Forum Games: Word Association

[NewYinzer]

Iran

[Darknight_88]

Nukes

[NewYinzer]

Dr. Strangelove

[SleepyD]

Mein Führer, I can WALK!

[NewYinzer]

Preversion

If you try any preversions, I'll blow yer head off!

[MisterCat]

War


'Youth Mourning,' George Clausen, 1916

;022

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[C-Chan]

Reinforcement  -v-

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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.

   -- Wilfred Owen, "Dulce Et Decorum Est", 1917

[NewYinzer]

Resources

We must never forget World War I...

[rdhdtwns]

memory

lawdy, that was my debate class topic, WWI was.

[Ultimaninja]

Loses

Murder is murder and somebody must answer, somebody must explain the streams of blood that flowed in the Indian country in the summer of 1838. Somebody must explain the four-thousand silent graves that mark the trail of the Cherokees to their exile. I wish I could forget it all, but the picture of six-hundred and forty-five wagons lumbering over the frozen ground with their cargo of suffering humanity still lingers in my memory. Let the Historian of a future day tell the sad story with its sighs, its tears and dying groans. Let the great Judge of all the earth weigh our actions and reward us according to our work. John G. Burnett, United States Army (The Native Americans)

[MisterCat]

War poets

The subtitle to this thread is taken from the following poem written in 1916 by Siegfried Sassoon, an officer in the U.K. army during the First World War:

Suicide In the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

~o~

Called "Mad Jack" by the men of his battalion due to his reckless bravery in the face of enemy fire, Sassoon received the Military Cross for his valorous actions; yet he hated the war all the same.  He spoke out against the war in a more direct manner, via the following declaration which The Times of London published:

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purpose 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. I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed. On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the contrivance of agonies which they do not, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.

An influential friend intervened and prevented Sassoon from being court-martialed.  Instead, he was sent to a military hospital in Scotland which was dedicated to helping those officers suffering from what we'd now call post-traumatic stress disorder.  In the event, Sassoon subsequently returned to combat in France and survived the war.

;022

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[SleepyD]

Literature class.

British Literature.

Junior year high school.

Read that exact same poem.

As much as I liked reading poetry like that, I did not like that class.

ok, I really should get back to work.

[MisterCat]

W*rk



o_o

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[Ultimaninja]

Sleep

I love my job, it's the work I hate

[NewYinzer]

Sheep