Dulce et decorum est

I just got back from a holiday in the Somme valley.  It is a strange place to take a holiday as the area is largely agricultural, but an interest in the first world war drew me there.  The house that we rented was built before the terrible events of the early twentieth century, its walls thick and its heating inefficient and the inclement weather meant that it was warmer outside than in.  We took books of course and when not touring the battlefields and cemeteries, I read about the events and the horrific experiences of some of those who survived.

The carnage, we all know, was beyond belief, hundreds of thousands of young men from all nations were mown down in their prime and their lives torn away from them.  Even more German lives were lost than those of commonwealth and American soldiers and the landscape of the Somme will be a permanent reminder of the effectiveness of propaganda as well as man's fundamental indifference to his fellow man.

The fields are green and lush everywhere and smeared liberally with swathes of poppies that look like bright bloodstains.  There are more than a thousand military cemeteries in that area alone and white headstones stand out from the perfectly manicured lawns like young teeth. So many headstones bear the anonymity of an unidentified victim and other monuments list the thousands who were never accounted for.  Remains are still being discovered nearly a hundred years on and those remains are given due respect and interred along with the rest.

History tells us that these young men willingly volunteered and laid down their lives in a war to end wars. Did they have any choice?  The politicians decided the events of the war, they instructed the generals who in turn sent their men to their deaths.  Enlisting was not an option for many men, it was either that or being branded a coward or a traitor. The propaganda enticed women to treat non combatants as lower forms of life and those in uniform as heroes. It would have been so hard not to volunteer. 

I was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of dead and the destruction of so many towns and villages in a relatively small area of France. The progress made in 1916 was minimal and it would appear that the Somme's main objective was to take pressure off Ypres, and in that sense it was a success. 

We found one small German cemetery. That in itself was very moving, the youth of that country were also decimated and they too had no choice but to kill and be killed.  Jewish and non Jewish soldiers were interred alongside each other a poignant reminder that the only lessons learned from the so called Great War were more efficient ways to kill each other, and each war passes on that lesson and no other.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST(1)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares(2) we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest(3) 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(4) 
Of tired, outstripped(5) Five-Nines(6) that dropped behind.
Gas!(7) Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets(8) just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime(9) . . .
Dim, through the misty panes(10) 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,(11) 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(12) 
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest(13) 
To children ardent(14) for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.(15)

Wilfred Owen
8 October 1917 - March, 1918