This Veteran's Day...

Subject: This Veteran's Day...
From: ost (Chris Mark)
Date: 11/12/03 2:23 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:


People do misuse "Lest we forget" all the time, assuming it refers to fallen
comrades rather than the hubris of empire.


Chris Mark

we few,
we happy few,
we band of brothers

Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

From: John Penta

when I read Kipling aloud, I
had Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" from "Messiah" (I think?) going
through my head.

Kipling seems apt these days. When I was flipping through my old Black's to
find "Recessional," I kept getting sidetracked, catching lines that clicked
with today's headlines and worries. "Arithmetic on the Frontier," for example,
with lines like:

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
....the Squadron's pride
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

and

With home-bred hordes the hillsides
teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

Abrams tanks and F-16s against technicals and command-detonated mines made of
old artillery shells. Men who fight to live against men who fight to die. Same
old same old.


Chris Mark