Well, they may be unremembered but they didn't die in vain. Oil is nearly $100 a barrel, corporate profits and the stock markets are at all-time highs, and the VeePee has moved into a new $2.9 million home, just down the street from Rumsfeld's, bought with Halliburton dividends. Sleep well in your trenches, you gentle heroes.

If you are able, save them a place inside of you
and save one backward glance when you are leaving
for the places they can no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say you loved them,
though you may or may not have always.
Take what they have left and what they have taught you
with their dying and keep it with your own.
And in that time when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes you left behind.

This poem written by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, on January 1, 1970 in Dak To 2 months before his death. Major O'Donnell was a helicopter commander with the 170th Aviation Company, 17th Aviation Group, 52nd Aviation Batalion, 1st Aviation Brigade. He and his crew were shot down on 24 March, 1970 while performing an extraction operation.

Major O'Donnell's remains were never found.

(Christ, I cry every time I read this poem.)

That wasn't reheated anything, that was an incredible poem. Blew me away.

If we're doing this here's one of the stanzas from Auden's "Shield of Achilles":

A place without a feature, bare and brown
No blade of grass, no sign of neighbourhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude
A million eyes, a million boots, in line
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as blank and level as the place;
No-one was cheered and nothing was discussed.
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

It should be printed on every conscription letter.

Don: Thanks for the poem and background.

Guest "Reheated" was a reference to my previous use of the poem. In fact, I can't get enough of it. Both Sassoon and his friend Wilfred Owen made a point of keeping their war poetry as simple as possible to make it accessible to everyone. The crafting is just superb. A line like "With crumps and lice and lack of rum" is pure genius. It's got symmetry (almost a palindrome), rhythm, alliterations. Almost as good as Tupac and Nas... :-)

Wilfred Owen's poems are favorites of mine, especially "Futility." Owen was killed just a week before the end of WW I. Bells were ringing to mark the Armistice as his parents received the telegram announcing his death.

"Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as blank and level as the place;"

MFB, how did Auden know about our current administration?

Wonderful and enraging poems all. I don't need to be sobbing at 9:30 in the morning.

While we're at it, this is from Witter Bynner's "American Version" of the Tao Te Ching:

31

Even the finest arms are an instrument of evil,
A spread of plague,
And the way for a vital man to go is not the way of a soldier.
But in time of war men civilized in peace
Turn from their higher to their lower nature.
Arms are an instrument of evil,
No measure for thoughtful men
Until there fail all other choice
But sad acceptance of it.
Triumph is not beautiful.
He who thinks triumph beautiful
Is one with a will to kill,
And one with a will to kill
Shall never prevail upon the world.
It is a good sign when man's higher nature comes forward,
A bad sign when his lower nature comes forward,
When retainers take charge
And the master stays back
As in the conduct of a funeral.
The death of a multitude is cause for mourning:
Conduct your triumph as a funeral.

MFB, how did Auden know about our current administration?

"There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now."
--Eugene O'Neill

Veterans Day? Feh. What was wrong with Armistice Day?
Too difficult to explain? Understand? Appreciate?
Didn't fit an empire on the way up? Maybe it'll fit on the way down.

I dunno if anyone has seen the greatest martial arts film EVER, 1971's "A Touch of Zen". There is one profoundly affecting scene where a cocky young scholar, after helping a group of rebels defeat the government troops that are after them walks through the battlefield laughing at his various ingeniously constructed deathtraps. All until he sees the corpses that include friend and foe alike, and they all appear to be staring reproachfully at him. The shock on his face is priceless.

That movie should be seen again by every single armchair warrior today.

I haven't seen "A Touch of Zen" - and it sounds good.

So far my favorite martial arts movie is "Karate Kid" - unfortunately, that was the peak of Ralph Macchio's movie career, although I also enjoyed "Crossroads". Another martial arts movie I'd recommend is "House of Flying Daggers".