tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post8399621976954306595..comments2023-10-30T06:31:05.501-07:00Comments on MilPub: Forgiveness of the DeadFDChiefhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-68852744527331494292019-05-29T14:44:29.125-07:002019-05-29T14:44:29.125-07:00"Only the dead have seen an end to war"...."Only the dead have seen an end to war"...FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-66716885148078218582019-05-29T03:13:15.139-07:002019-05-29T03:13:15.139-07:00The living are sometimes worse off than the dead.
...The living are sometimes worse off than the dead.<br />I'll post this among my link dump next Saturday:<br /><br />https://preview.tinyurl.com/y38yh7u7S Ohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03359796414832859686noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-10640388690734634742019-05-28T17:50:38.603-07:002019-05-28T17:50:38.603-07:00I ended up in the old Civil War cemetery at Poplar...I ended up in the old Civil War cemetery at Poplar Grove (https://www.nps.gov/pete/learn/historyculture/poplar-grove-national-cemetery.htm). It's very much in the tradition of the more modern military cemeteries; very peaceful and manicured.<br /><br />Until you look at the rows of stones, and realize that way more than half of them aren't "headstones" at all but simply stone blocks with a number carved on them. These were the remnants of soldiers that lacked any sort of identity; nothing marked their original grave - or, it it had, was gone by the time the graves registration parties reached it - and nothing was left, if there had been anything, of a tag or scrap of paper with a name on it.<br /><br />There was just some bone, and scraps of cloth, and probably some less savory remnants, to be gathered up and put back in a hole with a stone with a number on it for the following hundred-plus years. And empty chair at a table, an empty peg on a wall, where the scraps of bone and cloth never returned.<br /><br />Perhaps even more grim were the separate files where the men of the U.S. Colored Troops were buried, still apart from the white soldiers in death as in life.<br /><br />All in all a very unsettling sort of day, one that raised more spectres than laid them.FDChiefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10607785969510234092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-87252774601891759932019-05-27T14:02:04.738-07:002019-05-27T14:02:04.738-07:00Bless you Chief. I'll share a drink with my d...Bless you Chief. I'll share a drink with my departed compadres also, and make a toast to Sven's <i>Flakhelfer</i> schoolboys. <br /><br />I normally help the V put out flags on veterans graves at our local cemetery. And I used to get some grief from a diehard Trumpista who doesn't understand why I also put flags on the graves of drowned civilian fishermen, or put rum and tobacco on a Chinookan grave. I give him grief back though and tell him to kiss my keister and he has not complained since, at least not in front of me. <br /><br />Didn't make it this year with family commitments in Seattle. But I'll do it on the 30th. I never took to this making of Memorial Day into a three day holiday. mikehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09123137206598163451noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-74839684814254486792019-05-27T09:20:14.060-07:002019-05-27T09:20:14.060-07:00There are no words
No platitudes
No rousing chorus...There are no words<br />No platitudes<br />No rousing choruses <br />That can comfort the hollow echo of a loved one lost to war<br />No amount of Freedom<br />No amount of Liberty<br />No amount of Sacrifice<br />Can dispel the shadows haunting the lives of those mourning<br /><br />Who mourns the women and children, the men who did not take up arms?<br /><br />At least Germany does...not so here in the US.<br /><br />Glorious dead<br />Heroes all<br />Valhalla awaits it's own<br /><br />All bullshit<br /><br />The US has a National Religion, a Righteous Faith, practiced and perfected by all adherents with prophets, and Priests, laity, and Acolytes...<br /><br />We believe in Violence<br />We have put our faith in carnage<br />We are practitioners of murder<br />We are the very things we condemn<br /><br />Now, I wish this for all<br /><br />Peace<br />Love<br />Mercy<br />and<br />Grace<br />on you, yours, and whomever you meet<br /><br /><br /><br />sheerahkahnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16694622087244891222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-381917167978264683.post-80707637577612605642019-05-27T08:23:07.450-07:002019-05-27T08:23:07.450-07:00Germany had a tradition of annually mourning the f...Germany had a tradition of annually mourning the fallen heroes.<br />The nationalists exploited that and even used monuments in all villages and towns and cities with the names of the fallen and missing men from the Great War (WWI) as a means to cherish nationalism and militarism. The Nazis upped the ante some more about that.<br /><br />Germans were finally fed up with it after 1945, but a couple years after the war they began (in West Germany) to mourn all those who died in the wars -combatants and civilians alike - on the second Sunday before first advent. It's called "Volkstrauertag" (people's mourning day). We also added the dead from WW2 to the monuments, and there are also monuments commemorating the killed boys at bombed flak sites (schoolboys had to help the air defences in 1943-1945), the killed forced labourers and so on.<br />S Ohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03359796414832859686noreply@blogger.com