Lest we forget

Um I am lacking inspiration here. Why is it that some people can be totally uninspired say they are uninspired and don't have anything to say and I'm still impressed by how they sat it?

Turns to the Radio Times.

It is 90 years since the Battle of the Somme, the battle started on July 1st 1916. Lets be honest we all "know" more about WWII because there is lots of archive footage for Telly programs and there have been loads of films about it.

WWI isn't on film and no one makes Films about it. So hence we know less of it. OK OK there are the occasional classics but you know what I mean.

I'm aware that there were battles in WWI but they are names Somme, Paschendale etc the scale of the slaughter is really unimaginable. How many soldiers have died in Iraq? 1000? 2000? How many people died in 9/11 3000? Yes a wretched waste of life but.... now think about this.

20,000 Tommies died in 24 Hours. Think about that 20,000!! that's 14 people a second!!

in 4 months the total casualties (dead and wounded) were over 1.1 million. And what did that achieve? We advanced 7.5 miles. FFS what a waste.

The first world war was not glamorous. A whole generatiom of young men was wiped out. I suppose as a Brit WWI had less impact because the war took place on a foreign field. WWII involved the whole country, the blitz and all that. I think that's why Americans don't understand the French or the Russian's both had there countries ripped apart by Foreign invaders. The dread of war is ingrained in the pysche - see the film "The Best Years of Our Lives" 1946 - so for many Americans the wars means much less than it does to the British and French.

Anyway I digress, go into any Churchyard and the memorial cross you will find lists of whole families of young men gone the dates eerily similar. Friends who signed on for King and Country erased. It brings home to you the pointlessness of the whole thing.

Dulce Et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.