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Young Fellow My Lad - For Rememberance Day

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shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#16New Post! Nov 15, 2017 @ 05:33:53
"And as expected, you turn your bile to personal abuse."


"Just because I don't slavishly follow your point of view and express my own.

Yes, I have an opinion. Yes, I express it. That's my crime isn't it..?"

No, your 'crime' (your words not mine) is that you don't respect the authors of threads. Maybe the author of this thread doesnt mind you going off track. I dont know, but i doubt you checked first. The original post by the author clearly says his poem is "In honour of all those who have fought and died to protect our rights and freedoms, and continue to do so". You then go and attack the very men his post is meant to honour. This to me shows a total lack of respect for the creator of this thread. If you want to express opinions that are not consistent with the intention of a thread then start your OWN threads and do them there.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#17New Post! Nov 15, 2017 @ 05:41:07
"The modern soldier has grown up in a liberal society with a comprehensive state education and with the experience of the history of the 20th century in his mind.

He knows what he is doing when he goes to joins the military. His reasons and motivations for joining the army are not the same. And he also knows the laws and rules he is expected to follow and yet chooses to ignore.

He knows the Nuremburg Defence is not valid. He can't claim to be "following orders" when he knows the orders he is given may be conspicuously unlawful. And yet he obeys them just the same.

And then attempts to justify it all with cod-poetry which is given prominence on social media and by the mass of it becomes an attempt at justification and absolution."

Well you are consistent, speaking of things about which you have zero experience or knowledge but assuming infallible authority nonetheless.

I don't intend to continue to post here as this is not the proper place. If you want to air your views on Iraq and Afghanistan etc I suggest the more respectful and mature approach would be to start your own thread on same.
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#18New Post! Nov 16, 2017 @ 07:46:07
Back on topic...

For the Fallen

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

- Laurence Binyon
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#19New Post! Nov 16, 2017 @ 07:54:27
Absolution

The anguish of the earth absolves our eyes
Till beauty shines in all that we can see.
War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,
And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.

Horror of wounds and anger at the foe,
And loss of things desired; all these must pass.
We are the happy legion, for we know
Time's but a golden wind that shakes the grass.

There was an hour when we were loth to part
From life we longed to share no less than others.
Now, having claimed this heritage of heart,
What need we more, my comrades and my brothers?

- Siegfried Sassoon
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#20New Post! Nov 16, 2017 @ 07:55:32
In Memoriam

The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood
This Eastertide call into mind the men,
Now far from home, who, with their sweethearts, should
Have gathered them and will do never again.

- Edward Thomas
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#21New Post! Nov 16, 2017 @ 08:05:03
The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by the suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven

- Rupert Brooke
shadowen On March 22, 2024




Bunyip Bend, Australia
#22New Post! Nov 16, 2017 @ 08:06:22
My Boy Jack

"Have you news of my boy Jack?"
Not this tide.
"When d’you think that he’ll come back?"
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?"
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

- Rudyard Kipling
Jennifer1984 On July 20, 2022
Returner and proud





Penzance, United Kingdom
#23New Post! Nov 17, 2017 @ 04:35:11
"I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation."


Siegfried Sassoon.

But hey, what did he know, eh..?
Justpassing On February 03, 2021




Avoca Vic Australia, Australia
#24New Post! Nov 18, 2017 @ 02:42:22
@shadowen Said

Unreal. I never said the UK ever had a quarter of a million troops, I said that nearly a quarter of a million troops have served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan at some point since 2001.


Did you count the boys playing 2 UP behind the shed?
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