Harry's Place

God speed, Harry and your pals.

As is the way in our culture the obvious was glossed over.

The media wanted him to be a symbol but the bloke had his own ideas and views delivered in his delightful Somerset burr.

It was quite clear to me on the basis of the words he spoke that he was a pacifist. On the basis of his experience he objected to any war. No war justified the loss of even one life. Not world war 2, not the Falklands, not Iraq, not Afghanistan.

Just because he was 100 plus when he said this doesn’t mean we should patronise him in my view. His words rather make a mockery of what one might call the British Legion orthodox position (as exemplified by David T here): that war is hell, that sacrifice is noble, that soldiers don’t evaluate the worth of war but they do what their country asks of them.

Personally I think his pacifism wrong-headed and full of contradictions. Understandable of course but not right because it is understandable.

So rather than try and make of him a symbol, I would rather say there was a man who suffered, who saw his friends suffer terribly but who had his views as a result of his experience. I don’t agree with those views. But I respect them and I think that’s what many of his friends died for and he fought for – a society where people can disagree without rancour.

Truly the passing of an era. This year’s Remembrance Day will be the first one without a member of the generation for whom the Cenotaph was built.

My Taid (Grandfather) fought in the first world war and I honour him and Harry. We will remember them.

John Gray –

I had a Taid as well. I remember his Great War helmet. He died before I was born sadly. I think he was pretty much a pacifist himself. Pacifism has always been a strong strain in Wales (hangover from being brutalised by the English no doubt).

The whole of the poem with two Celt-excluding England references. It reads a lot less well. It’s not Dulce et Decorum is it? This poem has a great big fat lie in the middle of it “Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow” they went into battle…but we know that’s not true. As in most wars soldiers were dosed with alcohol before they went into battle. Thousands suffered mental collapse. Very few if any were going into battle “steady and aglow” – unless they were aglow with the extra rum ration.

” For The Fallen
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill; Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres,
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.”

field – “Pacifism has always been a strong strain in Wales (hangover from being brutalised by the English no doubt).”

I doubt it. After all, the countries that used to be ruled by the far more brutal Ottomans are not noted for their pacifism. Serbia for instance which suffered more in WW2 than any other European power. Yet if a Serbian pacifist movement arose I have never heard of it. Because in the end, those countries know what the price of pacifism is.

Rather it is more likely that the Welsh are often pacifists because the English were mild rulers and did such an excellent job of protecting them. Had they had Cossacks raping their way across the Hills on a regular basis they might be a little more sensible about the need to defend themselves.

And these died, a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

Mind you, Pound thought only a “myriad”- ten thousand- of the casualties mattered.

I’d agree, Field, that most of Binyon’s poem isn’t very good- that’s why it’s been forgotten. His poems from WWII- The Burning of the Sheaves, for instance, or his translation of Dante are better.

There is some good music from the First World War here:

http://www.greatwar.nl/frames/default-music.html

field, your assertion that the Welsh are pacifists through being brutalised makes no sense. To be brutalised is to be made brutal and therefore less inclined towards peace. The example of the effects the Ottoman empire had on populations would be a good example of brutalization, if true.

Actually, Welsh pacifism has much to do with Nonconformist beliefs shared by many Welsh. The Welsh were (and still are in rural areas) quite a God-fearing folk.

God bless, Harry.

We will remember them

My elderly mother reminds me in an email today:

“my uncle Desmond, who ws 18, died at Passchendale and is buried at Ypres. I have photo of him and also of his grave. My gran went to visit his grave every year until she was too frail to make the pilgrimage. He was the apple of her eye. We have always said the photo looks uncannily like you. Will find it and send. Lest we forget………”

R.I.P.

God rest his soul – and remember his generation who made an appalling sacrifice.

This is my favourite WW1 poem, not least because ‘that bilberried bank’ is a short walk from my home and I visit it often. To me, the poem has a more human quality to it than most other war poems.

Six Young Men

The celluloid of a photograph holds them well –
Six young men, familiar to their friends.
Four decades that have faded and ochre-tinged
This photograph have not wrinkled the faces or the hands.
Though their cocked hats are not now fashionable,
Their shoes shine. One imparts an intimate smile,
One chews a grass, one lowers his eyes, bashful,
One is ridiculous with cocky pride –
Six months after this picture they were all dead.

All are trimmed for a Sunday jaunt. I know
That bilberried bank, that thick tree, that black wall,
Which are there yet and not changed. From where these sit
You hear the water of seven streams fall
To the roarer in the bottom, and through all
The leafy valley a rumouring of air go.
Pictured here, their expressions listen yet,
And still that valley has not changed its sound
Though their faces are four decades under the ground.

This one was shot in an attack and lay
Calling in the wire, then this one, his best friend,
Went out to bring him in and was shot too;
And this one, the very moment he was warned
From potting at tin-cans in no-man’s land,
Fell back dead with his rifle-sights shot away.
The rest, nobody knows what they came to,
But come to the worst they must have done, and held it
Closer than their hope; all were killed.

Here see a man’s photograph,
The locket of a smile, turned overnight
Into the hospital of his mangled last
Agony and hours; see bundled in it
His mightier-than-a-man dead bulk and weight:
And on this one place which keeps him alive
(In his Sunday best) see fall war’s worst
Thinkable flash and rending, onto his smile
Forty years rotting into soil.

That man’s not more alive whom you confront
And shake by the hand, see hale, hear speak loud,
Than any of these six celluloid smiles are,
Nor prehistoric or, fabulous beast more dead;
No thought so vivid as their smoking-blood:
To regard this photograph might well dement,
Such contradictory permanent horrors here
Smile from the single exposure and shoulder out
One’s own body from its instant and heat.

Ted Hughes

May Harry Patch’s memory be blessed, along with the others of his generation who fought and died for something I hope we will never take for granted.

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
“At Mrs Greenland’s Hawthorn Bush,” said he,
“I slept.” None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover’, a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.

RIP Harry.

Not one word of condemnation towards the bastards that sent all those millions to waste their lives in that stupid, pointless war. A more fitting comemmoration would be to dig up the graves and hang the corpses of the politicians that made this happen.

It is an odd fact that the Commonwealth War Cemetaries are for the fallen of two world wars only.

They are beautifully maintained, whether in Thailand, Burma or Sri Lanka,

Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ trilogy is well worth reading. I had no idea that the soldiers of WWI were subjected to such horrific ‘medical’ treatment for their shell-shock until I read Barker’s first book. It certainly didn’t feature in my history lessons.

And:

The Veteran
May 1916
Margaret Postgate Cole

We came upon him sitting in the sun
Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence
There came young soldiers from the Hand and Flower,
Asking advice of his experience.

And he said this, and that, and told them tales,
And all the nightmares of each empty head
Blew into air; then, hearing us beside,
“Poor chaps, how’d they know what it’s like?” he said.

And we stood there, and watched him as he sat,
Turning his sockets where they went away,
Until it came to one of us to ask “And you’re how old?”
“Nineteen, the third of May.”

Not one word of condemnation towards the bastards that sent all those millions to waste their lives in that stupid, pointless war.

You must be totally blind to the poetry which has been posted.

What good would that do?

Quand au bout d’huit jours le r’pos terminé
On va reprendre les tranchées,
Notre place est si utile
Que sans nous on prend la pile
Mais c’est bien fini, on en a assez
Personne ne veut plus marcher
Et le cœur bien gros, comm’ dans un sanglot
On dit adieu aux civ’lots
Même sans tambours, même sans trompettes
On s’en va là-haut en baissant la tête

Adieu la vie, adieu l’amour,
Adieu toutes les femmes
C’est bien fini, c’est pour toujours
De cette guerre infâme
C’est à Craonne sur le plateau
Qu’on doit laisser sa peau
Car nous sommes tous condamnés
C’est nous les sacrifiés

Huit jours de tranchée, huit jours de souffrance
Pourtant on a l’espérance
Que ce soir viendra la r’lève
Que nous attendons sans trêve
Soudain dans la nuit et le silence
On voit quelqu’un qui s’avance
C’est un officier de chasseurs à pied
Qui vient pour nous remplacer
Doucement dans l’ombre sous la pluie qui tombe
Les petits chasseurs vont chercher leurs tombes

Adieu la vie, adieu l’amour,
Adieu toutes les femmes
C’est bien fini, c’est pour toujours
De cette guerre infâme
C’est à Craonne sur le plateau
Qu’on doit laisser sa peau
Car nous sommes tous condamnés
C’est nous les sacrifiés

C’est malheureux d’voir sur les grands boulevards
Tous ces gros qui font la foire
Si pour eux la vie est rose
Pour nous c’est pas la même chose
Au lieu d’se cacher tous ces embusqués
Feraient mieux d’monter aux tranchées
Pour défendre leur bien, car nous n’avons rien
Nous autres les pauv’ purotins
Tous les camarades sont enterrés là
Pour défendr’ les biens de ces messieurs là

Ceux qu’ont le pognon, ceux-là reviendront
Car c’est pour eux qu’on crève
Mais c’est fini, car les trouffions
Vont tous se mettre en grève
Ce s’ra votre tour messieurs les gros
De monter sur l’plateau
Car si vous voulez faire la guerre
Payez-la de votre peau

I suspect field is right and that we should take the man for who he is, not who we want him to be.

SMFS, pacifism is a legitimate strategy when facing the overwhelming odds and the probability of certain annihilation and no possibility of assistance. This is why, for long periods, the Kosovars chose pacifism over violent resistance.

On Passing the new Menin Gate
by Siegfried Sassoon

Who will remember, passing through this Gate1,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,—
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world’s worst wound. And here with pride
‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

Begun Brussels, 25 July 1927; finished Campden Hill Square, January 1928
54,889 names are engraved on the gate.

Who will remember, passing through this Gate1,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

Well, I did last year when I read the names on Menin Gate. So while “their name liveth for ever” is of course hyperbole, “live in some sense for later generations to acknowledge them and be moved ” is not. There were a lot of teenagers in school parties there, quiet as mice.

‘Not one word of condemnation towards the bastards that sent all those millions to waste their lives in that stupid, pointless war. A more fitting comemmoration would be to dig up the graves and hang the corpses of the politicians that made this happen.’ totally agree, ww1, unlike ww2 but like the vast majority of wars in human history was a pointless and disgusting waste of human life for the benefit of a parasitic ruling class. It might not be the most graphic but i think the film which best gets this across without any undue sentimimentalising of the victims is ‘Paths of glory’ by Stanley Kubrick and i also highly reccomend ‘Journey to the end of the night’ both of them definetly made me rethink ww1 and war in general.

Whilst fully understanding (if not exactly approving) the eagerness of some historians to get the (nearly always disgusted in my experience) memories of the veterans out of the way so that they can “show the bigger picture” and attempt to convince us that WW1 was not a complete waste of lives. And whilst not being at all religious I do think this national memorial service is a good idea (I will personally be remembering the old men of my youth who never talked about the war but who always seemed to have some indescribable sadness hanging over them.) I’d be interested to know what anyone else thinks about the memorial (or any other kind of memorial to those who fought in the Great war.)

Mullah –

No, you’re completely wrong:

“to brutalize (third-person singular simple present brutalizes, present participle brutalizing, simple past and past participle brutalized)

1. (transitive) to brutally inflict violence on someone”

That’s what the English did to the Welsh. Or did you think the castles were seaside homes for the English nobility?

It was a long time ago. I am not suggesting anyone get too worked up about it now.

Just War theory is never easy to apply but I don’t think you can write off World War 1 as clearly unjust.

Germany was not a very pleasant country in 1914. All the traits that were to find full expression in Hitler’s movement were well represented in 1914: racism, the desire for supremacy, ignoring neutrality and subjugation of other nations. Let’s not forget that Ludendorff was a close political associate of Hitler’s after the war; that Belgium, a neutral country, was invaded or that Austria had made completely unreasonable demands of Serbia. Let’s not forget that the German armed forces did operate murderous military dictatorships in the occupied lands.

The options were either to let Germany roll over France, let Austria subjugate Serbia, let Germany take over huge swathes of territory in the East and allow Germany to establish hegemony over the whole of Europe – or alternatively, as happened, the option was to fight.

Having decided to fight, I think one can fairly lay huge blame on sh*ts of the first order like Haig for engaging in fruitless high casualty offensives.

I think the right thing to do then was probably to seek all avenues for peace once the initial emergency was over. But it has to be understood – difficult though it is now to comprehend – that in many ways the war was kept going by popular demand.

Another heretical point I would like to make is that many Tommies came from appalling home circumstances in the UK in the slums of the great cities. They didn’t necessarily find the brutal warfare quite as traumatic as might be supposed. It was an escape from grinding poverty and the narrow life of home. Troops were actually rotated a lot and spend a good deal of time behind the lines enjoyed a good deal of recreation. In the army people at least had food, drink and a decent set of clothes.

That’s what the English did to the Welsh.

I think you will find it was the Normans who built castles all over England before doing the same in Wales.

Dai Hard –

Fair point! But I think by the time they were getting into North Wales where most of the castles are they could be described as English as much as Norman.

Owain The Bank

I was six years old when I was taken by my parents to visit Belgium, France and Holland. I remember the vastness of the war cemetaries, to a small child they seemed endless. I could read a little by then, enough to read the inscriptions, and work out their ages. To me, 16 years seemed all grown up, and quite old. I began to think that everyone had to do that when they were 16, or maybe 20. That I would have to do it too. (I well recall my parents horrified reaction when I asked them when I would go to the war. As if it were like starting school.)

Growing up, I would sit every Sunday morning at Mass, surrounded by old ladies, whose prayer books were interleaved with small photographs of fresh faced, clear eyed young men. The cameras had caught the softness of their skin, the roses in their cheeks. Innocent, and frozen in time like so many plaster saints. As if they were never meant to live, make mistakes, misbehave, get into trouble, and enjoy all the sins and misdemeanours of a normal span of years.

Now that I am much older, I think of them in a very different way. They were just like us. They wanted all the things we want. Love, marriage, maybe children, plenty of money, a nice golden labrador, a house, a motorcycle and sidecar, a job with a pension, the occasional day at the races, glass of beer, chips after the cinema, a day trip to Redcar. Thinking about them like that, it’s more painful, more tragic, and more personal.

Most of all they wanted to survive, win, and come home knowing that they had won. In that order. No man went there to die. My family were among them.

I’m very glad that Harry Patch survived, won, and came home knowing he had won. I’m glad he lived well, and lived so long. I think he should be laid to rest in the manner specified in his own wishes, in the place he loved, by his family and friends. We must avoid anything that might cast him as some sort of icon, or a metaphor for something else. He spent more than a hundred years showing us who he was. We don’t get to turn him into a plaster saint.

Years ago now, I sat with my very young daughter on the express between Paris Gare de Nord and Calais. It was late winter, and the snow had pitched across the great battlefields and so clearly, in the early morning sun, the snow had not yet thawed out the imperceptible dips where the trenches had been and the sun was still low and cast them as long shadows.

So I spent a while telling my infinitely patient five-year-old what these things meant. And I became aware that the old man sitting opposite me was staring out with a terrible sadness written across his face. He said to me his father was out there and his uncles too, amongst those fading dips and furrows.

field –

Fair enough, although I don’t think I am “completely wrong”

Main Entry: bru·tal·ize
Pronunciation: \ˈbrü-təl-ˌīz\
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): bru·tal·ized; bru·tal·iz·ing
Date: circa 1704
1 : to make brutal, unfeeling, or inhuman
2 : to treat brutally
— bru·tal·i·za·tion \ˌbrü-təl-ə-ˈzā-shən\ noun

bru·tal·ize (brtl-z)
tr.v. bru·tal·ized, bru·tal·iz·ing, bru·tal·iz·es
1. To make cruel, harsh, or unfeeling.
2. To treat cruelly or harshly.

brutal·i·zation (–zshn) n.

bru·tal·ize (brtl-z)
tr.v. bru·tal·ized, bru·tal·iz·ing, bru·tal·iz·es
1. To make cruel, harsh, or unfeeling.
2. To treat cruelly or harshly.

brutal·i·zation (–zshn) n.

But I think by the time they were getting into North Wales where most of the castles are they could be described as English as much as Norman.

Hardly! Construction began at Chepstow in 1067, less than a year after William the Conqueror invaded England!

Dai has a fair point. The southern castles defined an area that became a veritable South Welsh Pale, with the locals driven out and incomers bought in from the still vaguely conquered England of the earliest days of the three Norman kings (William I, II and Henry I). These castles were granted eventually to the tender loving care of the many bastard offspring of (in particular) Henry I (who ran a veritable harem, having relations of a Ugandan order with the daughters of many of the local rulers in Wales and elsewhere).

It was exactly these unruly barons, the illegitimate relatives of the English Angevin monarchs who were latterly encouraged to invade Ireland by Henry II. There they established a pale of similar style and method to the one already established in South Wales in their fathers’ time. What was learned in Wales was practised in Dublin’s Pale by an incoming Anglo-Norman-Welsh baronry being cleverly diverted by their Angevin overlords.

If you look at the place names to the east of Neath and eastward from their to Cardiff, you can almost trace an invisible line, behind which are almost exclusively English place-names, beyond which are Welsh.

Not so much Taffy was a thief, as FitzHenry and FitzRoy were larcenous bastards – quite literally.

“there”, not *their* – fuck.