Also note to self: watch Legacy RTE Player
Books:
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Roses of No Man’s Land (about nurses)
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Elsie and Mary Go to War
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Sagitarius rising CS Lewis
Fabian Ware -Graves Commission – Common Headstone with name, rank, Regiment
kindermord – young (student) German soldiers singing going into battle (propaganda later used by Hitler?)
All quiet on the Western Front
Messine Church – Hitler billeted there during WW1, William the Conquerer’s mother buried there
Hitler visited Lanquemark cemetery on his way to Paris?
Fr Brown’s WW1 photgraphs
Irish National War Memorial Gardens: These gardens in Islandbridge are one of the most famous memorial gardens in Europe. They are dedicated to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who died in the First World War. The name of every single soldier is contained in the sumptuously illustrated Harry Clarke manuscripts in the granite bookrooms. These gardens are not only a place of remembrance, they are also of great architectural interest and beauty. The great Sir Edwin Lutyens designed them.
These were some of the poems that I wrote down during my wanderings around the memorials of the Somme and Flanders
In Flanders Fields
Bitter to live in times like these.
While God declines beyond the seas;
Instead, man, king or peasantry,
Raises his gross authority.
When he thinks God has gone away
Man takes up his sword to slay
His brother; we can hear death’s roar.
It shadows the hovels of the poor.
Like the old songs they left behind,
We hung our harps in the willows again.
Ballads of boys blow on the wind,
Their blood is mingled with the rain.
A Little Boy In The Morning Poem by Francis Ledwidge
He will not come, and still I wait.
He whistles at another gate
Where angels listen. Ah I know
He will not come, yet if I go
How shall I know he did not pass
barefooted in the flowery grass?
The moon leans on one silver horn
Above the silhouettes of morn,
And from their nest-sills finches whistle
Or stooping pluck the downy thistle.
How is the morn so gay and fair
Without his whistling in its air?
The world is calling, I must go.
How shall I know he did not pass
Barefooted in the shining grass?
Soliloquay by Francis Ledwidge
When I was young I had a care
Lest I should cheat me of my share
Of that which makes it sweet to strive
For life, and dying still survive,
A name in sunshine written higher
Than lark or poet dare aspire.
But I grew weary doing well.
Besides, ’twas sweeter in that hell,
Down with the loud banditti people
Who robbed the orchards, climbed the steeple
For jackdaws’ eyes and made the cock
Crow ere ’twas daylight on the clock.
I was so very bad the neighbours
Spoke of me at their daily labours.
And now I’m drinking wine in France,
The helpless child of circumstance.
To-morrow will be loud with war,
How will I be accounted for?
It is too late now to retrieve
A fallen dream, too late to grieve
A name unmade, but not too late
To thank the gods for what is great;
A keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart,
Is greater than a poet’s art.
And greater than a poet’s fame
A little grave that has no name.
For the Fallen
by Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), published in The Times newspaper on 21 September 1914.
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 condemn.
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.
‘Reflections on two visits to Mametz Wood – 1916 and 1984.’
By Harry Fellows
Shattered trees and tortured earth
The acrid stench of decay
Of mangled bodies lying around
The battle not far away,
This man made devastation
Does man have no regrets?
Does he pause to ask the question?
Will the birds sing again in Mametz?
This Welsh lad lying near my feet
With blood matted auburn hair,
Was his father proud when he went to the war?
Did his mother shed a tear?
Did he leave a girl behind him?
Awaiting the postman’s knock,
Oh, the sadness when they learn of his death,
Dear God, help them to bear the shock.
That German boy, his bowels astrew
Fought for his Fatherland,
That he fought to the end is obvious
A stick bomb is still in his hand.
Did he hate us as much as we thought?
Was our enmity so just,
On his belt an insignia, ‘GOTT MIT UNS’,
Did not the same God favour us?
As far as the eye can see
Dead bodies cover the earth,
The death of a generation
Condemned to die at birth,
When comes the day of reckoning
Who will carry the can?
For this awful condemnation,
Of man’s inhumanity to man!
What a wondrous pleasant sight
Unfolds before my eyes,
A panoply of magnificent trees
Stretching upwards to the skies,
Did someone help Dame Nature?
The sins of man to forget,
Where once there was war, now peace reigns supreme,
And the birds sing again in Mametz.
