I saw the coffins at Clark AFB in 1965 before we had a war
I met a guardsman last week suffering from 'battle fatigue'
war does have real consequences the Washington cowboys would rather we
didn't see.
tom bell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Poets Against the War" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, November 09, 2003 11:54 PM
Subject: Wilfred Owen on Hiding Our Iraq War Dead
> We'd like to draw your attention to a powerful essay on the Op-Ed page of
> today's New York Times.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> What World War I's Greatest Poet Would Say About Hiding Our War Dead
>
> By ADAM COHEN
>
> Published: November 9, 2003
>
> When World War I broke out, the English saw going off to battle as a fine
> thing to do. They embraced the Latin poet Horace's dictum, "Dulce et
> decorum est, pro patria mori" - It is sweet and proper to die for one's
> country. But four years later, that romantic notion had been shattered by
> the grim reality of the mustard-gas-laced killing fields, and by the
bitter
> words of Wilfred Owen, a British officer now recognized as the greatest
> poet of the Great War. Owen reported from the battlefields of France that,
> contrary to the prettified accounts being served up, the war he witnessed
> was full of blood "gargling" up from "froth-corrupted lungs" and "vile,
> incurable sores on innocent tongues."
>
> Owen's subject was, he declared, "war, and the pity of war." He expressed
> it through dark word portraits, in which dead and dying young men were
> stripped of any glory or sentimentality. Owen himself became one of these
> inglorious casualties when he was killed in action at the age of 25, just
> days before the war's end, 85 years ago this week.
>
> A revered figure in England, Owen found a large American following during
> the Vietnam War. He is often portrayed as antiwar, which he was not. What
> he stood for was seeing war clearly, which makes him especially relevant
> today. The Bush administration has been loudly attacking the news media
for
> misreporting the Iraq conflict by leaving out good news. Owen would
counter
> - in vivid, gripping images - that it is the White House, with its
campaign
> to hide casualties from view, that is dangerously distorting reality.
>
> Owen was born in western England, near the Welsh border, to a middle-class
> family. When the clouds of war were gathering, he was embarking on a
> literary life. Like many young British men, he was caught up in war fever.
> As Dominic Hibberd, a leading Owen scholar, relates in a recent biography,
> Owen reacted to the German threat by writing a poem in which he
approvingly
> cited Horace's dictum, adding that it was "sweeter still" to die in war
> "with brothers." He wrote to his mother, "I now do most intensely want to
> fight."
>
> Owen got his wish. He volunteered for the army in the fall of 1915, and
was
> sent to France. Being there gave him a "fine heroic feeling," he wrote his
> mother a few months later. But before long, Owen was nearly killed by a
> German sniper. Then, while stumbling in the dark, he fell into a 15-foot
> pit and ended up with a concussion. "I have suffered seventh hell," he
> wrote his mother.
>
> A large shell exploded near his head weeks later, throwing him into the
> air, and another, ghoulishly, exhumed a comrade, depositing his corpse
> nearby. Owen was haunted by blood-soaked dreams and, after a diagnosis of
> shell shock, he was committed to a war hospital. He befriended a fellow
> patient, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, and embarked on his most prolific
> period of writing. For Owen, the romance of war was by now long gone. He
> wrote of one wounded soldier, "heavy like meat/And none of us could kick
> him to his feet."
>
> While convalescing, Owen wrote his greatest work, "Dulce et Decorum Est,"
> in which he provided a biting new take on Horace's assessment of death in
> battle. The poem is an account of a gas attack, and of one soldier too
slow
> to put on his "clumsy helmet" who ends up "guttering, choking, drowning."
> Owen concludes by caustically telling the reader that if he had been
there,
> "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."
>
> When he recovered, Owen was sent back to France to fight. Ordered to lead
> his troops across a canal into heavy enemy machine gun and mortar fire, he
> was killed in the crossing. His mother received a telegram reporting his
> death on Nov. 11, 1918, the day the war officially ended.
>
> Owen, who was commended posthumously for inflicting "considerable losses
on
> the enemy," was no pacifist. He told his mother he had a dual mission: to
> lead his men "as well as an officer can" but also to watch their
> "sufferings that I may speak of them." Owen was right that an honorable
> approach to war requires both ably leading troops on the battlefield, and
> reporting honestly what occurs there.
>
> The Bush administration, however, is resisting this honorable approach. In
> its eagerness to convince the public that things are going well in Iraq,
it
> is leading troops into battle, while trying its best to obscure what
> happens to them. President Bush is not attending soldier funerals, as
> previous presidents have, avoiding a television image that could sow
doubts
> in viewers' minds. He avoids mentioning the American dead - and the
> injured, who are seven times as numerous. The Pentagon has sent out
> emphatic reminders that television and photographic coverage is not
allowed
> of coffins returning to Dover Air Force Base.
>
> There are already signs of public unease. Representative George
Nethercutt,
> a Republican running for the Senate in Washington, was criticized last
> month for saying the media were focusing on "losing a couple of soldiers
> every day" rather than the "better and more important" story of progress
in
> Iraq. (Mr. Nethercutt later complained that some accounts left out that he
> said losing the soldiers "heaven forbid, is awful.") But Mr. Nethercutt's
> was just the sort of bland formulation that would have driven Owen wild.
>
> Americans are already considering the relative merits of staying the
course
> in Iraq, putting in an international peacekeeping force, and even pulling
> out. It is a somber debate, with great consequences for this nation, and
> the world. We must enter into it with full information, without lapsing
> into what Owen trenchantly called "the old lie" - or new ones.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> For the complete story in the New York Times, go to:
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/opinion/09SUN3.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEdit
orials%20and%20Op%2dEd
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> How can you help?
>
> >> Organize a poetry reading against the war. Go to
> http://poetsagainstthewar.org/createreading.asp.
>
> >> Publish your poem against the war. Since August 1st, over 1500 new
> antiwar poems have been added to the Poets Against the War web site. Go to
> http://poetsagainstthewar.org/submitpoem.asp.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change the email address we use to send you news or announcements about
> PAW, or to give us any additional info, please go to
> http://poetsagainstthewar.org/authoredit.asp.
>
> To unsubscribe: If you'd rather not receive any more email from us, please
> go to http://poetsagainstthewar.org/changesubscription.asp.
>
>
>
>
>
|
