The Great War, 1914-1918
For who likes to know more about this war:
a great comic: C'était la guerre des tranchées made by Tardi (I don't know if it's available in English)
a great book: Voyage au bout de la nuit. or translated Journey to the end of the night. written by Céline. One of the funniest books I've read.
This is my two minutes silence, to remember all the first war graveyards I'd cycle past when looking for blackberries, the graves still clean and well kept.
(I grew up near Ypres.)
Last year snapesbabe posted this by Wilfred Owen, this year I'll post it again and for those interested here is her post from last year.
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.