In Flanders Field

“In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Share
Avatar photo

Author: Jamie

Retired writer/editor

37 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
patd
3 years ago

the guardian:

For the British army, the Last Post, played to signify the end of the day, came to represent a final tribute to the fallen. The German-Austrian equivalent is Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden (I Had a Comrade). The Last Post is played every Remembrance Day. Since 1928 it has been played each evening at 8pm at the Menin Gate, Ypres. Robert Graves, wounded on the Somme, wrote a poem, The Last Post: “O spare the phantom bugle as I lie/ Dead in the gas and smoke and roar of guns,/ Dead in a row with other broken ones,/ Lying so stiff and still under the sky…”

 

As we begin to gather our thoughts for Remembrance, take a moment to pause with us for The Last Post around the country in honour of those who gave their today.

When you go home
Tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today
We will remember them

Bugler; LCpl Sebastian Yaseen of the Band and Bugles of the Rifles [british army]

patd
3 years ago

and popular across the pond was

“Over There” – United States of America (1917) Patriotic Song With English & Thai lyrics

patd
3 years ago

patd
3 years ago

in other news, the hill:

A federal judge on Wednesday declined to delay a Friday deadline for the National Archives to begin handing over Trump administration documents to the House January 6 Select Committee.
Lawyers for former President Trump had asked for a stay after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected his lawsuit seeking to block the documents from being released while he appeals.
In a six-page decision on Wednesday, Chutkan, an Obama appointee, denied Trump’s request for a temporary stay for essentially the same reasons that she ruled against blocking the documents from being handed over.
“In his renewed motion, despite the fact that he requests essentially the same relief as in his original preliminary injunction motion, Plaintiff has not advanced any new facts or arguments that persuade the court to reconsider its November 9, 2021, Order,” Chutkan said in her decision.
“The court’s analysis previously rejecting Plaintiff’s requested relief is thus equally applicable here: Plaintiff is unlikely to succeed on the merits of his claims or suffer irreparable harm, and a balance of the equities and public interest bear against granting his requested relief,” she added. 
The move will likely mean that Trump’s legal team will have to scramble ahead of Friday’s deadline to get an emergency stay from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. If that fails, Trump will have to ask the Supreme Court to take action.
[continues]

patd
3 years ago

blueINdallas
3 years ago

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/11/politics/trump-nixon-supreme-court-analysis-biskupic/index.html

“Nixon lost in 1977 by a 7-2 vote. A threshold question for the justices in that case of Nixon v. Administrator of General Services was whether Nixon, as a former president, could assert executive privilege …”

So take that, Cadet Bonespurs.

Sturgeone
3 years ago

Cadet Lookenferrum
 

Pogo
3 years ago

From the CNN piece posted by BiD:

Irrespective of past Supreme Court action on presidential powers, Chutkan, as she chronicled Trump’s false election claims, recalled the strained relations between the former President and the court. She observed that the justices had spurned Trump’s voter fraud arguments in 2020.
Wrote Chutkan: “The United States Supreme Court also denied numerous emergency applications aimed at overturning the results. In response, Plaintiff tweeted that the Court was ‘totally incompetent and weak on the massive Election Fraud that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election.’ ”

If the high court would not intercede to grant the then sitting president relief to protect against claims of him being a victim of election fraud then what in god’s name makes his crack legal team think they will grant him as a former president relief to protect against an investigation into his and his staff’s role in planning an attack on the Capitol that has led to over 600 arrests and numerous convictions and pleas by those he encouraged to go up Pennsylvania Ave to pressure Congress and the Vice President to reject the election results it has already refused to grant him relief he requested?

Blue Bronc
3 years ago

To all the other veterans on the Trail – Hi.  We are a small group, and shrinking fast.  But, from all the hoopla made about discounts to veterans you would think there are many of us. Nope.  Not much to lose giving a ten percent discount to veterans and active duty, unless you are next to a military base.  Once again I did not drive over to [big name restaurant] to eat a free breakfast with lots of extra sugar in everything.  Today I think of my family and all who are vets, not only of U.S. service too.  I am the last (so far) of the veterans in my immediate family. My Finnish cousins still do their turn to stay ready to repel Russia when it invades Finland again.

RebelliousRenee
3 years ago

A salute to all the vets that post and lurk here…
 
 

patd
3 years ago

jamie, thanks for the eric bogle piece.  here’s another one he wrote, very moving. And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda Eric Bogle Now when I was a young man, I carried me pack,And I lived the free life of a roverFrom the Murray’s green basin to the dusty outback,Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.Then in 1915, my country said “Son,It’s time you stopped rambling, there’s work to be done”.So they gave me a tin hat, and they gave me a gun,And they marched me away to the war. And the band played Waltzing MatildaAs the ship pulled away from the quayAnd amidst all the cheers, the flag-waving and tears,We sailed off for Gallipoli. And how well I remember that terrible day,How our blood stained the sand and the waterAnd of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay,We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.Johnny Turk he was waiting, he’d primed himself wellHe showered us with bullets and he rained us with shellAnd in five minutes flat, he’d blown us all to hellNearly blew us right back to Australia. But the band played Waltzing Matilda,When we stopped to bury our slain.We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirsThen we started all over again. And those that were left, well we tried to survive,In that mad world of blood, death and fireAnd for ten weary weeks, I kept myself aliveThough around me the corpses piled higherThen a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over headAnd when I woke up… Read more »

patd
3 years ago

wiki: Eric Bogle (born 23 September 1944) is a Scottish folk singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to Australia at the age of 25, to settle near Adelaide, South Australia. Bogle’s songs have covered a variety of topics, and have been performed by many artists. Two of his best known songs are “No Man’s Land” (or “The Green Fields of France”) and “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda“, with the latter named one of the APRA Top 30 Australian songs in 2001, as part of the celebrations for the Australasian Performing Right Association‘s 75th anniversary. […] Eric Bogle was born on 23 September 1944 in Peebles, Scotland. His father was a railway signalman who played the bagpipes. Bogle started writing poetry when he was eight years old. After attending school until he was sixteen, Bogle worked in various trades: labourer, clerk and barman. In 1969, Bogle emigrated to Australia and initially lived in the capital, Canberra, where he worked as an accountant. He had an interest in politics and by 1980 had moved to Queensland before settling in Adelaide […] Bogle taught himself to play guitar and joined a skiffle and rock band.[2] He was the leader of Eric and the Informers in Scotland.[1] His early influences were Lonnie Donegan, Elvis Presley and Ewan MacColl.[2] He turned to folk music prior to emigrating to Australia – his first written songs concerned his parents. One of these, “Leaving Nancy”, which sang of the day he left home for Australia, being the last time he saw his mother Nancy, was often covered, most notably by The Dubliners and The Fureys.[1] When living in Canberra he joined the… Read more »

old man
3 years ago

That Arch Duke was one bloody SOB , Rick Steves toured his retreat in the Czech Republic. He shot over 250,000 animals , the place is lousy stuffed heads and horns. 

old man
3 years ago

Tangier Island, home to a Virginia fishing town and about 400 people, could be saturated by rising seas and convert to uninhabitable wetlands by 2051, according to an analysis released Monday. 
The tiny island, which drew national attention for its residents’ support of former President Donald Trump and skepticism of climate change, is one of many Chesapeake Bay islands sinking because of local sea level rise and subsidence. People have lived on the island since the 18th century, but the residents could soon face displacement. ……………………..   
“What people are going to start realizing quickly, dealing with climate change is going to be an extremely expensive undertaking,” said Dave Schulte, a scientist for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and one of the paper’s two authors. “A lot of towns and cities are going to have similar estimates, and I have no idea where we’re going to get that money.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/climate-change-tangier-island-sea-level-rise-rcna4830

In 2017, after CNN aired a segment that noted Tangier Island’s support of Trump, the president himself phoned Eskridge to tell him not to worry about sea level rise and that the town would last for hundreds more years.

blueINdallas
3 years ago

Missing Flatus today, too.

Sturgeone
3 years ago

He ain’t gonna jump no more. 

Pogo
3 years ago

Tangier Island – not sure I ever set foot on it but did sail past it a number of times – it isn’t exactly a prominent island in the Chesapeake – the residents have good reason to be concerned.
NatGeo on Tangier Island.  If you visit wear rubber boots.

Few of us could find Tangier Island on a map. A tiny sliver of mud and marsh grass in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, it is one of the most isolated communities in America. But many of us, if we are lucky, will have tasted its most famous product,soft shell crab, a delicacy that has made the island famous worldwide. But as Earl Swift explains in his new book,Chesapeake Requiem, the future for the island, and numerous other low-lying communities across the world, is not looking bright, as a result of rising seas due to climate change.
(Continues)

The people there talk funny, at least that’s what my friend Bart told me..

craigcrawford
3 years ago

BREAKING: The DC Circuit Court of Appeals has granted a brief hold on the Trump executive privilege decision, setting a schedule that includes arguments on Nov. 30. https://t.co/K0uUjpjJKx

THE PANEL:
Judge Patricia Millett (Obama)
Judge Robert Wilkins (Obama)
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (Obama/Biden)

Blue Bronc
3 years ago

Pogo – Tangier Island is too shallow so I stay more west of it.  They need to do a lot to keep it dry, maybe do what the Netherlands has done.

Pogo
3 years ago

Dammit. A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked the imminent release of records of former president Donald Trump’s White House calls and activities related to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack after a lower court found that President Biden can waive his predecessor’s claim to executive privilege. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted a temporary injunction while it considers Trump’s request to hold off any release pending appeal, and fast-tracked oral arguments for a hearing Nov. 30. … Capping days of legal drama, the appeals court rocketed consideration of the case through federal courts in Washington. While granting an injunction pending further order, the court set a schedule that signaled it would act swiftly to decide whether to withhold records while an appeal is pending. If it declines, the documents would be released, effectively mooting the case in a victory for the House. Trump could still appeal to the Supreme Court, and a ruling keeping records secret could work to his advantage if litigation is prolonged through the November 2022 midterm elections, when Republicans hope to take the majority in what is now a Democratic-led Congress.  The scheduling order was issued by Judges Patricia Millett, Robert Wilkins and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who also will hear the case. All three were nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents and Jackson is a recent nominee of President Biden. Attorneys for the House and the Justice Department, representing the National Archives and Records Administration, took no position on Trump’s request… Read more »

Bink
3 years ago

Cool, we’ll all be dead before it’s resolved, go Dems😒

Pogo
3 years ago

Enjoying the MASH finale … again. 

Bink
3 years ago

Holy shit the rittenhouse trial judge is a grade-A buffoon

Bink
3 years ago

Thanks for defending this nation of vicious dummies and amoral thieves, veterans 

Bink
3 years ago

Ah i understand, now, these holidays are about assuaging individual guilt rather than expressing sincere gratitude, hooray for epiphanies! ✌️💔🇺🇸

Bink
3 years ago

Now you get to watch pimple-faced cryptocurrency scammers steal everything you’ve ever worked for, while Biden and Manchin bemoan “inflation”, thanks though Veterans

if that shit ain’t banned before Christmas i don’t want to ever again hear how this government works “for the People”

Bink
3 years ago

You see, the justification for vampiric securities trading, historically, has been that such reduces market volatility, preventing shocks that would lead to economic collapse and therefore negatively impact the welfare of all.
 
None of that applies to the newly-contrived cryptocurrency market- it’s all smoke, mirrors, and bullshit

Bink
3 years ago

We got a direct threat to American sovereignty (cryptocurrency) and clueless Dems are trying to “get to the bottom” of what happened on Jan 6, as if every fucking body, right and left, didn’t already know

Bink
3 years ago

If you noticed that you have to give cookie-permission to almost every website now, it’s because the EU mandated that.  They also banned casino-style mechanics in video games.  This congress couldn’t legislate a virtual cup of coffee

Bink
3 years ago

Oft-maligned AOC understands this society way better than any of the dinosaurs on Capitol Hill- the infamous dress was a gaffe, and hopefully an isolated one.  i’m Team AOC, regardless

Sturgeone
3 years ago

I’d have her baby.

patd
3 years ago

NEW THREAD