November 11, 2011

• Dulce et Decorum Est

  In honor of American veterans, it seems appropriate to me to post excerpts from stories and poems about the plight of soldiers.  Theirs is a path not entered into lightly, and never without cost.

  Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen

  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*.
  
  *Latin: “It is sweet and fitting to die for your country.”

  (Wilfred Owen was a soldier who served in World War One.  He was diagnosed with shell-shock in 1918, but returned to the front lines afterwards.  He was shot and killed one week before the end of the war: most of his best-known poems were published posthumously.)

  On the morning after Ted Lavender died, First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross crouched at the bottom of his foxhole and burned Martha’s letters.  Then he burned the two photographs.  There was a steady rain falling, which made it difficult, but he used heat tabs and Sterno to build a small fire, screening it with his body, holding the photographs over the bright blue flame with the tips of his fingers.
  
  He realized it was only a gesture.  Stupid, he thought.  Sentimental, too, but mostly just stupid.
  
  Lavender was dead.  You couldn’t burn the blame.
  
  Besides, the letters were in his head.  And even now, without photographs, Lieutenant Cross could see Martha playing volleyball in her white gym shorts and yellow T-shirt.  He could see her moving in the rain.
  
  When the fire died out, Lieutenant Cross pulled his poncho over his shoulders and ate breakfast in a can.
  
  …No more fantasies, he told himself.
  
  Henceforth, when he thought about Martha, it would be only to think that she belonged elsewhere.  He would shut down the daydreams.  This was not Mount Sebastian, it was another world, where there were no pretty poems or midterm exams, a place where men died because of carelessness and gross stupidity.  Kiowa was right.  Boom-down, and you were dead, never partly dead.
  
  Briefly, in the rain, Lieutenant Cross saw Martha’s gray eyes gazing back at him.
  
  He understood.
  
  It was very sad, he thought.  The things men carried inside.  The things men did or felt they had to do.

  –from The Things They Carried, by Tim O’Brien

  The Man He Killed, by Thomas Hardy
  
        “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 as 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.”

  It was Sam’s first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much.  He was glad that he could not see the dead face.  He wondered what the man’s name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace…

  –from The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

  
  I Have a Rendezvous with Death, by Alan Seeger

  I have a rendezvous with Death
  At some disputed barricade,
  When Spring comes back with rustling shade
  And apple-blossoms fill the air —
  I have a rendezvous with Death
  When Spring brings back blue days and fair.

  It may be he shall take my hand
  And lead me into his dark land
  And close my eyes and quench my breath —
  It may be I shall pass him still.
  I have a rendezvous with Death
  On some scarred slope of battered hill,
  When Spring comes round again this year
  And the first meadow-flowers appear.

  God knows ’twere better to be deep
  Pillowed in silk and scented down,
  Where Love throbs out in blissful sleep,
  Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
  Where hushed awakenings are dear . . .
  But I’ve a rendezvous with Death
  At midnight in some flaming town,
  When Spring trips north again this year,
  And I to my pledged word am true,
  I shall not fail that rendezvous.

  Not To Keep, by Robert Frost
  
  They sent him back to her. The letter came
  Saying… And she could have him. And before
  She could be sure there was no hidden ill
  Under the formal writing, he was in her sight,
  Living. They gave him back to her alive—
  How else? They are not known to send the dead—
  And not disfigured visibly. His face?
  His hands? She had to look, and ask,
  “What was it, dear?” And she had given all
  And still she had all—they had—they the lucky!
  Wasn’t she glad now? Everything seemed won,
  And all the rest for them permissible ease.
  She had to ask, “What was it, dear?”

                                                     “Enough,
  Yet not enough. A bullet through and through,
  High in the breast. Nothing but what good care
  And medicine and rest, and you a week,
  Can cure me of to go again.” The same
  Grim giving to do over for them both.
  She dared no more than ask him with her eyes
  How was it with him for a second trial.
  And with his eyes he asked her not to ask.
  They had given him back to her, but not to keep.

  • 11:21 am
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