Patriotic Lie

As this Fourth of July winds down and many of us complete our celebration with another beer or one last hot dog and the fog of patriotic celebration settles in we often hear eulogies or remembrances about our country's brave soldiers who have gloriously given their lives for their country. This "celebration" had added intensity in our city today as a young 19 year old soldier who recently died in Afghanistan was buried with all of the panoply this city could muster. As my wife and I talked about this she was reminded of a poem written by a soldier in WW I that spoke to the myth of the "glorious" death of another soldier. The poem follows that puts the lie to that concept of "glory".

Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggers under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And toward our distant rest began the 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 disappointed shells that drop 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 floundering like a man on 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,
Obscene as cancer, 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. *

* It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.