In Flanders Fields

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In Flanders fields
The poppies grow
Between the crosses,
Row on row,
Which mark our place.

And in the sky,
the lark, still bravely singing, flies
Scarce heard amidst the guns below.

We are the dead.
Short days ago,
We lived,
Drew breath,
Saw sunset’s 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.

For if you break faith
With us who die,
We shall not sleep,
Though poppies blow,
In Flanders fields.
Close to 20 million casualties: military and civilian, dead and injured.

God rest their souls.

2

I was listening to the CBC coverage from Ottawa while a CC-130J Hercules was flying overhead , doing a flyover of the ceremony at the Toronto Mt. Pleasant cemetery. I can imagine that sound of planes overhead in London during the Blitz.

I am quite detached from the act of war, having no family association other than some long-dead great uncles who fought in WW2, but I stop every year at 11am for the moment of silence. We are a free, strong country because of their sacrifice.

3

I read this poem every November 11. My mother had a special fondness for it. As a child in the 1930s, her school class sang the poem.

4

nm

5

In 1987 I went to Washington DC to visit my brother stationed at Walter Reed army hospital.

We visited Arlington, my brother noticed something odd. A couple of extra barricades and then secret service agents materializing like ghosts.

The prime minister of Sweden was in town. Eventually a 50 state flag color guard marched out of mixed servicemen. Then the helicopter landed. Vice President George H W Bush escorted the prime minister to the tomb.

A full wreath laying ceremony by a head of state. Bugler playing taps, then the 21 cannon salute. There were 3 fucking howitzers down the hill that fired in succession.

I served in the Navy and seen a lot of ceremonies and formal occasions, but this was amazing. No speeches, no publicity, maybe a dozen people to watch like us in the right place at the right time.

Let me reiterate, no publicity. Honoring the sacrifices of an Ally. 30 years ago last month and I remember it like yesterday.

God bless you my brethren row upon row.

6

Thank you for printing that poem. I memorized it in high school, and it always breaks my heart.

So much loss. So many futures that never came to be.

7

That is a memorable poem. I also recommend Carl Sandburg, for a reminder of how soon we forget:

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—

I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

8

Thanks for the poem. It was only recently that I discovered it after trying to find out the significance of why everyone on the BBC was wearing a poppy for Remembrance Day.

My high school English teacher was an elderly lady from England. I remember her reading a poem by Rupert Brooke and crying as she read it. I’ve always wondered if she had a relative that was lost during the war. Later, in college we studied the war poets and we had to memorize a poem. I chose The Soldier by Rupert Brooke in her honor. After all these years, I still think it is one of the most beautiful poems in the English language.
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.

9

I was in DC then too, at Gallaudet University, and my roommate was Swedish. He parents were apparently some major bigwigs in Sweden, because her mother called her to say that she should call the Swedish Prime Minister to tell him she was in town, so they could have tea, or something. My roommate was Deaf, and I interpreted all her calls, so I’m thinking “Holy crap, I’m going to interpret a call to the PM of Sweden?” But she decided not to contact him.

I was still pretty fucking impressed. I guess Sweden is a small country. I mean, my parents knew several mayors of NYC, and two governors, and my mother knew Vaclav Havel. She knew him when he was a playwright, before he became president of the independent Czech Republic. I guess size matters. Meeting the US president is a big deal, because you get to be one of 300,000,000 Americans who gets to meet him.

Oh, thanks for the poem. Testament of Youth is one of my two favorite books.

10

I went to Belgium a couple years ago and toured the area where so much of the fighting of WWI occurred. So many cemeteries there - Tyne Cot is one of the largest, but there are many, many smaller ones - some with just a few graves sandwiched between, say, a house and a shop in town. The Menin Gate has memorial wreathspretty much all the time, and remembrance ceremonies. I also saw Essex Farm Cemetery, which is the site of the aid station where the author of In Flanders Fields, John McCrae, did his service. And yes, poppies do grow wild there - the field photo was taken just outside Essex Farm Cemetery.

As an American, it’s always been hard for me to wrap my mind around how devastating this war was for Europe. We don’t have daily reminders of it like I saw in Flanders.

11

Sweden was not an ally in either World War – they remained neutral in both.

There were a lot of Americans of Swedish descent (Minnesota is full of them) who served in the wars – possibly that is who was being honored.

12

Weren’t there a lot a lot of Swedes, though, who were given permission to go to an Allied country and join the military, but not an Axis country during WWII? Without being considered disloyal Swedes?

13

As an American or even British, they have won most every war. I cant imagine what it must be like to be in a country where they have lost or the cause their ancestors fought for is now looked down on - like say Germany.

14

I memorized “In Flanders Fields” years ago, at school, when I was a child. Thanks for posting it, Northern Piper.

15

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.

That’s Wilfred Owen, with the Latin at the end being from Horace a couple of thousand years ago.

16

This last weekend, a lot of the monuments I walk or drive by every day had posies or crowns of flowers. The marquee of a small school I pass said “99 years ago, the armistice”.

To me WWI is “prehistoric stuff” which happened in countries north of the mountains. To my neighbors here in Belgium it’s something still, if barely, in living memory.

17

I thought Lord Dunsany’s book “Tales of War” (Project Gutenberg link) was an interesting perspective on WW1. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, and some show a great deal of bitterness towards the Germans (and the Kaiser, particularly) for perpetuating such a pointless slaughter.

18

*Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold: my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me, God, and make me strong.

I love a game; I love a fight.
I hate the dark; I love the light.
I love my child; I love my wife.
I am no coward. I love Life,

Life with its change of mood and shade.
I want to live. I’m not afraid,
But me and mine are hard to part;
Oh, unknown God, lift up my heart.

You stilled the waters at Dunkirk
And saved Your Servants. All Your work
Is wonderful, dear God. You strode
Before us down that dreadful road.

We were alone, and hope had fled;
We loved our country and our dead,
And could not shame them; so we stayed
The course, and were not much afraid.

Dear God that nightmare road! And then
That sea! We got there-we were men.
My eyes were blind, my feet were torn,
My soul sang like a bird at dawn!

I knew that death is but a door.
I knew what we were fighting for:
Peace for the kids, our brothers freed,
A kinder world, a cleaner breed.

I’m but the son my mother bore,
A simple man, and nothing more.
But-God of strength and gentleness,
Be pleased to make me nothing less.

Help me, O God, when Death is near
To mock the haggard face of fear,
That when I fall-if fall I must-
My soul may triumph in the Dust.

Regards,
Shodan