[lit-ideas] Re: Anzio and the meaning of war (or thursday poem)
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 00:03:48 -0800
someone better versed than i
(pun noted)
should study the rhetoric of soldiers letters for
having read many missives from the first world war and
heard those in ken burns account of the civil
war and now noting how those from the peninsula war go
what
strikes me is that soldiers read one another's thoughts
that those who could read
did read
and that the reason people pushed forward in the civil war and the
first world war is that the letters from the peninsula war
published throughout the nineteenth century
told them that this was how success happened
ten thousand french attacking a pass
four hundred highlanders move through retreating troops to stand
resolutely and
are they mown down by cannon and machine gun fire
no they go down one by one and
on the spot and in history heroically and in reality
some survive to
write about blessing inaccurate musketry
but
and here's the point to note
the highlanders' descendants
among whom my grandfather numbered
when asked to be similarly brave
thinking they knew what they were doing
were blasted to kingdom come
perhaps by a footnote
which warned that a man named shrapnel
had changed the way war was done
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Re: Anzio and the meaning of war (or thursday poem)
