from Britain, who died shortly before Armistice Day, in fact one week earlier, in one of the pointless final battles.

Benjamin Britten used these poems as the text for his War Requiem, played for the dedication of the new cathedral in Coventry -  the original was bombed when Churchill, knowing the city was going to be attacked because German codes had been broken, had to make the heartrending decision to take no preventive action so the Germans would not realize their codes were compromised. The original soloists were selected to represent a post-war healing:  tenor Peter Pears from Britain (the composer's paramour), baritone Dietrich Fischer-Diskau of Germany, and soprano Galina Vischnevskaya of the USSR 9wife of cellist/conductor of Msitislav Rostropovich).

The opening text for Britten, the words you first hear, taken from his "Anthem for Dead Youth," begin like this:

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

I have the collected works of Wilfred Owen and believe his poems should be required reading for anyone who believes war can ever be an easy or glorious thing.  He was an anti-war warrior, a decorated officer who suffered wounds and what they then called combat fatigue (PTSD) and somehow always managed to summon the courage to return once again to the front, where he finally lost his life leading an unnecessary attack on a non-vital target in the waning days of the war.  His anger at the pointless loss of life was matched only by his love for his fellow soldiers, which shines through in his poetry.  

Here's one I particularly like:

PARABLE OF THE OLD MEN AND THE YOUNG

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son and
half the seed of Europe, one by one.

I read once that his brother serving in the Navy on hearing that the war was over gave secial thanks that his family had coem throught the war whole.  Shortly after that while still on board his ship at see, he walked into his birth and found Wilfred sitting in the room.  In a few moments Wilfred vanished.  At that point Wilfred's brother knew he must be dead even though it was some time before his ship made landfall and he confirmed that indeed his brother was dead.

  Is ure wish i could find the source of that story again.

I had/have a two year old climbing on me as I type.

was by Wilfred Owen.  After i read it I went on to interview more than 50 WW1 veterans between the years 1990-2000.

The poem is:

DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Wilfred Owen  circa 1918

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 wilting 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
Bitten 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.

"Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori." means -It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.  

This poem addresses the futility and loss of war.  The most striking line in it is "the pity of war; the pity war distilled".  He wrote this poem around the time of his 25th birthday.  Just as an aside, Owen was one of the first poets to use pararhyme, where the consonants of words are the same but the vowels are different.  Note the use of "scooped" and "escaped" and "groined" with "groaned".  He was only 25 years old when he died.

Strange Meeting ~Wilfred Owen

It seemed that out of 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 pains 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 that 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 had 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 . . ."

I wrote an English paper it and got and A- or a B+.

Back in the early 90's it was fairly easy to find men in their nineties that remembered the war first hand.  

in Merrifeld today. The woman behind the counter told him "Thank you for serving," and he told her he was a veteran of the Cold War, serving overseas in 1950-51, part of it as liaison with the British, and felt the people serving today had it much harder. He chatted for a minute and she was very patient with him, as, to my appreciation, were the two people ahead of me in line, instead of the usual jerky impatience we normally see at the post office.  

When I got to the counter, I thanked the woman for thanking the veteran, and she told me "This time we had enough people so every veteran at the Post Office had the day off." Nice, unexpected, and unadvertized.

In honor of Wilfred Owen, here is a BBC story on Remembrance Day

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_...

This passage, from "Suicide in the Trenches" always reminds me of the bastards that marched us into our present war--but perhaps they are the same bastards who march us into every war:

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.