"In Flanders Fields" sounds so anti-war, until you get to the last stanza.

[raccoon]

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

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.


“Do you think if the dead could speak to us they would cry out for yet more war dead as this poem suggests? I don’t think so. They would say it’s time to stop the killing…”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/30/1535/

Someone posted this in response to Garrison Keillor’s article “Telling Lies Over Good Soldiers’ Graves”
on commondreams.org today.


I can only guess the reason the tone changes is because the writer was a soldier and still alive. He didn't want to believe that so many men were dying for nothing.

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. How aout this one as a better substitute?

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen circa 1918

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 wilting 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
Bitten 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.

[DemoTex]

2. The old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

It is sweet and good to die for one's country. The old lie, indeed.

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. It's still around today too

Damn these cultural hero generation projects we call wars.

[sharp_stick]

3. I don't know

he wrote that as he was under fire in Belgium with the Canadians IIRC. Colonels weren't fully REMF's at that point in time and the doctors had to work under horrendous conditions.

It was a different time, a different war and a different world back then.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. Want an anti-war poem? This one from Viet Nam works...

http://www.users.interport.net/m/k/mklweb/illyria.com/www.illyria.com/dustyhp.html

"HELLO, DAVID"

Hello, David--my name is Dusty.
I'm your night nurse.
I will stay with you.
I will check your vitals
every 15 minutes.
I will document
inevitability.
I will hang more blood
and give you something
for your pain.
I will stay with you
and I will touch your face.

Yes, of course,
I will write your mother
and tell her you were brave.
I will write your mother
and tell her how much you loved her.
I will write your mother
and tell her to give your bratty kid sister
a big kiss and hug.
What I will not tell her
is that you were wasted.

I will stay with you
and I will hold your hand.
I will stay with you
and watch your life
flow through my fingers
into my soul.
I will stay with you
until you stay with me.

Goodbye, David---my name is Dusty.
I'm the last person
you will see.
I'm the last person
you will touch.
I'm the last person
who will love you.

So long, David--my name is Dusty.
David--who will give me something
for my pain?

[raccoon]

6. That one works, all right! nt

[Spazito]

5. Seeing as this was written during WWI, seen by many as a

"just" war, if there is such a thing, I don't see it as being either pro or anti-war, it is a plea for remembrance of those who died and, because the war was still going on at the time, for those who would die.

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. Few people saw WWI as a "just" war

On what basis would one see it that way?

Historically, it's also a bit off.

[Spazito]

18. There was little, if any, criticism of WWI or WWII relative to later wars

Korea,Vietnam, Kosovo, etc. History books aside, the public generally looks at WWI and WWII quite "benignly".

[alcibiades_mystery]

19. What the public sees NOW is irrelevant to your original point

You were speaking of the feelings at the time, not how people broadly feel about these wars today.

And while there was considerably less resistance to WWI, it was generally seen as a horrible waste by 1916 (a bloody balls up), on all sides, but particularly among soldiers in the field. The great war poetry and later memoir and novel craze didn't emerge from a vacuum. WWI absolutely cannot be lumped in with WWII in terms of public resistance and feelings about it. Apples and oranges, historically.

[Spazito]

22. I disagree, it is not apples and oranges

One has only to watch the glorification of both WWI and WWII on the history channel to see they are both viewed from the same lens unlike other "wars". The public hated the "Huns", "Remember the Lusitania" being one of the slogans from then, felt that the soldiers fighting "over there" were doing the right thing just as they felt during WWII re the Germans and the Japanese.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty even in writing after the fact and the horrible waste you write about was spoken about AFTER the war.

[JoDog]

8. "Suicide in the Trenches"

Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

[AllegroRondo]

9. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

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 the 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

[hfojvt]

10. well, it is quite similar to another famous speech

"that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

[hatrack]

11. Nauseating poem - and they DID die for nothing

Hence McRae's poetic dyspepsia.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. It's not anti-war at all

It is for the continued atrocity of the Western Front. Wilfred Owen destroys this line of thinking in one of his lesser known poems, Smile Smile, Smile:

Smile, Smile, Smile

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned,
'For', said the paper, 'when this war is done (5)
The men's first instincts will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has but begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, –
The sons we offered might regret they died (10)
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot (15)
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity.'
Nation? – The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe. (20)
(This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France,
Not many elsewhere now, save under France.)
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings (25)
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.

[raccoon]

14. You didn't read my post, did you?

Sounds like you just read the first line.

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. No, I read it.

I can't imagine why anyone would consider In Flanders Field an anti-war poem even for a second.

[petronius]

21. The first time you read In Flanders Field, at what point did you realize it was not anti-war?

At the first line? End of the first stanza? End of the second?

The OP is exactly right - the first two stanzas of the poem could just as easily be leading up to an anti-war statement as to what the poem actually says...

[raccoon]

23. It seems to me the first 2 stanzas sound anti-war, then in the last

it's as if he did a 180-degree turn.


Who was it said, "We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are." :hi:

Good point you made upthread about WWI. Someone on DU mentioned to me recently about the mutinies and near-mutinies in the trenches in WWI, something I hadn't known about before.

[petronius]

26. I don't read that as pro-war at all

Owen seems to be talking about the attitudes of the Mail writers and readers at home - that the war is basically a business venture that must be seen through to a profitable conclusion - and contrasting that with the much different views of the soldiers. His sympathy is clearly with the sunk-eyed, half-limbed wounded...

[alcibiades_mystery]

27. I'm not saying that Owen's poem is pro-war

I'm saying that it serves as a kind of response to the "we must win to avenge the dead" nonsense that McCrae was pushing, and that was quite popular at the time, at least among a certain segment of the population that Owen and others (specifically Sassoon) were taking to task.

Of course Owen's poem is not pro-war. That's why I say "Owen destroys this line of thinking..." (the line of thinking being McCrae's implicit argument).

[petronius]

28. Gotcha - I thought you were saying that Owen destroyed

the anti-war line of thinking...

[Javaman]

16. here's my poem...

The willow sways with the breeze from the blast

back and forth to each side it goes

bullet this way, mortar that

never frowning, never mad

just swaying

swaying

swaying


My point with this poem is regardless of who is fighting, people always die.

[Zomby Woof]

17. 2+2=?

A Bob Seger classic from 1969:

Yes it's true I am a young man
But I'm old enough to kill
I don't wanna kill nobody
But I must if you so will
And if I raise my hand in question
You just say that I'm a fool
'Cause I got the gall to ask you
Can you maybe change the rules
Can you stand and call me upstart
Ask what answer can I find, I ain't sayin' I'm a genius
2+2 is on my mind

Well I knew a guy in high school
Just an average friendly guy
And he had himself a girlfriend
And you made them say goodbye
Now he's buried in the mud
Over foreign jungle land
And his girl just sits and cries
She just doesn't understand
So you say he died for freedom
Well if he died to save your lies
Go ahead and call me yellow
2+2 is on my mind

All I know is that I'm young and your rules they are old
If I've got to kill to live
Then there's something left untold
I'm no statesman I'm no general
I'm no kid I'll never be
It's the rules not the soldier
That I find the real enemy

I'm no prophet I'm no rebel
I'm just asking you why
I just want a simple answer
Why it is I've got to die
I'm a simple minded guy
2+2 is on my mind

[Posteritatis]

20. Depends on who "the foe" is, doesn't it? (nt)

[LeftishBrit]

24. A WW1 poem from Thomas Hardy

The Man He Killed


"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him and he at me,
And killed him in his place.


"I shot him dead because -
Because he was my foe,
Just so - my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although


"He thought he'd 'list perhaps,
Off-hand like - just as I -
Was out of work - had sold his traps -
No other reason why.


"Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown."



Thomas Hardy

[LeftishBrit]

25. This is a great war poem by John Davidson (1867-1909)

I don't know what war it's about; but it could be about any war.

War Song

IN anguish we uplift
A new unhallowed song:
The race is to the swift;
The battle to the strong.

Of old it was ordained
That we, in packs like curs,
Some thirty million trained
And licensed murderers,

In crime should live and act,
If cunning folk say sooth
Who flay the naked fact
And carve the heart of truth.

The rulers cry aloud,
"We cannot cancel war,
The end and bloody shroud
Of wrongs the worst abhor,
And order's swaddling band:
Know that relentless strife
Remains by sea and land
The holiest law of life.
From fear in every guise,
From sloth, from lust of pelf,
By war's great sacrifice
The world redeems itself.
War is the source, the theme
Of art; the goal, the bent
And brilliant academe
Of noble sentiment;
The augury, the dawn
Of golden times of grace;
The true catholicon,
And blood-bath of the race."

We thirty million trained
And licensed murderers,
Like zanies rigged, and chained
By drill and scourge and curse
In shackles of despair
We know not how to break --
What do we victims care
For art, what interest take
In things unseen, unheard?
Some diplomat no doubt
Will launch a heedless word,
And lurking war leap out!

We spell-bound armies then,
Huge brutes in dumb distress,
Machines compact of men
Who once had consciences,
Must trample harvests down --
Vineyard, and corn and oil;
Dismantle town by town,
Hamlet and homestead spoil
On each appointed path,
Till lust of havoc light
A blood-red blaze of wrath
In every frenzied sight.

In many a mountain pass,
Or meadow green and fresh,
Mass shall encounter mass
Of shuddering human flesh;
Opposing ordnance roar
Across the swaths of slain,
And blood in torrents pour
In vain -- always in vain,
For war breeds war again!

The shameful dream is past,
The subtle maze untrod:
We recognise at last
That war is not of God.

John Davidson