 22 (of 22 total)
  • If I should die…….
  • stratobiker
    Free Member

    If I should die, think only this of me;
    That there's some corner of a foreign field
    That is for ever England. There shall be
    In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
    A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
    Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
    A body of England's breathing English air,
    Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

    And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
    A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
    Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
    Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
    And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
    In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

    Rupert Brooke

    Lest we forget.

    SB

    rOcKeTdOg
    Full Member

    And did those feet in ancient time,
    Walk upon England's mountains green?
    And was the Holy Lamb of God
    On England's pleasant pastures seen?

    And did the Countenance Divine,
    Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
    And was Jerusalem builded here
    Among those dark Satanic mills?

    Bring me my bow of burning gold!
    Bring me my arrows of desire!
    Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
    Bring me my Chariot of Fire!

    I will not cease from mental fight;
    Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
    Til we have built Jerusalem
    In England's green and pleasant land

    William Blake
    (probably also frowned upon by the PC lot)

    GrahamS
    Full Member

    Half-mast the castle banner droops,
        The Laird's lament was played yestreen,
    An' mony a widowed cottar wife
        Is greetin' at her shank aleen.
    In Freedom's cause, for ane that fa's,
        We'll gleen the glens a' send them three
    To clip the reivin' eagle's claws,
        An' drook his feathers i' the sea.
    For gallant loons, in brochs an' toons,
        Are leavin' shop an' yard an' mill,
    A keen to show baith friend an' foe
        Auld Scotland counts for something still.

    "The Sough o' War" (The Sigh of War), Charles Murray

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    AndyP
    Free Member

    It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
    Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
    Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

    Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
    Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
    Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
    With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
    Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
    And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
    By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

    With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
    Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
    And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
    "Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
    "None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
    The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
    Was my life also; I went hunting wild
    After the wildest beauty in the world,
    Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
    But mocks the steady running of the hour,
    And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
    For by my glee might many men have laughed,
    And of my weeping something has been left,
    Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
    The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
    Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
    Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
    They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
    None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
    Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
    Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
    To miss the march of this retreating world
    Into vain citadels that are not walled.
    Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot—wheels
    I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
    Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
    I would have poured my spirit without stint
    But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
    Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

    I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
    I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned
    Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
    I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
    Let us sleep now . . ."

    Wilf O

    clubber
    Free Member

    Suicide in the Trenches – Seigfried Sassoon

    I knew a simple soldier boy
    Who grinned at life in empty joy,
    Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
    And whistled early with the lark.

    In winter trenches, cowed and glum
    With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
    He put a bullet through his brain.
    No one spoke of him again.

    You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
    Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
    Sneak home and pray you'll never know
    The hell where youth and laughter go.

    backhander
    Free Member

    It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
    The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    As the team's head-brass flashed out on the turn
    The lovers disappeared into the wood.
    I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm
    That strewed the angle of the fallow, and
    Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square
    Of charlock. Every time the horses turned
    Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned
    Upon the handles to say or ask a word,
    About the weather, next about the war.
    Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,
    And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed
    Once more.

    The blizzard felled the elm whose crest
    I sat in, by a woodpecker's round hole,
    The ploughman said. "When will they take it away?"
    "When the war's over." So the talk began-–
    One minute and an interval of ten,
    A minute more and the same interval.
    "Have you been out?" "No." "And don't want to, perhaps?"
    "If I could only come back again, I should.
    I could spare an arm, I shouldn't want to lose
    A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,
    I should want nothing more. . . Have many gone
    From here?" "Yes." "Many lost?" 'Yes, a good few.
    Only two teams work on the farm this year.
    One of my mates is dead. The second day
    In France they killed him. It was back in March,
    The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if
    He had stayed here we should have moved the tree."
    "And I should not have sat here. Everything
    Would have been different. For it would have been
    Another world." "Ay, and a better, though
    If we could see all all might seem good." Then
    The lovers came out of the wood again:
    The horses started and for the last time
    I watched the clods crumble and topple over
    After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

    Edward Thomas.

    And, as it really does need to be here as well;

    For the Fallen (Laurence Binyon)

    With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
    England mourns for her dead across the sea.
    Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
    Fallen in the cause of the free.

    Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
    Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
    There is music in the midst of desolation
    And a glory that shines upon our tears.

    They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
    Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
    They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
    They fell with their faces to the foe.

    They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
    Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
    At the going down of the sun and in the morning
    We will remember them.

    They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
    They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
    They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
    They sleep beyond England's foam.

    But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
    Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
    To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
    As the stars are known to the Night;

    As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
    Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
    As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
    To the end, to the end, they remain.

    nickname
    Free Member

    I have a Rendezvous with Death, by 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.

    simonfbarnes
    Free Member

    Roger Daltry

    Hope we don't get fooled again

    BlindMelon
    Free Member

    Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride
    Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
    And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
    I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
    And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
    When you joined the great fallen in 1916
    Well I hope you died quick
    And I hope you died clean
    Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene

    Did they beat the drums slowly
    Did they play the fife lowly
    Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
    Did the band play the last post and chorus
    Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

    And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
    In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
    And though you died back in 1916
    To that loyal heart you're forever nineteen
    Or are you a stranger without even a name
    Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
    In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
    And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

    Did they beat the drums slowly
    Did they play the fife lowly
    Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
    Did the band play the last post and chorus
    Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

    The sun shining down on these green fields of France
    The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
    The trenches have vanished long under the plow
    No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
    But here in this graveyard that's still no mans land
    The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
    To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
    And a whole generation were butchered and damned

    Did they beat the drums slowly
    Did they play the fife lowly
    Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
    Did the band play the last post and chorus
    Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

    And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
    Do all those who lie here know why they died
    Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
    Did you really believe that this war would end wars
    Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
    The killing and dying it was all done in vain
    Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
    And again, and again, and again, and again

    Did they beat the drums slowly
    Did they play the fife lowly
    Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
    Did the band play the last post and chorus
    Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

    Eric Bogle

    pennine
    Free Member

    When I was a young man I carried my pack
    And I lived the free life of a rover
    From the murrays green basin to the dusty outback
    I waltzed my matilda all over
    Then in nineteen fifteen my country said son
    It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be
    Done
    So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
    And they sent me away to the war
    And the band played waltzing matilda
    As we sailed away from the quay
    And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the
    Cheers
    We sailed off to gallipoli

    How well I remember that terrible day
    ≪when> the blood stained the sand and the water
    And how in that hell that they called suvla bay
    We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
    Johnny turk he was ready, he primed himself well
    He <showered> us with bullets, he rained us with
    Shells
    And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
    Nearly blew us right back to australia
    But the band played waltzing matilda
    As we stopped to bury our slain
    And we buried ours and the turks buried theirs
    Then <it> started all over again

    Now those <who were living did their best to survive>
    In <that> mad world of blood, death and fire
    And for <seven long> weeks I kept myself alive
    ≪while the corpses around me piled higher>
    Then a big turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
    And when I woke up in my hospital bed
    And saw what it had done, <christ> I wished I was
    Dead
    Never knew there were worse things than dying
    ≪and> no more I'll go waltzing matilda
    ≪to> the green <bushes so> far and near
    For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
    No more waltzing matilda for me

    So they collected the cripples, the wounded <and>
    Maimed
    And they shipped us back home to australia
    ≪the legless, the armless>, the blind <and> insane
    Those proud wounded heroes of suvla
    And as our ship pulled into circular quay
    I looked at the place where <me> legs used to be
    And thank christ there was nobody waiting for me
    To grieve and to mourn and to pity
    And the band played waltzing matilda
    As they carried us down the gangway
    But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
    ≪and they> turned all their faces away

    And now every april I sit on my porch
    And I watch the parade pass before me
    ≪i see> my old comrades, how proudly they march
    Reliving <the or their> dreams of past glory
    ≪i see the old men, all twisted and torn>
    The forgotten heroes <of> a forgotten war
    And the young people ask <me>, "what are they
    Marching for?"
    And I ask myself the same question
    And the band plays waltzing matilda
    And the old men <still> answer to the call
    But year after year their numbers get fewer
    Some day no one will march there at all

    stratobiker
    Free Member

    Just got back from the Armistice day rando.
    40 tough kms hammered out in 1:55 mins in the company of friends.

    I was back just before 11:00.
    Just in time to spend a couple of minutes in quiet thought for those who gave so much.

    SB

    JacksonPollock
    Free Member

    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 a 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.

    Wilfred Owen

    Last verse says it all…

    stratobiker
    Free Member

    Well posted Jackson…..
    as you say…. last verse

    Last quote………………

    They shall grow not old as we that are left grow old:
    Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
    At the going down of the sun and in the morning
    We will remember them.

    SB

    avdave2
    Full Member

    Can I take this opportunity to suggest reading Pat Barkers Ghost Road Trilogy. It's available from The Book People for less than a fiver. Here

    stuartie_c
    Free Member

    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.

    John Macrae, 1915

    BeveledEdge
    Free Member

    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.

    Wilfred Owen

    Translation:
    My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
    To children ardent for some desperate glory,
    The old Lie; How sweet and fitting it is to die for ones country.

    stuartie_c
    Free Member

    What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
    Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.
    No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

    What candles may be held to speed them all?
    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
    Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
    Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

    "Anthem for Doomed Youth", Wilfred Owen, 1917

    Sandwich
    Full Member

    This says it all

    Words by John Maxwell Edmonds

    JulianA
    Free Member

    The inscription you can't see reads

    Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).

    Went to Brookwood Military Cemetery today and left our poppies here.

    Whoever you were, thank you, and all of you.

    pennine
    Free Member

    RIP Dad (RN 1939-1945).
    We are all as thankful to those who came back as we are to those who died.

    He never talked about the bad times or deaths of his shipmates until he was in his 70s.

    JulianA
    Free Member

    pennine – Member
    RIP Dad (RN 1939-1945).
    We are all as thankful to those who came back as we are to those who died

    Of course: well said and thanks for the reminder, as (today especially) we tend to remember those who didn't come back rather than those who did – and surely those who did come back had some pretty awful memories that would have been very hard to share.

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