The guns fell silent and men heard the voice of God

PiptheFair

Nearly 100 years ago today, in 1918, the treaty to end hostilities on the Western Front of World War 1 took effect. Typically a 2 minute moment of silence is taken at 1100 hours to commemorate the nearly 20 million men who lost their lives during the conflict.

Kurt Vonnegut put it best in one of my most favorite quotes.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.
Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.
What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.

SA

I love Kurt Vonnegut.

Antimatter

I love kurt vonnegut and agree with his statement

Solar

Kurt Vonnegut is pretty cool

Huntera

This title is the best quote I have ever heard.

Hobnail

You're an alright guy Pip.

Dongs Galore

Well, hurrah! Rule, Britannia, and boo-sucks to Harry Hun!

Druhim

Pip, you done good.

Indie Winter

MORE WARSHIPS JOIN THE REDS

PiptheFair

I was actually planning on making this thread on the way home from work, and lo and behold I get home and Tam sent me a message telling me to make one

Huntera

America needs to bring back Columbia.

She's much nicer looking than ol' Sam.

Sal

Didn't they drag out the armistice by a couple of days so that it would fall on the special date and time

Would've sucked to be a dude that died on say, 11/10/18 or something

Gatsby

You're a good bloke, Pip.

Tam

this was a good day

Centipede Damascus

PiptheFair wrote:

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.
And all music is.

even Nickleback?

PiptheFair

even megatokyo

No Great Name

even l33t str33t boys

joshofalltrades

even Brokencyde

Slider

Happy Veteran's Day.

UnbrokenEva

Canada has a thing for John McCrae's In Flanders Fields today, but for real emotional impact Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est gets me every time.

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 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

Centipede Damascus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_x0M5y-EWo

Lost Salient

Wait, what is this?

Is this, like... a WWI thread?

Henri Barbusse wrote:

The paralysis of cold was passing away from the knot of sufferers, though the light no longer made any progress over the great irregular marsh of the lower plain. The desolation proceeded, but not the day.
Then he who spoke sorrowfully, like a bell, said. "It'll be no good telling about it, eh? They wouldn't believe you; not out of malice or through liking to pull your leg, but because they couldn't. When you say to 'em later, if you live to say it, 'We were on a night job and we got shelled and we were very nearly drowned in mud,' they'll say, 'Ah!' And p'raps they'll say. 'You didn't have a very spicy time on the job.' And that's all. No one can know it. Only us."
"No, not even us, not even us!" some one cried.
"That's what I say, too. We shall forget — we're forgetting already, my boy!"
"We've seen too much to remember."
"And everything we've seen was too much. We're not made to hold it all. It takes its damned hook in all directions. We're too little to hold it."
"You're right, we shall forget! Not only the length of the big misery, which can't be calculated, as you say, ever since the beginning, but the marches that turn up the ground and turn it again, lacerating your feet and wearing out your bones under a load that seems to grow bigger in the sky, the exhaustion until you don't know your own name any more, the tramping and the inaction that grind you, the digging jobs that exceed your strength, the endless vigils when you fight against sleep and watch for an enemy who is everywhere in the night, the pillows of dung and lice — we shall forget not only those, but even the foul wounds of shells and machine-guns, the mines, the gas, and the counter-attacks. At those moments you're full of the excitement of reality, and you've some satisfaction. But all that wears off and goes away, you don't know how and you don't know where, and there's only the names left, only the words of it, like in a dispatch."
"That's true what he says," remarks a man, without moving his head in its pillory of mud. When I was on leave, I found I'd already jolly well forgotten what had happened to me before. There were some letters from me that I read over again just as if they were a book I was opening. And yet in spite of that, I've forgotten also all the pain I've had in the war. We're forgetting-machines. Men are things that think a little but chiefly forget. That's what we are."
"Then neither the other side nor us'll remember! So much misery all wasted!"
This point of view added to the abasement of these beings on the shore of the flood, like news of a greater disaster, and humiliated them still more.
"Ah, if one did remember!" cried some one.
"If we remembered," said another, "there wouldn't be any more war."

Butler For Life #1

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

If any question why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers lied

Centipede Damascus

that is a powerful passage

Tam

In the fyres of change...

Indie Winter

Julian Grenfell wrote:

The naked earth is warm with spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun’s gaze glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze;
And life is colour and warmth and light,
And a striving evermore for these;
And he is dead who will not fight;
And who dies fighting has increase.

The fighting man shall from the sun
Take warmth, and life from the glowing earth;
Speed with the light-foot winds to run,
And with the trees to newer birth;
And find, when fighting shall be done,
Great rest and fullness after dearth.

All the bright company of Heaven
Hold him in their high comradeship,
The Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven,
Orion’s Belt and sworded hip.

The woodland trees that stand together,
They stand to him each one a friend;
They gently speak in the windy weather;
They guide to valley and ridge’s end.

The kestrel hovering by day,
And the little owls that call by night,
Bid him be swift and keen as they,
As keen of ear, as swift of sight.

The blackbird sings to him, ‘Brother, brother,
If this be the last song you shall sing,
Sing well, for you may not sing another;
Brother, sing.’

In dreary, doubtful, waiting hours,
Before the brazen frenzy starts,
The horses show him nobler powers;
O patient eyes, courageous hearts!

And when the burning moment breaks,
And all things else are out of mind,
And only Joy of Battle takes
Him by the throat, and makes him blind,

Through joy and blindness he shall know,
Not caring much to know, that still
Nor lead nor steel shall reach him, so
That it be not the Destined Will.
The thundering line of battle stands,
And in the air Death moan and sings;
But Day shall clasp him with strong hands,
And Night shall fold him in soft wings.

CorporateLogo

Dongs Galore wrote:

Well, hurrah! Rule, Britannia, and boo-sucks to Harry Hun!

There's nothing cushy about life in the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps!

I Win Swordfights

Happy Birthday, Kurt.

Calamity Jane

sometimes a dude must war

Blake T

One of the best things about that newspaper front page is that it didn't have a single line about the kardashians.

I bought my poppy yesterday and had a good thing about World War 1.

My great grandad fought in france and died from infection.

Fencingsax

Baldrick wrote:

Hear the words I sing
War's a horrid thing.
So I sing sing sing
Dingalingaling

The German Guns

Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom

Lost Salient

If you guys are interested, there's a quite famous book called It Was the War of the Trenches. You can read the first ten pages via this .pdf.

Platy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z_dUOhkygY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUzQ6Am-bbc

Rankenphile

this thread is a good thread

Quoth

http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blsassoonwar.htm

http://www.world-war-pictures.com/war-poem/The-Redeemer/166/

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/suicide.html

Fire Truck

That'll do, Pip.

That'll do.

E^(i Pi)+1=0

History had a really good docudrama about the Gallipoli campaign. It goes by the same name. Y'all should watch it.

Fandyien

pip this is a great thread for someone so gay

really though i love that quote so much. i also like the idea of someone getting incensed over a writer trashing veterans day and then being made to look dumb

Lost Salient

Robert Graves wrote:

Opposite our trenches a German salient protruded, and the brigadier wanted to "bite it off" in proof of the division's offensive spirit. Trench soldiers could never understand the Staff's desire to bite off an enemy salient. It was hardly desirable to be fired at from both flanks; if the Germans had got caught in a salient, our obvious duty was to keep them there as long as they could be persuaded to stay. We concluded that a passion for straight lines, for which headquarters were well known, had dictated this plan, which had no strategic or tactical excuse.

E-uppy-pi name, if you're interested in the Gallipoli campaign there are a bunch of really interesting memoirs and contemporary accounts you could check out. Although some of them might be hard to track down.

TheySlashThem

don't really have anything to add other than that this thread is a good thread

chiasaur11

Fearghaill wrote:

Canada has a thing for John McCrae's In Flanders Fields today, but for real emotional impact Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est gets me every time.

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 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

I've... geeze, I feel like a shit for saying this, but I figure I should.

Always hated that poem. Not for saying World War One was horrible, nasty business that probably wasn't worth it. That's fair and honest. But it's taking all the vile business, presenting it as the facts and all of the facts, and calling the only things that add any nobility to the business wasn't just out of scale, wasn't wrong here, but were lies.

I mean... hmm. Hard to say, and I've never served so I feel like I can't say anything, don't have the right, but there seems a heritage other than the rah-rah bullshit that says there's some good, not in war which is vile, nasty business, but in the people fighting for home and country, and maybe dying in the attempt. No greater love and such.

We should avoid war whenever possible, agreed. But there are times war is more or less necessary, God forgive us all, and taking away what few comforts are left then with any humanity or nobility to them?

Dunno. Just feels... wrong.