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In Flanders Fields
2006-11-11

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.


On this Veterans' Day [or Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day], are we about to break faith again?
Posted by:Eric Jablow

#11  Bravo, trailing wife. It is sad that the United Way must serve as an umbrella group for so many worthy small organizations. They have been such a routinely corrupt cesspit of misappropriation, nepotism and embezzlement that contributing to them is simply out of the question.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-11-11 22:26  

#10  This year we've taken our charitable contributions away from the United Way, and will be giving a portion directly to our local VFW post, to aid their older members. It isn't much, but I hope the gesture will be as helpful to their spirit as the few dollars toward their needs.
Posted by: trailing wife   2006-11-11 21:44  

#9  "But where the danger is
Grows the saving power also."

Holderlin
Posted by: borgboy   2006-11-11 20:47  

#8  One last from me. I just met an older gentleman in front of a grocery store, taking contributions for disabled vets. I asked him, and he said "A Korean War vet".

"I was in Korea for three days. I spent the rest of the war in Manchuria, a POW of the Chinese."

I said thank you, and wished him well.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-11-11 18:24  

#7  On this day of all days, I am morally obliged to add my deep and abiding gratitude to all who have served our nation. Without their efforts and all too often, ultimate sacrifice, we would not have the profound liberty and freedom that so many of us take for granted. I, for one, do not.

Thank you soldiers, for a job impeccably well done. Our's is a free nation because of you.
Posted by: Zenster   2006-11-11 15:20  

#6  It was said that when WWI military recruiters in the US South came around looking for volunteers, in some particularly rural areas there was some confusion, as the assumption was that they would be fighting "the Yankees" again.

Ironically, the song "How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? (After They've Seen Paree)", was quite true. It was the end of America as a rural, farming society, caused by a massive demographic shift to the cities.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-11-11 15:10  

#5  To this very day I am still awe struck by the incredible number of young Amrtican men who were uprooted from their peaceful smalltown homes and churned through boot camp only to be flung across an ocean in order to catch a bullet within less than six weeks.

Whenever I drive by the Colma Veteran's Cemetary where my grandfather, a WWI vet, is buried, the nearly endless ranks and rows of crosses that carpet its placid turf remind me of those young men dying in droves on those foreign fields and islands.

We have lost a minuscule fraction, in both civilian and military dead, as yet in this new World War. It simply stuns me that complacent and spineless appeasers bray about the very few we have lost so far in the face of a danger that threatens centuries of human progress.

To them and to all of us here at Rantburg who do understand what is at stake, I can only offer up an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's immortal Lyceum Address:

Their's was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis ours only, to transmit these, the former, unprofaned by the foot of an invader; the latter, undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation, to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know. This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.

How then shall we perform it?--At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

— Abraham Lincoln —

The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838
Posted by: Zenster   2006-11-11 14:48  

#4  Immortal words: "Earn this".
Posted by: Jack is Back!   2006-11-11 13:17  

#3  "They shall not grow 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"

-- Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)
Posted by: elbud   2006-11-11 11:20  

#2  W.N.Hodgson (1893-1916)
"Before Action"

By all the glories of the day
And the cool evening's benison,
By that last sunset touch that lay
Upon the hills where day was done,
By beauty lavisghly outpoured
And blessings carelessly received,
By all the days that I have lived
Make me a solider, Lord.

By all of man's hopes and fears,
And all the wonders poets sing,
The laughter of unclouded years,
And every sad and lovely thing;
By the romantic ages stored
With high endeavor that was his,
By all his mad catastrophes
Make me a man, O Lord.

I, that on my familiar hill
Saw with uncomprehending eyes
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice,
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword
Must say goodbye to all of this;--
By all delights that I shall miss,
Help me to die, O Lord.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2006-11-11 11:10  

#1  The war (retaining a hold on the last 2000 years of human progress) against a dark domain with a desire to enslave the world in it's archaic ideology is being led, for the moment, by Americans. Even though our opposition postures us as the supreme leaders of the world, perhaps they have helped identify our role in this conflict.

The battle is being fought in the easily manipulated black hearts and weak minds of the poor and oppressed, of all cultures.

The struggles that surface as acts of terror are against an ideology America has defined. Regardless of the label (Republican or Democrat) Americans will hold the torch high.

But look for the FLOT to shift.
Posted by: Skidmark   2006-11-11 09:58  

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