Got
11-11-2005, 03:59 PM
I was late for college today so I decided just to go to the cinema but before I did so I went to get some lunch. It was a relatively nice day so I thought I'd go eat it in George Square (Glasgow's equivalent of Trafalgar Square) which has a massive War memorial at one end. Anyway as I looked up I noticed that a grandfather was holding his grandson's hand and both were staring up at the memorial in what I assume was silent remembrance.
It's not often I'm touched by something (even though that Last Post gets me every time) but that sight sent a shiver up my spine. I've heard the words "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them." probably every year since birth but when they played through my head when I saw that I fell in to a seeming coma of contemplation - which, by the way, I was rudely awoken from an hour later by Murderball.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I didn't realise or appreciate it when I was younger, those who fought in the hellish conditions of both World Wars did an incredibly important thing for us and it is vital to just take a couple of minutes out and let mind drift to it, especially considering a lot of them didn't have any choice in the matter in the first place.
One of my favourites, by the way:
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.
-Wilfred Owen
It's not often I'm touched by something (even though that Last Post gets me every time) but that sight sent a shiver up my spine. I've heard the words "At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them." probably every year since birth but when they played through my head when I saw that I fell in to a seeming coma of contemplation - which, by the way, I was rudely awoken from an hour later by Murderball.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that, while I didn't realise or appreciate it when I was younger, those who fought in the hellish conditions of both World Wars did an incredibly important thing for us and it is vital to just take a couple of minutes out and let mind drift to it, especially considering a lot of them didn't have any choice in the matter in the first place.
One of my favourites, by the way:
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.
-Wilfred Owen