[HN Gopher] Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
___________________________________________________________________
Dulce et Decorum Est (1921)
Author : bikeshaving
Score : 190 points
Date : 2026-03-04 21:41 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.poetryfoundation.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.poetryfoundation.org)
| swader999 wrote:
| I prefer the poem Warpigs by Black Sabbath.
| kibibu wrote:
| It's a great song, but as a piece of poetry it's not even in
| the same league imo.
|
| (This is my all time favourite poem though)
| anxman wrote:
| Same. I had to write an essay about it which helped me
| appreciate it in a new way.
| tanseydavid wrote:
| Surprised that no one yet has mentioned the song of the same
| name, by The Damned, released in 1987. Very pleasing track to
| my ears.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4BxP5IEyzw
| wvbdmp wrote:
| I prefer Child In Time by Deep Purple.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| Wilfred Owen would never have dared to rhyme 'masses' with
| 'masses'.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Gallipoli is a good movie that touches on this complex subject.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Why did the title of the poem get translated?
| kibibu wrote:
| The title of the poem is also only the first half of the
| statement. Somebody's doing some editorializing I guess
| doubletwoyou wrote:
| Probably with hacker news requiring that titles be in only
| english
| dang wrote:
| Not in a case like this. On the contrary.
| dang wrote:
| Probably because of a good intention to help people understand
| it, but this is not the HN way. It's better when readers have
| to work a little: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&
| prefix=true&sor....
|
| We've reverted the title. But also re-upped the post, because
| about half of this thread is surprisingly good.
| oniony wrote:
| In the 1990s, in the UK, my secondary school English teacher, who
| had Shakespearian actor vibes and wore dark tweed trousers and a
| plain white shirt--imagine Patrick Stewart if you may--brought
| this poem to life in my class by vividly reenacting a soldier
| dying from mustard gas poisoning by falling onto a desk and
| flailing about in front of the stunnned students sitting at it.
| I've never forgotten the closing line since.
| stoneman24 wrote:
| We did the poem in secondary school as well. While we didn't
| have the acting skills of your teacher, we deconstructed and
| reviewed each line and it really had a powerful impact on the
| class. The tortured helplessness of the dying soldier was a
| lasting memory.
|
| Later, I thought that the job of a soldier wasn't to die for
| their country but to make someone else die for theirs. Perhaps
| that more cynical view was influenced by the poem and the other
| war poets that we covered.
| spacedcowboy wrote:
| Yeah, we did it too, in the early 80's. I'm not an "artsy"
| type, very focused on maths and sciences (6 A levels), but I
| can quote two poems verbatim from all those years ago. The
| first is "Jabberwocky" because I had to memorise it for a
| school performance, it's still something of a party-trick, a
| real tone-poem, the first and last verses are identical, but
| spoken _so_ differently, the alliteration, tempo-changes, etc.
| etc.
|
| The second is "Dulce et decorum est", which we studied and
| analysed for "O" level. This poem, very much, is _not_ a party-
| trick.
| ggm wrote:
| Owen died 7 days before the end of the war. A highly
| fictionalised but very evocative account of Owen, Sassoon, Hughes
| and the Craiglockhart medical facility that Owen stayed at
| (recuperating from PTSD) is in Pat Barker's 'Regeneration"
| Trilogy
| zealtrace wrote:
| This poem also owes its existence to W.H.R. Rivers. He was a
| notable individual. His early research was in anthropology and
| neurology. He was a key figure in the early treatment of what
| is now called PTSD, and a lead medical officer at
| Craiglockhart.
|
| Another poem from Craiglockhart is Sassoon's "Repression of War
| Experience." It is one of the relatively uncommon works, both
| as literature and clinically, that depicts the sensory
| experience associated with PTSD.
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57267/repression-of-w...
|
| Incidentally, Rivers himself also wrote a paper titled "The
| Repression of War Experience." It was published in The Lancet
| around the same time. https://archive.is/EZerl
|
| A century later, I believe the poet's attempt was more
| successful than the scientist's in sharing the data.
| kibibu wrote:
| There's additional context here that makes this poem more
| powerful in my opinion.
|
| It's a direct response to Jessie Pope, an English poet and
| propagandist who would write poems like "Who's for the Game?",
| implying that the great war was all a bit of fun and those who
| didn't want to go were cowards.
|
| Owen had actually been in the trenches, and tragically died only
| a few days before the armistice.
| seydor wrote:
| I don't think modern soldiers feel like they own their country.
| scubbo wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what you mean here?
| shimman wrote:
| Read "War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler for the first person
| account, "Gangsters of Capitalism" for the third person.
| jongjong wrote:
| You've got to die of something; so you might as well die for
| something but your country isn't the best thing to die for.
|
| The problem with your country (at least the vast majority of
| countries) is that it doesn't care about you. It's just too big
| to care. It has almost nothing to do with you.
|
| I can't wrap my mind around the fact that people feel some
| affiliation with their country. For the vast majority of people,
| the relationship is akin to an abusive boyfriend/girlfriend who
| takes your money and ignores your existence.
|
| It only reciprocates for a tiny number of people at the very top;
| everyone else is delusional.
|
| The slots at the top are extremely limited. The country should
| never be the focus; people should engage with local community
| instead. The country can only be appreciated in the context of a
| local community.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| Imagine your country is a nice place with nice values might be
| hard to imagine for Americans. You fight so that it remains
| that way for future generations. Countries can cease to exist.
| jongjong wrote:
| I get it but I don't buy this. You don't need to fight for
| this. You just need to live according to your values.
|
| My ancestors' country had (and still have) nice values. Used
| to be under the control of France, then switched to British
| control, then back to French control. This happened without
| any war or fighting. Nothing changed for the people. They
| even kept speaking French. Many got rich still; just had to
| decide which parasite to pay tax to.
|
| Before they learned this, they had actually fought wars
| against the British, but for what? The British later ended up
| protecting them. Protecting their own tax proceeds, really...
|
| If the people are strong-willed and have a strong sense of
| community and know what is actually important, the owner
| country doesn't really matter. People won't obey laws they
| don't agree with anyway. They'll just manipulate the local
| authorities to report whatever they want to higher ups. What
| is the parent country going to do if they don't get the
| results they want, kill everyone in the country?
|
| It's like having a donkey, you know you can't win with it.
|
| It's the reason why US failed to maintain control in Iraq and
| Afghanistan. The people didn't need to fight to reclaim their
| country. In spite of massive military power asymmetry. This
| effect works with large populations and small populations.
| What more proof do we need? Fighting exists just to sell
| weapons IMO.
|
| It's crazy to me that everyone assumes that you have to obey
| authority. People forget this only happens with consensus.
| You can just pretend to obey, do the bare minimum and let the
| authorities blame bureaucracy. Anyway these big governments
| have real major bureaucratic struggles internally anyway so
| they're used to it.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That recipe doesn't work universally, there are wars of
| expulsion and extermination.
| jongjong wrote:
| If your values are non-violent and you're value
| producers, that doesn't happen. Sure, there can be
| situations where the land itself is valuable and the
| people on it are only a liability, but usually the value
| is in the people themselves.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sometimes, people aren't valued. Consider the Holocaust,
| Rwanda and the Culture Revolution.
| minihoster wrote:
| I think you underestimate just how well national pride works on
| people. It's an amazing proposition - you get to identify with
| the struggles and achievements of millions of people over
| decades just by being born in some spot. This can be
| useful/motivating in moderation, but it's obvious how
| dangerously easy it is to abuse by nationalists. Russians
| rather feel mighty dying in a pointless war than admitting they
| will never be a superpower. Americans would rather reminisce
| about the 1950s than doing anything to fix the many ways we've
| stagnated. Humans are willing to accept a lot of suffering
| instead of feeling humiliated.
| jongjong wrote:
| Good point. Meanwhile you can often lead a good life if
| you're willing to forego status and try to be objective about
| your accomplishments. Let others believe what fantasies they
| want. It's always a fantasy anyway.
|
| Everyone is clutching onto narratives and blind-spots.
| z2 wrote:
| Exactly, where it crosses into ultranationalism, it's a
| coping drug. You may be a nobody on all other scales, but
| darned if you can't stand under the flag of your country and
| truly _be someone._
| enaaem wrote:
| How about dying for Israel?
| georgemcbay wrote:
| For modern readers we might need an update to the old lie about
| how it is sweet and fitting to die for an entirely different
| country than your own. One you have probably never even visited.
| wk_end wrote:
| Seems a bit like an historically blinkered statement. There's a
| long history of countries militarily supporting their allies;
| there's nothing "modern" about this.
|
| Most of the countries in WWI - which this poem is about -
| entered the war because of existing alliances, not because they
| were personally affected by the assassination of Archduke Franz
| Ferdinand.
|
| While the US was indeed attacked by the Japanese in WWII, they
| could have focused entirely on the PTO and left their allies
| across the Atlantic to fend for themselves. Instead hundreds of
| thousands of Americans died liberating Europe.
|
| The Vietnam War was at root the US supporting an allied
| government in Saigon. Tens of thousands of Americans died for
| an entirely different country than their own, one they'd likely
| never been to. A tragedy, but a tragedy that's been in the
| history books for fifty years now.
|
| The Gulf War was 42 separate countries banding together to
| liberate Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion. How many of those
| soldiers had ever even thought about Kuwait before being
| deployed and potentially dying there?
|
| When the US was attacked by Osama Bin Laden, the US invaded
| Afghanistan in response. Whether or not that was a justifiable
| decision, at the time dozens of countries lent their support.
| Their soldiers died for the sake of the US, though in this case
| maybe some of them had at least visited it.
|
| This isn't an endorsement of dying for someone else's country
| (or even one's own); just an observation that it was normal
| even when this poem was written, hardly modern and no need for
| an "update" (perhaps just an expansion of the original). I also
| don't want this to come across as a defense of the US or
| Israeli action in Iran, which I assume is what you're referring
| to, so I'll be explicit about my position on this: the Iranian
| regime may be unquestionably awful, but not only is this attack
| illegal domestically (in the US) and internationally, I have
| extraordinarily little faith that either Netanyahu's Israel or
| Trump's US are going to handle this war or its aftermath well,
| and I'm terrified about the chaos that's likely to unfold over
| the coming months and years.
|
| But: this sort of thing is precisely why Israelis/Zionists/Jews
| often view criticisms of Israel as anti-semitic. Things that
| have long been considered totally normal - military alliances,
| in this instance - are suddenly treated as novel and uniquely
| awful when Israel is involved. So their question becomes,
| "what's unique about Israel that makes people treat us
| differently", and then they look at their status as the only
| ethnically Jewish state and the history of how the world has
| treated Jews and derive themselves an answer. Especially when
| the complaint is rooted in an age old anti-semitic trope -
| "Jews secretly control the world" - just with "Jews" swapped
| out for "Israel".
| seydor wrote:
| in those times everyone was conscripted , and people had a
| visceral feeling of fighting for their actual land and family
| out of necessity. Perhaps ukrainians have that feeling.
|
| US army is more like mercenaries on a misson. Besides, Us
| soldiers have not fought on US mainland for century
| temp8830 wrote:
| Ukraine is far from a monolith. It's an agglomeration of
| bits and pieces attached in the aftermath of WW2 to a
| Ukrainian core. But there are plenty of ethnic Poles,
| Hungarians and Russians whose lands got attached that don't
| identify with it.
|
| Before you downvote (OK, you can downvote first, I don't
| particularly care) - go look up what folks in Hungarian
| parts of Ukraine do to army recruiters.
| dr-smooth wrote:
| Got to be honest with you, bro. This sounds like pro-
| russia FUD to me.
|
| I mean honestly, wasn't all of the USSR a big
| agglomeration? The bottom line now is that Ukraine is a
| sovereign nation recognized by the rest of the world, and
| they have been invaded.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Vietnam was Lyndon B Johnson making money from weapons
| procurement and supporting his donors. (Such as Brown and
| Root, who started the war as a tiny firm and ended it as one
| of the biggest contractors in the US.)
|
| Iraq was Dick Cheney's sponsors making money from oil and
| arms deals.
|
| Afghanistan was Bush's sponsors making money from weapons
| procurement.
|
| Iran is Trump's sponsors making money from oil and arms
| deals, plus some crusading crank millenarianism for the
| faithful.
|
| Gaza is a straightforward land grab and real estate
| development opportunity with some cynical other-abuse thrown
| in.
|
| None of these have anything at all to do with realistic
| threats to non-rich people.
|
| It's always money. Always. Someone always makes money from
| these things.
|
| The disposable shlub in the Oval Office gets the reputational
| damage, but their funders are so happy they can barely count.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| To say this is simplifying is understating just how 'not
| even wrong' this is...
| einpoklum wrote:
| This reminds me of what could be considered a complementary
| poem/song, by John F. Kendrick:
|
| --
|
| _Onward, Christian soldiers! Duty 's way is plain:_
|
| _Slay your Christian neighbors, or by them be slain._
|
| _Pulpiteers are spouting effervescent swill,_
|
| _God above is calling you to rob and rape and kill,_
|
| _All your acts are sanctified by the Lamb on high;_
|
| _If you love the Holy Ghost, go murder, pray and die._
|
| --
|
| _Onward, Christian soldiers, rip and tear and smite!_
|
| _Let the gentle Jesus, bless your dynamite._
|
| _Splinter skulls with shrapnel, fertilize the sod;_
|
| _Folks who do not speak your tongue, deserve the curse of God._
|
| _Smash the doors of every home, pretty maidens seize;_
|
| _Use your might and sacred right to treat them as you please._
|
| --
|
| _Onward, Christian soldiers! Eat and drink your fill;_
|
| _Rob with bloody fingers, Christ OK 's the bill._
|
| _Steal the farmer 's savings, take their grain and meat;_
|
| _Even though the children starve, the Saviour 's bums must eat._
|
| _Burn the peasant 's cottages, orphans leave bereft;_
|
| _In Jehovah 's holy name, wreak ruin right and left._
|
| --
|
| and so on:
| https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Songs_of_the_Workers_(9th_edi...
| bitwize wrote:
| > Onward, Christian soldiers, rip and tear and smite!
|
| Doomguy feels seen. Especially since fanon has it that Doomguy
| is Catholic.
| blast wrote:
| This doggerel is every bit as propagandistic as what it
| opposes, and has nothing in common with Owen's poem of
| unbearably real experience.
| jibal wrote:
| See also
| https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/War%20Prayer%2C%20Mark%20T...
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| It's interesting to compare Owen's and Brooke's poetry (and even
| Sassoon's). Owen had lived through it all from '15 to '18, with
| some detours, and probably even as a patriot saw war for what it
| was. Brooke never really got that dose of realism; putting out
| his jingoistic cant until dying in 1915, before even seeing a
| war. Owen was a better poet, Brooke appealed to schoolboys.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| "Wo alle Strassen enden" is an German marching song. The video
| has WWI footage showing the reality of the trenches.
|
| https://youtu.be/A_45_19b9Hg?si=auCx4B6wFFGrJ3Hb
| ekianjo wrote:
| there's more movie clips than actual WWI footage in there
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| While we're sharing anti-war songs/poetry, I like _And The Band
| Played Waltzing Matilda_ (originally written by Eric Bogle, but I
| personally like the Pogues ' version):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKURhqmSLmM
| endgame wrote:
| The Australians have some incredible anti-war music. Redgum's
| /I was only 19/ is brutal:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UYDKxxQ50o
| golem14 wrote:
| My personal favorite is the song from the movie (not the show,
| haven't watched) M.A.S.H.
|
| Or, perhaps, Vera Lynn's "We'll meet again some sunny day".
|
| These are good movies to rewatch, especially in these
| interesting times.
| martinpw wrote:
| Another great Eric Bogle song is Green Fields of France.
|
| I like this version by The Men They Couldn't Hang best :
|
| https://youtu.be/Kr6OzLJrS2k?si=ZX6lrXqjZktV20-V
| Herodotus38 wrote:
| Great song. I will check out that version. I first heard a
| version by The Furies.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| I used to play this on the street as a young lad, can't sing it
| at all anymore because I get too choked up to get the words out
| specproc wrote:
| The Pogues' version brings me close to tears, every single
| time. Incredible rendition.
| julian_t wrote:
| I've often played this after Ralph McTell's "Maginot Waltz",
| which really contrasts the optimism and patriotism with the
| reality.
| skmurphy wrote:
| Henry Newbolt's Vitai Lampada
| https://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/influences/vitai.html
| Captures a sense of duty against the realities of war.
|
| Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner"
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-th...
| Is a much grimmer perspective.
|
| Richard Grenier captured the truth for civil society: "As George
| Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at
| night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their
| behalf." (h/t https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-
| men/)
|
| All we have of freedom, all we use or know - This our fathers
| bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the
| breath we draw-- Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the
| Law. Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899
| https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kipling/old_issue/
| barrkel wrote:
| World War 1 was not the kind of war that delivered freedom. It
| was more the kind that elites entered into without full regard
| of the costs.
| jemmyw wrote:
| An opinion that formed after the war, but not actually
| anchored in reality. None of the elite really wanted a war,
| some levels of the military did. Nicolas II raged against his
| generals that he did not want to mobilize and send men to
| their deaths. The German leadership didn't want a war, they
| thought it was inevitable but that they'd lose. The Austro-
| Hungarians definitely didn't want a war with Russia but did
| want to give the Serbs a black eye for the assassination in
| Sarajevo, and made a number of bad decisions. The British
| tried to stop the war and a number of politicians there wrote
| about the potential consequences before it happened.
|
| In a way it's sadder than other conflicts: none of the
| participants entered the war for power or control, they all
| thought they were defending themselves. Plenty of people knew
| the human cost would be high. Events and fear and lack of
| fast communication just took over. And it set up the
| conditions for WW2 and probably the cold war.
| fwipsy wrote:
| We need our rough men and nuclear weapons because they have
| theirs. I think I would sleep deeper if no one had them.
| beloch wrote:
| The ceremony, pomp and reverence we pay to soldiers and the
| fallen are all aimed at making sure the young remain willing to
| do an ugly job at affordable prices. For every poem like this
| there is a parade, monument, wreath-laying ceremony, or the
| modern equivalent of young girls handing white feathers to young
| boys.
|
| It seems ungrateful to view it this way. We owe a real debt to
| the soldiers who died for the world we live in. It seems like we
| should owe them respect. However, we need to recognize that this
| kind of respect, while indeed owed, is also sometimes abused by
| politicians to field armies at affordable prices in the service
| of their own greed and vanity.
|
| If, "War is the continuation of politics by other means", then we
| must demand better policy from our politicians than what we're
| seeing today.
| trhway wrote:
| >sometimes abused by politicians to field armies at affordable
| prices in the service of their own greed and vanity.
|
| After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a
| statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of
| sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular
| citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
|
| In the Spanish series "El Cid" there is a nice depiction of how
| a battle and the whole war immediately ends once the king of
| one side is killed in that battle. Everybody just went back to
| their regular business.
|
| A translation of saying in Russian, not sure whether it exists
| in English - "One's heroism is always a result of incompetency
| and idiotism of somebody else."
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > After Khamenei death Russian Foreign Ministry issued a
| statement that Russia is "against killing of the leaders of
| sovereign countries". Somehow they didn't mention nor regular
| citizens nor rank-and-file soldiers of sovereign countries.
|
| Rich, coming from the state that sponsored more than a dozen
| assassination attempts on Zelenskyy. But russians get over
| this hypocrisy by not recognizing a country as sovereign, so
| it's fair game.
| 6510 wrote:
| And with "sometimes" we mean we cant remember the last time it
| didn't happen.
| caaqil wrote:
| > We owe a real debt to the soldiers who died for the world we
| live in.
|
| Why? It's a job. Chosen voluntarily (usually), with known
| risks. Never mind the propaganda part that they are dying for a
| "world we live in". How a soldier dying for some war with
| dubious morality is owed any "debt" is beyond me.
|
| I submit that we owe others who died doing some kind of public
| good much more _debt_ than some dude who was duped into
| sacrificing his life to gun down others for some made-up
| reason. It 's really hard to find any soldier who died for a
| good cause for most of the past century actually.
| netsharc wrote:
| "Voluntarily". I guess that word fits if being a cog in the
| capitalist machine is voluntary. Lots of US soldiers are poor
| kids with no prospects, the USA offers subsidized education
| and healthcare, but only after you put your body on the line
| to be shot at because the child-rapist-in-chief and a Fox
| News alcoholic wants to please their corrupt Israeli daddy...
|
| Amongst Netanyahu's corruption charges is that he and his
| wife used taxpayer money to rent a celebrity chef. Imagine
| expanding a genocide to WW3 because you wanted to escape
| accountability for stealing public money to pay for some
| overpriced dinner...
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| War is the poor dying for the rich. The only way to pay respect
| to those who have died at the behest of the rich is to
| explicitly recognize who sent them, why they were sent, and to
| do everything we can to prevent it happening again.
| gadders wrote:
| I think if you read "On Killing" by Grossman, parades etc are
| almost like an ancient Greek purification ritual.
|
| Killing is the biggest taboo and people need societal
| "absolution" afterwards.
|
| The absence of this for Vietnam is what caused issues with
| veterans.
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| Powerful poem.
|
| I studied it in school as did my children at their school,
| decades later.
|
| They also studied the Caesar' savage Gallic Wars ( in English and
| in Latin ) and Thucydides History of the Peloponsesian War.
|
| Thucydides is essential reading these days.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/opinion/america-china-tru...
| nullorempty wrote:
| There is a reason they put that into curriculum.
| nullorempty wrote:
| I much prefer "Imagine" by Beatles.
|
| Imagine they call a war but no one shows up.
|
| Young people are especially vulnerable to brainwashing. Do
| everything you can to explain to them that they will dying to
| protect the powerful elite.
| KnuthIsGod wrote:
| "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"
| jonstewart wrote:
| About 150 Iranian sailors drowned this morning, far from home,
| not a clear and present danger to anyone, no war declared on them
| by Congress, nor sanctioned by the UN. We could have demanded a
| surrender but instead we blew them up.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/04/iran-war-...
| jjgreen wrote:
| Those that survived were lucky that the civilised Srilankans
| reached them first, the Americans would have shot them in the
| water.
|
| https://theintercept.com/2025/12/05/boat-strike-survivors-do...
| phantomathkg wrote:
| The recital by Christopher Eccleston is more dramatic.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB4cdRgIcB8
| kjellsbells wrote:
| There's an excellent _In Our Time_ episode on Owen available
| from the BBC ([1], [2]) where Melvin Bragg gives an gentle yet
| chilling reading of the climax of the poem (about 29 minutes
| in). And like many IOT episodes, provides great context and
| detail eg on Jessie Pope, Sassoon, and so on.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001df48 [2]
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/2nd5iWVnNCWL2ulAVsSDLe
| jfengel wrote:
| Bragg is an absolute national treasure. It will take time to
| warm to his successor, who is doing a fine job but I've grown
| so used to that voice.
| raminf wrote:
| We had to memorize this back in grade school. It still gives me
| shivers every time I read it.
| blast wrote:
| The gas victim scene is harrowing. But what haunts me even more
| is the men without boots, marching with bloody feet.
| lidavidm wrote:
| [Not the overall point of the poem, but] yet for all that, it
| turns out chemical weapons aren't even that useful:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
| closewith wrote:
| I was a CBRN NCO and this argument is not convincing. The
| author significantly underestimates the operational impact of
| chemical weapons on modern manoeuvre warfare and the cost of
| CBRN counter-measures.
|
| CBRN defence imposes a substantial burden on modern militaries.
| Our infantry CBRN kit alone weighed 4.5kg, roughly the same
| weight as ten loaded 30-round STANAG magazines. That penalty
| applies to every soldier and similar burdens apply to vehicles,
| emplacements, heavy equipment. It increases fuel consumption,
| maintenance, logistics.
|
| The training burden is also significant. In my experience
| nearly 8% of training time was dedicated to CBRN defence, more
| than marksmanship or signalling.
|
| Operating under CBRN threat severely degrades ops tempo.
| Buttoning up slows movement, comms, situational awareness and
| command effectiveness. Speed and violence of action suffer and
| op tempo can drop by half or more. The impact on combat support
| and support units is worse than combat units. Naval and air
| forces fare worse again, with large decontamination
| requirements affecting sortie tempo, all external operations,
| and resupply. Even without casualties, the threat alone
| severely degrades manoeuvre warfare. They act as a force
| divisor.
|
| The author reverses the logic. Modern militaries avoid chemical
| weapons for political reasons, not because they are
| ineffective. After WW1 they became politically toxic, and the
| Geneva Protocol has held because any state using them today
| would face immediate international condemnation and serious
| domestic political consequences.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I was bothered by the fact that the English poem doesn't scan
| correctly.
|
| This prompted me to look up the ode, and I can't figure out the
| Latin meter. Does anyone know?
|
| https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext...
| amelung wrote:
| Metrum Alcaicum:
| dul.cet.de.co:.rest.|pro:.pa.tri.a:.mo.ri:
| mor.set.fu.ga:.cem.|per.se.qui.tur.vi.rum
| nec.par.ci.tin.bel.li:s.iu.ven.tae
| po:pli.ti.bus.ti.mi.do:.que.ter.go
|
| (Not sure about the first syllable of "poplitibus": muta cum
| liquida and long "o"?)
|
| Reading it like in school (with qualitative stress marking the
| quantitative meter), that would be: dulcet
| decorest | pro patria mori morset fugacem | persequitur
| virum nec parcit inbellis iuventae poplitibus
| timidoque tergo.
|
| Thanks for the link!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Minor note: I was taught that forms of _esse_ are weak enough
| that they lose _their_ vowel to elision, so it would be
| de.co:.rust.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodelision
|
| This seems like it would never matter for _esse_ or _est_ ,
| but I guess it could preserve a long vowel in a case like -V:
| es V-.
| jibal wrote:
| https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen
| StackBPoppin wrote:
| I remember reading this as part of GCSE English, unfortunately
| the school system in the UK makes poetry dry and uninspiring. In
| terms of anti-war poems I prefer "The Box" by Kendrew Lascelles.
| hkt wrote:
| I did it too and found it to be the same. It was years until I
| realised we had actually been doing rather good stuff.
| miningape wrote:
| Same, although I actually remember enjoying this particular
| poem in class.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Instantly took me back 35 years.
|
| I wonder if you can age a person based on them knowing this and
| whatever the Siegfried Sassoon poem that was covered in order
| to demonstrate onomatopoeia? I suppose it would depend how long
| it was (or indeed if it still is) part of the curriculum.
| s3krit wrote:
| Reading and reciting this poem and the works of Benjamin
| Zephaniah (particularly 'dis poetry') in gcse English convinced
| me that it wasn't 'lame' and poetry can be inspiring
| ccppurcell wrote:
| Same here! This poem and Anthem for Doomed Youth lodged deep
| in my memory. We all had to perform a poem from one of those
| GCSE collections and I chose Anthem for Doomed Youth. The
| silence in the classroom afterwards... We were lucky with
| English teachers though.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| "As under a green sea, I saw him drowning."
|
| Fortunately, at least in my time, this was part of the curriculum
| in UK schools, and we had an exceptional English teacher. Like
| one of the other commenters here, I'm a science and numbers man,
| but can recite this poem still. Perhaps it was particularly
| memorable as I have an ancestor who occupies Sanctuary Wood as a
| consequence of a gas shell.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Inspiration for the New Wave song of the same name from the
| seventies. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JeJuEqCtzKg
| humanlity wrote:
| Sharing my beloved ancient Chinese poem
|
| Shan Po Yang *Tong Guan Huai Gu Zhang Yang Hao
|
| Feng Luan Ru Ju ,Bo Tao Ru Nu ,Shan He Biao Li Tong Guan Lu .
| Wang Xi Du ,Yi Chou Chu . Shang Xin Qin Yi Jing Xing Chu ,Gong
| Que Mo Jian Du Zuo Liao Tu . Xing ,Bai Xing Ku ;Wang ,Bai Xing Ku
| .
|
| Tune: "Sheep on the Hillside" --Tong Pass
|
| Zhang Yanghao
|
| Translated by Wayne Schlepp
|
| Peaks as if massed,
|
| Waves that look angry,
|
| Along the mountains and the river lies the road to Tong Pass.
|
| I look to the West Capital,
|
| My thoughts unsettled.
|
| Here, where the Qin and Han armies passed, I lament
|
| The ten thousand palaces, all turned to dust.
|
| Kingdoms rise,
|
| The people suffer;
|
| Kingdoms fall,
|
| The people suffer.
| axpvms wrote:
| Do not call me, father, do not seek me, Do not call me, do not
| wish me back.
|
| We're on a route uncharted, fire and blood erase our tracks. On
| we fly, on wings of thunder, never more to sheath our swords.
| All of us in battle fallen, not to be brought back by words.
|
| Will there be a rendezvous? I know not. I only know we still
| must fight. We are sand grains in infinity, never to meet,never
| more see light.
|
| Farewell then my son. Farewell then my conscience. My youth and
| my solace my one and my only.
|
| And let this farewell be the end of a story, Of solitude vast
| and which none is more lonely. In which you remain,barred
| forever and ever, From light and from air,with your death pangs
| untold. Untold and unsoothed, not to be resurrected. Forever
| and ever, an 18 year old.
|
| Farewell then, no trains ever come from those regions
| Unscheduled or scheduled, no aeroplanes fly there. Farewell
| then my son, for no miracles happen, As in this world dreams do
| not come true.
|
| Farewell...
|
| I will dream of you still as a baby, Treading the earth with
| little strong toes, The earth where already so many lie buried.
| This song to my son, is come to its close.
|
| Son (Pavel Antokolsky, 1943)
| tetris11 wrote:
| At the starting of the week At summit talks you'll
| hear them speak It's only Monday
| You could be sitting, taking lunch The news
| will hit you like a punch It's only Tuesday
| We'll all go running underground And we'll
| be listening for the sound It's only
| Wednesday You'll hear a whistling
| overhead Are you alive or are you dead?
| It's only Thursday Though that shelter is your
| home The living space, you have outgrown
| It's only Friday Tomorrow never comes until
| it's too late
|
| Six Day War (Colonel Bagshot)
| voxlax wrote:
| https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/hu/Radn%C3%B3ti_Mikl%C3%B3...
| nathan_douglas wrote:
| The Zombies recorded "Butcher's Tale" [1][2], which I believe is
| a derivative of this but good in its own right.
|
| My French language teacher at one college or other told me a
| story once. I might be getting some of the details wrong, so
| forgive me. But here goes:
|
| In 1914 or thereabouts, his grandfather, a young French man, had
| just graduated from lycee or whatever and celebrated by
| backpacking around Europe, staying in youth hostels, riding
| trains, etc. He drank a lot of alcohol, made a lot of new
| friends, and generally had a great time.
|
| In Germany, he wandered into a pub, encountered some friendly
| Germans, and joined them at a table. One drink turned into three,
| or five, or six, and the young Frenchman started attempting to
| speak the German spoken by his new friends. Perhaps he had a gift
| for languages, perhaps he'd picked up a little through some other
| means, perhaps the disinhibitory effect of alcohol helped his
| short-term recall for syntax and semantics.
|
| Either way, the result was the same - the young Frenchman climbed
| up onto a table and made a brief, impromptu speech in German,
| addressed to his new friends, full of affection, extolling the
| virtues of modernity, goodwill and brotherhood, etc.
|
| The rest of the pub was absolutely _alarmed_ by the young
| Frenchman's grasp of German. There was no way, they thought, that
| he could speak German so well. He must be a spy. The police were
| called, and he was thrown in jail.
|
| Then the war broke out, and returning the young man to France was
| not anyone's concern. He spent the war locked up in Germany.
|
| I can repeat that story, but I can't personally vouch for it.
| It's hearsay three or four times removed. It's a funny story, a
| little awful, but he's free in the end. Everything worked out.
|
| But the awful punchline is something I do tend to believe - that
| his grandfather was the only survivor of all of the young men
| from his graduating class. Every other one died in the war.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xy0htPZZPs [2]
| https://genius.com/The-zombies-butchers-tale-western-front-1...
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Just as an FYI, if anyone is into reading some good poems, I'd
| recommend "Good Poems", an anthology edited by Garrison Keillor.
| It's a great book to start reading poetry.
|
| I had a friend who was reading it, and she loaned it to me, and
| it got me much more into poetry. I read the intro and was hooked.
| The whole series is pretty good, too.
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