Memorial day.

I am not a pacifist.  I see the point in fighting -- depending on the cause.  

And yet my favorite memorial poetry is the bitter, dark, ironic stuff from Britain, from World War One.  The poems that turn their backs on the parades and flag-waving, and stagger into the corner with a drink.  I think it's hard to honor sacrifices unless we try to grasp them -- including the parts that hurt to grasp from the outside; the sacrifice of illusions and ideals, the replacement of them by an awful sense that "it may all have been for nothing."  I never fought; what do I know?  Except that I believe no self-sacrifice is for nothing; but much war is other-sacrifice, and sadly, a lot of that has been for nothing.   

Maybe the best way to articulate what I'm getting across:  One way to honor our fallen and wounded is to try to grasp that war indeed sucks -- from the combat all the way up to the bureaucracy (thank you, Joseph Heller).  And then to reflect on the people who endured it, willingly or unwillingly. 

Here is a bit from "Suicide in the Trenches," by Siegfried Sassoon, 1918:

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.

It's an odd snippet of verse to be reminded of on Memorial Day, but Sassoon earned the right to satirize patriotic displays that celebrate soldiers' sacrifices.    

I wonder what he would think of the modern tendency to ignore them.  

Anyway, here's my favorite of his.

The Glory of Women

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,

Or wounded in a mentionable place.

You worship decorations; you believe

That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.

You make us shells. You listen with delight,

By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.

You crown our distant ardours while we fight,

And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.

You can't believe that British troops "retire"

When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,

Trampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood.

O German mother dreaming by the fire,

While you are knitting socks to send your son

His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

 

Comments

[Margaret in Minnesota]

I understand, to a very small extent, that war is indeed hell. At Mass today, Father said that war is a consequence of sin; how could it not be ugly and abhorrent?

Yet, by honoring our soldiers with tribute and song, we are honoring their valor & their virtue--not the war itself.

It *is* ironic that some of these war songs are beautiful--they bring me to tears because I realize, to some small extent, all that was (and continues to be) at stake.

[Margaret in Minnesota]

I realize, too, that I should have proofed that last comment to avoid repeating myself.

[bearing]

I understand the distinction between honoring war and honoring valor. But I feel more kinship with valor when the nature of war itself -- interior and exterior, physical and spiritual -- is laid more bare.

Or, to put it another way, I like and am moved by the first two stanzas of "In Flanders Fields." I don't like the third one. It feels too much like honoring war than honoring warriors -- puts words in their mouths that I'm uncomfortable doing. Perhaps because not all "quarrels with the foe" are righteous, and I hope the dead have more perspective than we do.

[Kathy]

Death Of the Ball Turret Gunner.