It’s a hundred years since the First World War or as it used
to be called ‘The Great War’ or ‘The War to end all Wars’.
And now David Cameron and people like him are glorifying that
pointless waste of life.
So, I thought I’d commemorate an anniversary; it’s a hundred
years ago this last weekend that poison gas was used for the first time.
It’s not important who did it; every army used gas in WW1.
90,000 soldiers of all armies died of it and 200,000 were horribly injured too –
injuries that shortened their lives and dominated the post war years for them.
Britain made and stored its poison gas at a Top Secret base
at Nancekuke on the beautiful north Cornish coast. Remote enough that if there
had been an accident only some few thousand local Cornish folk would have died.
It’s been decontaminated and removed now but the gas was stockpiled there until
the early 1990’s.
This is Wilfred Owen’s most famous poem.
'Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori' is a quote by the
poet Horace which would have been drummed into the head of the young Owen at
school; 'It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one's country'.
Dulce et decorum est
by Wilfred Owen
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
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,
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 died on 4th November 1918, just a
week before the Armistice was signed.
Neil Harris
(a don’t stop till you drop production)
Contact me: neilwithpromisestokeep@gmail.com
