Armistice Day

According to a local poll, I am one of seven percent who feel November 11th should not be a national holiday.
Being as 93% of the populace seems to be against me on this issue, I should probably elaborate.
I'm sure many of these people--the ones who feel we should honour our veterans with a holiday--have the purest of motives and intentions. But they're terribly misguided, because within a year or two, Remembrance Day would become just another day off. Two minutes of silence at the eleventh hour would go by largely unmarked. Kids would lose the poignant Remembrance Day assemblies that are pretty much their only chance to learn about the terrible toll that generations of veterans have willingly paid.
November 11th is the secular Easter: a chance to acknowledge that pretty much everything we have as a nation, certainly everything worth the having, has risen out of the deaths of multitudes. The burden of gratitude is heavy, but not a fraction as heavy as its price.

Herewith, a small poppy-field of some of my favourite war poems and songs, which detail that price in a way my words simply can not.

And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (Eric Bogle)

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in nineteen fifteen the country said, "Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done."
And they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As our ship pulled away from the quay,
And amidst all the cheers, flag-waving and tears
We sailed off to Gallipoli.

And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water.
And of how in that hell that they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk he was waiting, he'd primed himself well,
He showered us with bullets, and he rained us with shell,
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.

But the band played Waltzing Matilda,
As we stopped to bury our slain.
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then we started all over again.

Now those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive,
But around me, the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead.
Never knew there was worse things than dying.

For I'll go no more Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and free,
To hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs,
No more Waltzing Matilda for me.

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind and insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve and to mourn and to pity.
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway.
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

And so now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
And I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams of past glory.
And the old men marched slowly, all bones stiff and sore,
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war,
And the young people ask,"What are they marching for?"...
And I ask meself the same question.

But the band plays Waltzing Matilda,
And the old men still answer the call.
But as year follows year, more old men disappear,
Someday no one will march there at all.

Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda, Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me ?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong...
Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me ?
*******

Christmas In The Trenches (John McCutcheon)

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.

'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung.
Our families back in England were toasting us that day:
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!'' Each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.

"He's singing bloody well, you know!'' my partner says to me.
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony.
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war.

As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent,
"God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen'' struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was "Stille Nacht.'' "'Tis `Silent Night'", says I,
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky.

"There's someone coming toward us!'', the front line sentry cried.
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side.
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night.

Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land,
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand.
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well,
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.

We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home,
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own;
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin...
This curious and unlikely band of men.

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more,
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war.
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wond'rous night:
"Whose family have I fixed within my sights?''

'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter, hung.
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung.
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore.

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell.
Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well.
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame,
And on each end of the rifle we're the same.

******
And finally, the poem which I feel sums up the true horror of war. This was written by perhaps the finest of the World War I poets, Wilfred Owen. He was killed in action, at 25 years of age, just one week before the Armistice. As the bells were ringing in Shrewsbury, England, to mark the end of the conflict, his parents received a telegram informing them of the death of their son.

Dulce Et Decorum Est (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.