twincityhacker

It's really bizarre, the mileage out of The impromptu series of poetry and songs on the occasion of Veteran's Day - really, Armistice Day as the focus is on the Great War.

I'm not sure why I'm surprised. Just by the nature of where the fandom is placed in time and space the horrors of World War I sits in the corner like a well-picked over skeleton, while everyone tries very firmly not to think over the the ghost of horrors future sitting the the other corner, and the great depression kindly brings both of them tea. Wodehouse does a good job hand waving away most of the unpleasantness, but most of us can't quite divorce the cannon from reality as he could.

But it's all very interesting, even divorced from the whys of it. For instance, instead of being a glorification of service like every single other vetrarn's program I've been to, it's about the utter wastefulness of the war and it's effect on the people that fought in it, and died in it.

In fact, until today I didn't even know why the goddamn poppies were important. Why were there poppies in Flander's fields? My friends, poppies don't like to compete with the surrounding flora, so poppy seeds lie dormant until the are no other plants in the area. In other words, poppies bloomed like blood welling up from the very Earth itself because everything in the surrounding area was fucking dead and there was nothing but turned up soil.

So, Flander's fields, though no longer filled with poppies, they are still buring people there. Fewer now, but every once and a while while rooting though a trench they find some corpses, still. Nothing to identify them, except sometimes a scrap of uniform still resides with their muddy bones. Not German's though. The German's are sent back home to Germany.

Honestly, I don't know what's worse. That Flander's fields don't want German's, or that the German's are the only ones that get to go home.

Eric Bogle - And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

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 march 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.

Nicking this from hangingfire.

Technically, it's about the Great War.

Not so technically, it's about doing horrible things in the name of religion because you think God told you to do something that when you think of it, that it's not particularly in character for a loving God. Does God have nothing better to do in with His time than give a flying fuck about polyester blends? Is the leisure suit such a sin that you can be stoned to death for wearing one?

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young
Wilfred Owen

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.