November MGWAT

[Ozzie]

Topic for this month

HOW SHALL WE REMEMBER THEM?

Well, seems no-one wanted to put one up, so........

Kim

[jay dubaya]

well done Kim at least the ball is rolling...a nice topic, should give us all plenty of scope,

cheers, Jon

[squirrel]

Good suggestion - I'll get something done when I'm back from Belgium next week.

[Landsturm]

Nice work, Kim

[Landsturm]

Veteran re-visiting his old battlefields. Better quality pic in my gallery...

[Landsturm]

Soren's work... enjoy

[Ozzie]

Well, you guys are quick!

Landsturm, looking back, excellent portrayal. The older soldier, knowing what happened right there.

Soren, all those crosses, the ruins. And the way you have depicted the uniforms, at first glance, for a split second, I thought you had put medieval soldiers in it. This is one of your best ones.

Kim

[Gunboat]

How Shall We Remember Them

Still breathless from the climb she sat down heavily on the jacket he had laid out to protect her skirts from the dew on the grass. The struggle up the steep hill was forgotten no sooner had he sat down next to her and allowed herself to lean imperceptibly against his shoulder.

The view of the valley below was spectacular, a blanket of lush grass and the purple and ochre trees that stood in small copses at the foot of the hills. It was desolate save one small cottage with smoke curling from the chimney which was surrounded by a dry-stone wall.

“I love autumn” she said with a sigh “It’s so beautiful”, she turned toward her companion who was sat silent staring into the distance.

“Aye” he mumbled “It’s beautiful alright…but I know something even more beautiful than that” he fell silent again.

After a long pause she pulled at his arm “What?”

“You” he said tilting his head toward hers.

She turned away from him, unable to think what to say she giggled with embarrassment.

“I thought you would find it funny coming from me” he went to get up clearly stung by her reaction. She grabbed his arm preventing him doing so, the last thing she wanted to do was hurt his feelings

“No…Jack…please…don’t go, I wasn’t laughing at you I promise…I was surprised…I had no idea you felt like that….”

He sat back down but didn’t look at her he felt more comfortable looking out across the hills.

“I’ve loved you ever since I first saw you walk past my Uncle’s shop on your way to and from school. When I knew you would be walking by I would make sure I was outside so you might smile and say ‘hello Jack’ and I would say ‘Hello Miss Catherine’ and I’d be struck dumb and then no sooner had you gone by…I would remember all the things I had been saving up to say”

“But why didn’t you say something before now” she said taking his hand in hers.

“ Cos you’re an educated girl, from a good family, you’ll be a school teacher and marry a good husband a master maybe?…. Someone worthy of you……not me…I’m just an errand boy for my uncle…it were good enough for me that you were my friend…and now I am going away…”

He didn’t finish the sentence; he pulled his hand away and went to stand up.

She gripped his sleeve pulling him back down pleading with him to stay

“Stay Jack….stay…we came to see the sunset together…I want to see the sunset with you …please stay!”

He was kneeling before her now staring intently at her

“ I don’t need to see the sunset….your hair is the sunset …your dark eyes the night where I keep my dreams…your skin is like the rose-pink light at dawn….your smile the warm sunlight…your breath is the rise and fall of the breeze that blows through the grass and makes the trees dance…you are all my days, my nights, my seasons my….”

He faltered , a simple man stunned at his own eloquence stirred by the love of the girl sat before him. Her eyes were closed as she took in what was saying.

“Everything!” he finished

After a long pause she opened them. He was looking at the ground peeling at piece of grass waiting for her rebuff.

She lifted his chin and kissed him…softly at first and then with more passion as he responded…she took his hands and placed them around her waist…which he allowed her to do somewhat hesitantly…but as she threw her arms around his neck he pulled her closer to him.

Reluctantly she stopped kissing him so she could catch her breath. She tilted her head back so she could see his face properly….he was smiling broadly…

“I never ever though’t I would be good enough to….”

“Shhhhhhhhsssh” she put her finger on his lips “ I’ve always loved you Jack…always…but why wait until now…we have so little time left before you go to….”

She couldn’t finish the sentence the implications of what she was about to say was too horrid to contemplate. She bit her lip, she was scared and confused she was no longer a girl but barely a woman either, but she knew what she wanted to do…she lay back and held out her arms to him…

“You can love me now Jack if you want?”

He leaned down and kissed her.

“Let’s wait until we are married….you will marry me won’t you….as soon as I get leave..we will get married….it will be all over soon anyway…but you will marry me won’t you”

“Oh yes Jack of course I will marry you”

Catherine opened her eyes after the voice on the PA system had thanked the shoppers in the mall for observing the silence.

For those two minutes she had been 17 again and now the weight of all the intervening years had suddenly weighed down on her and she had to steady herself against her stick.

She never did marry Jack, the young boy who had promised to marry her all those years ago had been killed before he could even take his first leave. She had been a teacher, married a good man, had children, grandchildren and now great -grand children. But she had never forgotten. Every Armistice Day since, for two minutes she chose to think of that moment on the hill when she discovered love with her Jack a boy who like so many others had been torn away tragically young.

That is how she would always remember them.

[susanhemmings]

Well done Kim, wonderfully apt topic for November.

Landsturm - love the veteran. His silent contemplation standing amongst those poppies...

and Soren. Great stuff as always. The latest burial amongst all those crosses.

and, Gunboat - wow. I was away in that story. It made me get all goosebumps at the end and i could feel my eyes filling up. Talk about the shivers. Superb work....

Well done everyone.

Susan.

[Landsturm]

Very good, one of your best, Gunboat

[susanhemmings]

How shall we remember them

How shall we remember them

When we have no idea

How can we remember when we never shared their fear

We have a certain grasp of things from all that people write

We know we have some small idea – a semblance of insight

We hear the sorrowful memories of the veterans and the war

We have seen the documentaries, wondered what it was all for

And when we are in our homes at night

And safe without a falter

We can’t begin to comprehend the senseless, awful slaughter………

………….Of a generation that gave their lives – so dear

That gave their freedom

So that we can

Live –

Without their fear

So, every day in every way they deserve our homage

And respect

Our gratitude, our silent thanks for their gift to us

And its effect

Because of them:

We are able to shed a tear, without a fear

Are able to enjoy life and have fun

Bless all who fell, amongst the hell

A poppy for each one

Their death earns our regret

We must never forget…….

And every November

Is how we shall remember

With respect,

Forever in their debt

[Michael Johnson]

I was four when Papa left for the War. Momma took us down to the train station to say goodbye. Papa hugged us all, and I remember how rough the wool of his tunic felt, and how his moustache tickled me when he kissed me. Johnny wanted to hold his gun, but Papa wouldn't let him. We waved until the train was out of sight.

One day I heard Papa whistling his favourite song out on the street, and I ran to the door, yelling "Papa!". But it wasn't him. When I came back in, Mama was crying.

After a while Papa didn't send any more letters, and Mama took us aside one day. I remember that she was wearing a black dress, and she never wore black. She told us that Papa had been killed, and he wouldn't be coming back home.

Eventually I got a new father. He's good to Johnny and me, but I still miss Papa.

Notes: the incident with the whistler actually took place - the little girl(s) were my mother and her twin sister, aged about two; my grandmother mentions it in a letter to grandfather. Fortunately, he came home in 1915 to run his munitions factory.

[susanhemmings]

That is lovely Michael.

Susan.

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

I haven't been on the forum for a while owing to workload. I have not set up the October Poll yet, and times are moving on. To be honest, I'm not dead sure how to do it... Could I ask someone else to? Please? I'd really appreciate it, if anyone has the technical know how that I lack!

Well, this year's entries... As a group of artists, you bunch move from strength to strength, it's true! What can I say that does them justice...

Michael, yours was strong as it was a deeply personal entry, and I love the way you captured the sound and smell and feel of a man from a lost generation. He was real for that poor guileless little girl.

Susan, your poem contains elements of the nostalgia that I feel every year around Remembrance. The way that generation are all just a sepia memory, and becoming increasingly so every moment. We can never touch them, never reach them again and it is desperately sad.

Gunboat, the description of nature in your entry is quite beautiful, and familiar to me, there is no other word for it, and I think I identified particularly with it as it reminds me of my home land: Cumbria. The country of dry stone walls rising up bare grass-covered slopes, homely cottages. It also reminds me in a way of 'Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey', by Wordsworth (only much better, of course!... I have my own views on Billy, don't get me started...) What was your entry really? The bare bones of a tale of loss and love. We look at old women doing their shopping in the supermarket in the mid-morning, and it is so easy to dismiss them, to think of them as slow, dulled by time. We do not remember that she was beautiful in her youth, we do not remember the passion she induced in others, how she was a lover, and how a young man once found all of his dreams in the touch of her lips and the darkness of her eyes. And in a way, although the soldier's life was cut short untimely, when he had everything he wanted in his grasp, he had already, even at that stage, got all he wanted and perhaps even far more than he could have hoped for. He died in the knowledge that she would have loved him and did.

[Ozzie]

Bloody hell!

What great entries.

All I can do is endorse the above comments.

Katie, for a young one, you are very perseptive. We do watch those old people, and how often do we think of what they have been through in their younger years? What trials did they go through? What scars and memories do they carry?

Probably, not as often as we should.

[Ozzie]

Remembrance.

What is remembrance?

Is it when you think about your first dog? Is it your first memory of staring up at your mother?

That word, remembrance, might mean the above to many people. But to others, it means the remembrance of sacrifice.

The Dream.

I had a dream last night. I dreamt of death. I was among the clouds, looking down upon a battlefield strewn with dead bodies, barbed wire, mud and long gouges in the earth.

I saw upturned wagons, bloated carcasses of horses and mules. Men shivering in sodden clothing, their fear sending tendrils of white spider floss towards the heavens.

I caught a deep guttural intonation of Stille Nacht, mingled with a plumy, even toned,

Holy Night. Felt their angst, their loneliness, even though they were among others , their hearts were with their home, their loved ones.

The light shimmered, and below me were tired and worn out horses, standing over sleeping soldiers. The sun reflecting from the sand hurt my eyes, and the heat radiating from the earth bought droplets of sweat to my brow. Their bronzed rising sun badges were dusty, their uniform torn and shredded, but shafts of deep pride iof belonging, darted between their sleeping forms

Closing my eyes, to shut out that blinding desert sand, the fetid, rotting smell of tropical jungle hit me, making me gag. On opening my eyes, I saw the green dense foliage that hid the dead and rotting bodies of those who stood between the enemy, and the freedom for their loved ones. The steam from the daily rain rose upwards, bringing with it the smell of disease ridden living men, of determination, and of sheer terror. The fuzzy wuzzy angels, their tread slow and methodical, lifted each torn and battered body onto makeshift stretchers, their touch as soft as a mothers.

I float onwards, my mind trying desperately to shut off the unfolding scenes. Now it is a bamboo hut, long and narrow. Skeleton men lay upon hard boards, their breath reaching me, fetid and diseased.

A man moves amongst them, pips on his threadbare uniform. A grasp of the hand here, a pat there, he leaves a rainbow mist behind him as he moves long the hut, a rainbow mist that envelopes the men whose last breath is but a minute away.

My head begins to hurt with the myriad of tortuous assailants it is absorbing. I snort, trying to rid my nasal passages of the smell of death.

A new image opened before me,. One of a village. Thatched roofs, a patch of turned earth beside every house. Chickens and pigs roaming. A fireball erupts, singeing me high above in the heavens. The village is no more. The flames die down gradually, leaving blackened earth, with khaki coloured men, walking carefully amongst the charcoaled, bloated remains of the humanity of a village that once stood.

The living men let their tears roll unchecked as the horror pans out before them. Dark, twisted forms that were once mothers, uncles, nieces lay in what was once a living community.

A tomb of granite, gray and shiny, rises up from the green lawn.

A gold Rising Sun Badge is etched into the cold stone.

Upon its headstone are the words, Rest in Peace, Your work is Done.

A restless soul lies beneath.

The memories did not leave with his last breath exhaled.

They live for him until eternity.

And his tears are the dew drops upon the poppy wreath laid every November, at the foot of his grave.

Kim

[susanhemmings]

Kim, that is a superb way to depict this months topic. It made me all shivery again as he began floating off to another scene down below him. Though provoking stuff and so poignant.

Love it.

Susan.

[Michael Johnson]

I love the way you captured the sound and smell and feel of a man from a lost generation.

Smells are surer than sounds or sights

To make your heart-strings crack—

They start those awful voices o’ nights

That whisper, “Old man, come back!”

That must be why the big things pass

And the little things remain,

Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,

Riding in, in the rain.

Rudyard Kipling - "Lichtenberg"

Memories are strange things, and what we remember isn't always what we thought we'd remember. So the girl remembers the feel of the rough wool, and the prickly moustache - and her brother wanting to play with the rifle, perhaps even more than she remembers exactly what her father looked like in his uniform.

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

Little idiosyncratic details. I remember my great-grandfather's eyes - nothing else about him. The bluest I'd ever seen, and never an inkling of his age.

My, you are quite the number one Kipling fan, aren't you? I often thing there is a realism to some of his poetry that borders on irony.

[Michael Johnson]

My, you are quite the number one Kipling fan, aren't you? I often thing there is a realism to some of his poetry that borders on irony.

I remember reading somewhere that if Tommy didn't think and behave as Kipling depicted him, by 1914 life had adapted itself to art.

Yes, I am a fan, and have been since 1975. Here's one that you could do:

http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/au...p2/myrival.html

Kipling is meant to be recited, or sung. I've got a copy of The Seven Seas marked up for recitation, with some amendments to take out anything suggestive.

[marina]

Good one, Michael. Here's the grand old man in chilling mood:

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipl...ipling_ind.html

Marina

[Greyhound]

Indulge me, if you will.

Here is a page from my Dad's autograph book, written by my grandfather (almost certainly one of the first men in France!! - see Grumpy's thread, I'm so excited!!!)

Anyway, in Jim's famously tiny handwriting, a bit of Kipling:

(The Power of The Dog)

[susanhemmings]

Grace, it has been a pleasure. That is a lovely thing to have. how lucky you are.

Wonderful way to remember. And not just your grandad remembering, it probably brought back memories for your dad and it must for you.

With the advent of computers we I wonder what will be left in paper form for those that follow us...

That autograph book is a lovely family momento..

Thank you for sharing

Susan.

[Ozzie]

Thanks Susan.

Kim

[Katie Elizabeth Stewart]

Kim,

Your entry this month was so painfully beautiful it made me go cold. The smells of War are eerie, and somehow make it seem even more real than sights or images ever can. I had a similar experience on Gold Beach near Arramanche - an intermingling of many strange smells: I later tried to describe what I had smelled but could not. I think there was damp straw, starched linen, mud, new rope, tar, and a curious underlying staleness. It didn't smell like anything I had smelled before, and certainly not of one thing. In the end I reached the conclusion that it smelled of the War itself. I felt that your entry in a sense seemed to take the War and personify it as a tangible character - one that holds the dreamer captive and possesses them in a way which seems almost unbearable. Then there is the luridness, the nauseating power of death, the fireball that was once a village and the cloying smell of decay. This imagery oppresses the reader, so much so that when you reach the end, the 'tomb of granite, shiny and grey' seems cold and remote from the actual events, the greenness of the grass semi-incongruous. I really enjoyed your entry for this month, in fact allow me to say that I think it is perhaps your best yet.