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Thread: In Flander's Field

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Dec 2002
    Location
    Montreal
    Posts
    2,373

    In Flander's Field

    "In Flander's Fields"
    By John McCrae

    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.

  2. #2
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    Feb 2003
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    Unhappy "A BEACH IN FRANCE"

    by Frank Gibbons

    Last night I sat and watched a man die
    He wasn't afraid he seemed in good cheer.
    Last night I sat and asked myself why
    A dying man should feel no fear.


    One minute he breathed, a faint smile on his face
    He wasn't afraid he seemed so at peace
    One minute he was here and then he was gone
    An empty shell in a lonely space


    He said "At last I'm old" and then he died
    Too many go young when a thief steals their time
    At least he was warm, with a friend by his side
    No one should die alone


    Last night I sat and watched a man die
    He was'nt afraid, he'd faced death before
    Last night he told me how he'd stolen his time
    On a beach in France in '44'.


    From youth he jumped chest high in pink water
    Wading ashore in another worlds war
    Random selection in a senseless slaughte
    Praying to his Jesus for a few minutes more


    He killed his first man near that beach in France
    Fifty years later he still prayed for his soul
    He found his God on that beach in France
    Crying in terror in a too shallow hole
    It's idomatic, beatch.

  3. #3
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    Oct 2003
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    Close, but not close enough
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    http://www.fotomatic.nl/data/thumbna...s_Fields_1.jpg

    Nice, Gin

    Good place to say "Thank You"

  4. #4
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    Feb 2003
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    North Coast
    Posts
    2,615

    "Dulce et Decorum Est"

    by Wilfred Owen

    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 gas shells dropping softly 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.


    Overplayed, but still my favorite.
    It's idomatic, beatch.

  5. #5
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    Dec 2002
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    2,373
    Nautical Disaster
    by the Tragically Hip

    I had this dream
    where I relished
    The fray
    and the screaming filled my head all day
    It was as though
    I'd been spit there
    settled in,
    into a pocket
    Of a lighthouse off some rocky socket,
    Off the coast of France,
    Dear

    One afternoon,
    four thousand men
    died in the water
    here
    And five hundred more were thrashing madly
    as parasites might in your blood
    Now I was in lifeboat
    designed for ten
    and ten only
    Anything
    that systematic
    would get you hated.
    It's not a deal nor a test nor a love of something fated.

    The selection was quick,
    the crew was picked
    and those left in the water
    were kicked off our pant legs

    and we headed for home.

    Then the dream ends
    when the phone rings
    You're doing alright
    except it's out there,
    most days and nights,
    but only a fool would complain

    Anyway
    Susan
    if you like
    our conversation is as faint a sound
    in my memory
    As those fingernails
    scratching on my hull

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Calgary
    Posts
    771
    Thanks for my freedom, grandpa.

    I had the opportunity to tour Vimmy Ridge a few years back. Walking through the trenches, seeing the remnants of the barbed wire, thinking about what our boys must have seen, smelt, and heard, really makes me appreciate the freedom they provided me with.

    On a semi related note, John McCrae was my grade 5 teachers uncle.
    I went out there in search of experience. To taste, and to touch, and to feel as much as a man can, before he repents.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Posts
    3,303
    In Your War Dream
    By Richard Hugo

    You must fly your 35 missions again.
    The old base is reopened. The food is still bad.
    You are disturbed. The phlegm you choked up
    mornings in fear returns. You strangle on the phlegm.
    You ask, "Why must I do this again?" A man
    replies, "Home." You fly over one country
    after another. The nations are bright like a map.
    You pass over the red one. The orange one ahead
    looks cold. The purple one north of that is the one
    you must bomb. A wild land. Austere. The city
    below seems ancient. You are on the ground.
    Lovers are inside a cabin. You ask to come in.
    The say, "No. Keep watch on Stark Yellow Lake."
    You stand beside the odd water. A terrible wind
    keeps knocking you down. "I'm keeping watch
    on the lake," you yell at the cabin. The lovers
    don't answer. You break into the cabin. Inside
    old women bake bread. They yell, "Return to the base."
    You must fly your 35 missions again.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    Jordan's Cabin
    Posts
    506
    bump

    Went to the the remembrance day service here in Fenie. Was very well attended by young and old.

    Least we Forget,
    "A lack of planning and preparation on your part does not make it an emergency on my part."

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    Babylon
    Posts
    13,837
    Thanks to all who risked so much so we may have the freedom to criticize our current folly if we so choose.
    Thanks especially to Lt.Col Richard E Davis & Cpl Elvin " Bud " Johnson may they both rest in peace

    The Ballad of Ira Hayes
    Written by Peter LaFarge
    Recorded by Johnny Cash on 3/5/64


    Call him drunken Ira Hayes
    He won't answer anymore
    Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
    Nor the Marine that went to war

    Gather round me people there's a story I would tell
    About a brave young Indian you should remember well
    From the land of the Pima Indian
    A proud and noble band
    Who farmed the Phoenix valley in Arizona land

    Down the ditches for a thousand years
    The water grew Ira's peoples' crops
    'Till the white man stole the water rights
    And the sparklin' water stopped

    Now Ira's folks were hungry
    And their land grew crops of weeds
    When war came, Ira volunteered
    And forgot the white man's greed

    CHORUS:
    Call him drunken Ira Hayes
    He won't answer anymore
    Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
    Nor the Marine that went to war

    There they battled up Iwo Jima's hill,
    Two hundred and fifty men
    But only twenty-seven lived to walk back down again

    And when the fight was over
    And when Old Glory raised
    Among the men who held it high
    Was the Indian, Ira Hayes

    CHORUS:
    Call him drunken Ira Hayes
    He won't answer anymore
    Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
    Nor the Marine that went to war

    Ira returned a hero
    Celebrated through the land
    He was wined and speeched and honored;
    Everybody shook his hand

    But he was just a Pima Indian
    No water, no crops, no chance
    At home nobody cared what Ira'd done
    And when did the Indians dance

    CHORUS:
    Call him drunken Ira Hayes
    He won't answer anymore
    Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
    Nor the Marine that went to war

    Then Ira started drinkin' hard;
    Jail was often his home
    They'd let him raise the flag and lower it
    like you'd throw a dog a bone!

    He died drunk one mornin'
    Alone in the land he fought to save
    Two inches of water in a lonely ditch
    Was a grave for Ira Hayes

    CHORUS:
    Call him drunken Ira Hayes
    He won't answer anymore
    Not the whiskey drinkin' Indian
    Nor the Marine that went to war

    Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
    But his land is just as dry
    And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
    In the ditch where Ira died

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Location
    FAR
    Posts
    345
    Freedom didn't come free.

    Thanks, to all who gave so much.

    So the rest of us could live knowing what Freedom is.

    Never Forget.
    Smoke'em If You Got'em

  11. #11
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
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    portland of the west
    Posts
    4,083
    why is veterans day always prominently associated with d-day and ww2?

    pray that these guys get to celebrate their own.
    http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com...lt-273x374.jpg
    fine

  12. #12
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    Oct 2003
    Location
    Great White North
    Posts
    305
    Least we forget.....Thanks Grandpa.
    Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin pussy

  13. #13
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    Nov 2003
    Location
    westie
    Posts
    2,534
    The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
    by Randall Jarrell

    From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
    And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
    Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
    I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
    When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
    http://tetongravity.com/forums/image.php?type=sigpic&userid=932&dateline=12042516  96

  14. #14
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Posts
    8,881
    The Soldier
    by Rupert Brooke

    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.

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