IN FLANDERS FIELDS, THE POPPIES BLOW........

[billcoe]

"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 McCrae, 1915

[billcoe]

Thus ends the day of remembrance of Armistice day, to celebrate the end of the War which would end all wars.

 

Perhaps in Afghanistan, where they know for poppies, we can end that on 11-11-2014 as an end date so that the poppies can continue to be utilized as a symbol? All that's needed is a solid catch phrase. The "War to End all Wars" has already been done.

[murraysovereign]

Poppies are still widely used - UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand... there's nothing stopping you Yanks from doing the same.

 

Has the US never used the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, or was it dropped at some point?

[ivan]

never much like that flanders field poem - too pro war...it's not a poem about remembering shit, just getting even, and guilt-tripping you to do it no less, like some demented jewish-mother.

 

a far, far better one from that war, from a guy who's mom found out he died the exact day the armistice was announced:

 

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.

 

 

[murraysovereign]

A little too graphic for my tastes.

 

"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."

 

Short, simple, and poignant.

[ivan]

A little too graphic for my tastes.

i'm prepared to accept other folks have tastes n' opinions other than my own....but...i think anything that discredits, de-emphasizes or dismisses the awfulness of war does nothing but disservice to those fortunate few that managed to thole it.

 

veterans day should be a reminder why we ought not so merrily march off to war, not a blow-job to hallmark and the halliburton that lurks just beyond it

[billcoe]

Poppies are still widely used - UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand... there's nothing stopping you Yanks from doing the same.

 

Has the US never used the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, or was it dropped at some point?

 

Yes Murray -we use to. When I was young many people would put poppies on their lapels this day. Don't know why it ended. The poppies would grow wild where the shells of big guns had slammed and tilled the earth. So you had these wide swaths of destruction, where not even a blade of grass was left standing, turn into a beautiful field of a rolling carpet of pretty poppies after the troops stopped lobbing shells.

 

As far as the poems go, the Wilfred Owens poem was always preferred by me as well. However, the poppies are the symbol of the great war, and Flanders Fields, despite being written by a Canadian, is the poem most commonly associated with it.

 

Interestingly, in France, for domestic consumption: the Americans (and even lesser the Canadians) are noted in passing, and appear to have little historical mention as effecting the outcome. The vets of WW1 were dismayed to see that the War to End all Wars really was only just another big assed way when WW2 started. My grandfather was a Marine in WW1 stuck in the trenches of Belgium. His son - my dad, was in the 8th air force in WW2 and basically tilled the same earth.