Lest we forget

[Zor]

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.

-Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918), Canadian Army

89 years ago today, on the Eleventh our of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, across the battlefields of France, turned from forest and farmland, to barren muddy wastes littered with the remains of what was once alive, the guns fell silent as the War to End all wars, ended. However, in its four years, the war had claimed ten million soldiers in the muddy trenchlines, on the vast plains of poland, in the burring sandscape of Arabia, on and under the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and in the air above these places. Human beings, just like you or me, who went to fight for King and Empire, Democracy, the Kaiser, their duty to serve their nation as conscripts or whatever other reasons they had, but never returned. As such, today is Rememberance Day, in which we rember those who fought and died in war. Wear a poppy and show your respect for those who had fallen.

Lest we Forget

Zor

[That NOS Guy]

Over the top gentleman, over the top and into history.

[Patrick Degan]

Ten million who died for nothing. Utter tragedy.

[Coop D'etat]

To the fallen *raises glass*

[Knife]

To those of the Belleau woods, those from the eastern front or the western front. To those at the bottom of the Atlantic....


*salutes*

[Simplicius]

Aftermath


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

[Androsphinx]

MCMXIV

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

[Academia Nut]

...

[Adrian Laguna]

Ten million who died for nothing. Utter tragedy.

We got communism and a fascism out of it.

[Companion Cube]

[size=0]ouch[/size]

[Wanderer]

"Plays Taps"

[Thanas]

And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen when you joined the great folly in 1916

What a complete and utter waste of human lifes, leading to an even more horrific waste of human lifes.

[Rogue 9]

[Mark S]

I remember.

And I thank those that have taken up the torch today.

[LadyTevar]

[JME2]

...

[The Yosemite Bear]

Thank You gentlemen and gentlewomen.

[K. A. Pital]

Pointless imperialist war between huge colonial empires, in the most true sense of the word "imperialism". Millions dead. It can only be a day of mourning, and a strong repudiation of imperialism, colonialism and nationalism.

Tears over soldiers, but not an inch of good memory for the leaders.

[CaptainChewbacca]

At the tomb of the unknown there were 3 living vets from WWI. Staggering that its almost only a memory now.

[PeZook]

Pointless imperialist war between huge colonial empires, in the most true sense of the word "imperialism". Millions dead. It can only be a day of mourning, and a strong repudiation of imperialism, colonialism and nationalism.

Tears over soldiers, but not an inch of good memory for the leaders.

Hopefully, in the future, humans will think of themselves as humans first, nationals later.

But it pains me that I will never live to see this day, human nature being what it is.

I like to think of November 11th as a day to remember all the fallen, from every war ever fought. From the time the first caveman broke the skull of another, through frightened peasants forced to fight for their lord's glory and wealth, to mass-conscripted everymen being herded into machinegun fire. Every one of them has died because of human foolishness.