To Our Fallen

[Perknose]

A member on another forum posted this:

Yesterday my five year old grand daughter said "Pops why were you selling poppies today?"

• • In Flanders Fields
    John McCrae, 1915.
    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.

I say:

Here's to the grunt, the troop, the lonely, scared PFC patrolling on point, with that haunted and haunting thousand yard stare -- to all the men and women who have given their "last, full measure" under the streaming colors of Old Glory, that our republic, our grand experiment, the United States of America, might endure amongst men.

May every mother's son find his way safely back home.

Here's to my late father, Lt. Cmdr. George Henry Perkins, who saw the winds of war coming and volunteered in 1939 for the Navy -- who marched in every day to his commanding officer and asked, until at last, one year later, he relented and let my dad join his brothers in arms in the shooting war in the South Pacific -- who saw his sister ship, a fleet oiler (think about that for a second) blown sky high by a kamakazie -- who set foot on Japaneese soil BEFORE the armistice was signed, taking the still functioning light rail from Yokohama naval base up into destroyed Tokyo with a detail of armed officers, but who silently but firmly opposed our folly in Vietnam even as I, as a high school senior, was writing a 30 page paper that ended, "My country, right of wrong".

May we all learn to live in peace.

Wilfred Owen was a Shropshire born lad who served in His Majesty's Artist's Rifles and who was killed in combat on November 4th, 1918, just seven scant days before World War I, that brutal, unrelenting meat grinder of a war, ground to a shuddering halt.

But Wilfred Owen left behind some of the most transcendant war poetry ever written, including Dulce Et Decorum Est. The poem is so titled, and ends with the Latin "Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori", which translates as "Sweet and honorable it is to die for one's country".

Dulce Et Decorum Est


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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.

Every year for more than two decades, my good friend Steve would fly our from Los Angeles before the 4th of July and we would drive down to Washington DC and pay our respects at the Vietnam memorial. We both have a lot of good friends whose sacrifice is enshrined on that cold, black marble.

May you all rest in serentiy and peace, my brothers.

So long as I live, you will never be forgotten.

 

[zendari]

:thumbsup:

God bless our troops.

 

[conjur]

:thumbsup:

May our men and women come home soon.