Brilliant memorial to the fallen of the Somme

[Pinetree]

Groups of Tommies from WW1 are popping up all over Britain on the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Somme. Looks stunning.

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-36690510

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36682140

[Wes]

At the Thiepval Memorial ceremony, close to the battlefields of the Somme, actor Charles Dance read "Aftermath", a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, which asks "Have you forgotten yet?"

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you'll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon

[MikeGER]

...would have liked to see the media echo if some (international composition) Reenacters would have done this kind of flashmop in German uniforms on the 75 aniversary kickoff-date of Operation Barbarossa on June 22 here ;)

[Boggit]

I feel sorry all the poor sods on both sides that were killed in that hell of a battle. :'( One of my great grandfathers fought at the Somme. He joined the war with A1 health and came out of it his health ruined. He died in the mid 1920's, leaving a wife and three kids to cope on their own.

I admire Sassoon's poetry, but prefer his associate's Wilfred Owen for his edge, and clear deep anger at the war and at the ritual ceremonies that celebrate it. I think they better capture the reality of the Somme and the subsequent battles there far better.

I prefer Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est - with all the sarcasm, irony and disgust against Horace's original poem... He had a hard journey during the war. Despite his originally pacifist nature he personally killed many Germans, and it ate away at him. I think his poetry allowed him to vent his feelings at a war he first hated, then adapted to before he was killed in action beside the Sambre canal on 4th November 1918 - just seven days before the armistice! What a tragedy. :'(

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 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.

Wilfred Owen

Less well known is this one, but still very good... it really captures the bloody horror of the war, and how you "maybe" rationalise it:

APOLOGIA PRO POEMATE MEO

I, too, saw God through mud
The mud that cracked on cheeks when wretches smiled.
War brought more glory to their eyes than blood,
And gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child.

Merry it was to laugh there
Where death becomes absurd and life absurder.
For power was on us as we slashed bones bare
Not to feel sickness or remorse of murder.

I, too, have dropped off fear
Behind the barrage, dead as my platoon,
And sailed my spirit surging, light and clear,
Past the entanglement where hopes lie strewn;

And witnessed exhultation
Faces that used to curse me, scowl for scowl,
Shine and lift up with passion of oblation,
Seraphic for an hour, though they were foul.

I have made fellowships
Untold of happy lovers in old song.
For love is not the binding of fair lips
With the soft silk of eyes that look and long.

By joy, whose ribbon slips,
But wound with war's hard wire whose stakes are strong;
Bound with the bandage of the arm that drips;
Knit in the welding of the rifle-thong.

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but a trembling of a flare
And heaven but a highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

Wilfred Owen

The irony and distaste for the celebration of "patriotism" misused is even clearer here...

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

[airboy]

Thanks for posting this.  Only word I've heard about this in the USA. 

[bbmike]

Thanks for posting this.  Only word I've heard about this in the USA.

+1  O0

[bob48]

Its been a very well done and emotive event.

[Con]

That is brilliant

Very moving and inspirational and even more emotive due to the unexpected nature and lack of build up/marketing to do something like this.  I wish I could see it

Con

[bob48]

There was something like 1500 people taking part around the country.