Saigon – The War Museum

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It was a very saddening experience to visit the war museum in Saigon. Apart from the captured American equipment there were graphic photos of the effects of the war – children born with terrible deformities due to Agent Orange, horrendous burns from napalm. Then there were the iconic photographs, nearly all of which I remembered clearly. There were a whole series of antiwar posters.

It was well worth a visit to show the brutality and futility of war.

The mighty USA dropped over three times the tonnage of bombs on Vietnam than were dropped in the whole of World War Two. They defoliated millions of acres of jungle with poisonous Agent Orange. They poured in men and equipment against a poorly armed opposition. They lost.

There has to be better ways of dealing with differences.

Wilfred Owen – Dulce et Decorum Est – Lest we forget!

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It is remembrance day – the time we stop to remember all those who died or were injured and traumatised by war.

War is terrible.

There has to be better ways.

When I ran my school I used to hold a remembrance service for the whole school and I would read this poem to them. It has huge impact because it describes the reality. It is not sugar-coated.

War is horror. There is nothing gallant about it. It is death and agony.

The poem ends with the line – The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Translated: The old lie – it is good and proper to die for your country.

Dulce et Decorum Est 

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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound’ring 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.

Remembrance Day – Berliners by Roy Harper

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Lest we forget the obscenity of war and the young men and women consumed by the war machine.

There has to be better ways.

Roy Harper – Come Out Fighting Ghenghis Smith

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The last track on the second album – an interesting antiwar poem on the end dedicated to Jack Kerouac.

Poetry – John Phillips – Silence

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Another poem from Shorts and Shots

Silence

 

Stone on stone on stone, the city canyons,

Towering ramparts, stark against the sky,

Once living, vibrant, fat with city sound.

No sound to break the silence of shadows.

 

Believe! We shall prevail! The Leaders cry.

The flag, the drums, the sound of marching feet

And crowds, then cheering, now forever still.

Nothing disturbs the silence of the ghosts.

 

Silent, the end, no sirens mournful wail

To mark the passing. But  blinding, choking;

Beckoning forth, rats to graze the streets,

Leaving behind the silence of the bones.

 

No birdsong brightens empty, city streets;

No sense of summer sun or winter chill.

No eyes, no ears, no thoughts, no memories.

Only the endless silence of the stone.

Poetry – John Phillips – Roses

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This is another poem from John Phillips out of his poetry book Shorts and Shots.

It is a poem about war. John selected the War of the Roses as his subject.

 

Roses

 

The ground is frozen hard, the Dawn is grey

Which rises on late Winter’s icy blast.

Two armies marching forth in steel array;

The battle lines are drawn, the die is cast.

No loud Hosannas laud a coming King;

No victory palms his glorious path to greet.

But clashing steel and curses, madly ring

O’er broken corpses, crushed ‘neath armoured feet.

Long hours, Death’s hideous song is raised on high,

Whilst howling winds of snow and arrows fall

On those condemned by fate to live or die;

On all, who answered to their ‘Roses’ call.

‘till with the dying day, Red Roses yield

To White, on Towton’s storm-lashed, blood-drenched field.

2014 – The Sea of Remembrance Poppies around the Tower of London

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I was just Looking through my archives and I came across these incredible shots. The Tower of London was surrounded with a sea of porcelain poppies to commemorate the dead of the First World War.

It was a most amazing sight. Each one a dead soldier. It brought home to me the sheer folly of war.

Poetry – War – A poem about the futility and stupidity of war, terrorism and violence as history provides perspective.

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Poetry – War – A poem about the futility and stupidity of war, terrorism and violence as history provides perspective.

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War

There is nothing quite as stupid as humanity. History gives perspective to everything. To stand on a battlefield and look around one sees nothing but stupidity.

Culloden was a beautiful meadow full of grass, flowers and shrubs on which the birds and butterflies flitted. Back in 1746 two armies charged each other with blind hatred. They slashed with swords and hacked each other to death. They inflicted terrible injuries and horrendous agony. They were driven by patriotic passion.

Vicksburg was the battle that was a major blow to the Confederacy. Men were shot and blown to pieces. Limbs were blown off. The mud was sticky with blood.

Hiroshima melted people alive. People stumbled out of the city with their skin dragging behind them like grotesque shadows. They were half cooked alive.

Now ISIS is using medieval methods to kill slowly to inflict the greatest agony. They burn people in cages, slowly drown people, slice their heads off, bury them alive, crucify them and slowly crush them.

War. What is it for? Time robs all of these maniacs of their purpose. Today Vietnam is a tourist trap, Scotland is part of the UK, the USA is united and Japan is a friend from which we buy our cars and TVs.

Tomorrow ISIS will be a dim distant memory. They will be remembered with disbelief and disgust. All their obscene ambition will have been seen to be pointless.

All those wars; all that blood; all that agony – all pointless! There was nothing that could not have been sorted out through intelligence and humanity! Jaw jaw – not war war – as Churchill said!

There are no easy answers or quick fixes. War is the last resort!

 

War

Eating ice-cream in Vietnam,

Belgian chocolate in Ypres;

Sipping beer on the Killing Fields of Cambodia –

A damn sight better than blood and screams.

 

Sitting in a deserted pillbox

Surveying the beauty of the beach and sea

Through an oblong slit;

Walking through a forest of majestic unbroken trees

In the woodland at Vicksburg

Where thirty seven thousand men were killed or wounded;

Photographing butterflies and birds

On the flowers on the battlefield of Culloden

Where two thousand suffered

The agonies of wounds or death.

A damn sight better than being pierced by steel,

Slashed, smashed and shattered.

 

Then Hiroshima, Dresden, the London Blitz, the Crusades

And Jihad – What was it all about?

The IRA, Black Panthers, Weathermen and Baader Meinhof  –

Who won?

 

Shrapnel, chlorine, uranium, steel, bombs, bullets, missiles, napalm, knives, swords, machetes and indoctrinated will.

 

War

What is it for?

 

Enemies become friends.

Time changes everything.

Passions cool.

Nothing is gained.

Agony, blood, sacrifice and early death.

Such a waste.

 

Standing on the scene of such terrible carnage

One is reminded of the stupidity, tragedy and uselessness.

 

War

What is it for?

 

Eating ice-cream in Vietnam where Agent Orange destroyed so much, twisted thousands of lives and created nothing but misery, I was struck by the pointlessness and waste.

 

Opher 4.8.2016