For Christmas

For this Christmas post, I encourage you to click thru to the amazing, thoughtful and inspiring Christmas tale told by retired U.S. Army Colonel Pat Lang (The Huron Carol) and his readers. Over at Old Hickory, Bruce recounts the story of the famous 1914 Christmas truce, held during the holiday that most thought they would be home before. Thirty years later, U.S. forces fought one of the most intensive battles of the Second World War in the Ardennes Forest. And up until the debacle in Holland, they too thought they would be on their way home for their Christmas in '44.

For so many, it is hard to imagine Christmas away from their families, friends and loved ones - much less a Christmas spent in a war zone in combat. Again this Christmas, thousands of our countrymen remain deployed and sadly, far too many of them are serving in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let's hope that they too, today, can enjoy a brief respite from their work.

(Photo: Cross and wreath laid in 1999 to commemorate the 1914 Christmas Truce, Ypres, Belgium via Wikimedia Common)

F the F'in Yankees!

Today would have been Steve Gilliard's 44th birthday. I've missed this patriot often over the past couple of years. And I especially missed him in this past election campaign. Somehow, I think he was still around, and the legion of followers who are "fighting back" are Steve's mark and memory in our world. Truly and often, the good die all too young.

I for one will never forget the hornet's nest he stirred when he put Michael Steel in blackface! Or his human and humane coverage of the NYC transit workers strike. Or the long treatises on history. Or the (waaay) optimistic predictions that the GOP would get its due (they finally did this year). Or the typos! To go back to Steve's archives today is to relive the agony and the ecstasy of these past Bush years - and miss all over again that wonderful voice he gave to so many of us.

The folks at the Group News Blog are keeping Steve's fighting spirit alive and well. Thanks for all that you do and reminding us today about the man we miss from our midst.

Steve, I miss ya! And yeah, F the effing Yankees!

November 11

Maybe Veteran's Day is best remembered by the poet and soldier, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."

1918
(The Poems of Wilfred Owen)

Wilfred Owen served with joined the British Army in 1915 and served as an officer on the Western Front. He was evacuated with "shell shock" in 1917, and during his hospitalization, he met Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon greatly influenced and strongly supported Owen's poetry and in 1918, five of Owen's poems were published.

In July 1918, Wilfred Owen returned to France, serving in the 2nd Manchesters. He was killed in action on November 4th while leading his company across the Sambre-Oise Canal in what was one of the Allies final victories in the war. Although his death occurred almost exactly one week to the hour before the Armistice would end the fighting on the Western Front, his mother did not learn of it until the Armistice Day itself.

In a draft preface to a collection of poems he expected to publish after the war, Owens noted that his book:

"was not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
And the Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful."

This Remembrance/Armistice/Veterans Day, spend a few moments considering the Pity of War. And the heroes on all sides that serve.

(Image by Michele Catania via Flickr)