In Flanders Fields

[Danmel]

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.

[k8conant]

1. the poppies blow

[Ikonoklast]

2. Everyone that thinks that war is the answer needs to go there one day.

Last Post and Call, Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium.

Every single day of the year, at 2000 hrs.

[oneshooter]

3. Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month of 1918 the guns went silent.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. A popular poem on this day, but it's a pro-war poem

Reread that third verse. It's not a call to end war. It's a call to continue to fight and to crush the foe.

[intaglio]

5. Wilfred Owen 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 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.

and Lawrence Binyon's ODE OF REMEMBERANCE

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Three classic b&w films on the horrors of WWI

made within a few years of the end of the slaughter: Westfront 1918, German, 1930; Les Crois De Bois, (Wooden Crosses), French, 1932; All Quiet On The Western Front, U.S. 1930.

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