Dulce et Decorum Est …

My grandpa was there, the trenches in France.
A private in the North Irish Horse Regiment.
2 Lieutenant in the Royal Worcestershire Regiment at the end of the war.
At the eleventh hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 1918.
The “war to end all wars” was over.
He was one of the lucky ones still breathing.

Mud and rats were all he’d speak of.
The horrors of trench warfare were left unspoken.
Violence against his fellow man, left far too many people dead.
You didn’t mention Field Marshal Douglas Haig in his presence.
He had no time for those who sent young men to die.

Following the war grandpa was committed to non-violence.
It was costly.
He was sent a white feather when he refused to join the original Ulster Volunteers after the war.

In school we studied the war poets. Two poems have stuck with me, Siegfried Sassoon’s Base Details and Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est. The horror, power, and emotion of Owen’s poem continues to influence my thinking. I can still recite most of it from memory.

I long for the final armistice when peace comes to the world.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

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 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.