[Trigger Warning for violence, war]
Recently, I read a story that was set during the First World War. It was very well researched.
It was horrifying.
Horrifying because of what took place. The thousands knowingly sacrificed to wholesale slaughter for a few feet of land, the decimated fields of mud and blood and the pieces of the unburied dead, the sheer reality of death upon death upon mutilation and shell-shock and firing squad and poison gas and No Man's Land that no one who hadn't been there would ever, ever comprehend.
Horrifying because it was supposed to be an end. The war that was officially ended ninety-three years ago today was supposed to be the war to end all wars. They called it that, because no one could imagine that, remembering the sheer monstrousnous of that conflict, anyone would ever think war an appropriate response again. And yet, peace has eluded us.
Horrifying, too, because we have forgotten.
I knew this, and I had forgotten the sheer scale of the death and bloodshed of the Great War. Lest we forget?
We have. If we truly remembered, we wouldn't still be doing this. We wouldn't still be sending people to die, using human beings as weapons against one another and considering them expendable.
Every year on this day, wreaths are laid and poppies are worn, and we vow again to forever remember the sacrifices of those who laid down their lives in wars throughout modern history. Our remembrance of the lost, though, is accompanied by salutes and flags and military bands, is shot through with pride and nationalism and the myth of glory.
There is no glory in war. There is only death, and this is what we should remember. So today, as you pin on your regulation red poppy and forget to observe the silence, remember the reality behind the pomp and circumstance. Remember the slaughter of the Somme and Passchendaele, the millions who died, the bodies lost to No Man's Land. Remember the millions upon millions who've died since, victims of all the wars that have followed the War to End All Wars.
Maybe, just maybe, if we all remember, or learn, to treat each other as human beings, with respect and consideration, we can start to put a stop to this. It's not sweet and it's not proper; it's a tragedy and a waste on all sides.
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, 1893-1918
exhausted
cynical
sad
determined
standing ovation
bouncy