#those people probably had a frick ton of unresolved trauma with no healthy way to cope with it

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

The stark contrast between the messages of In Flanders Fields and Dulce Et Decorum Est... how one poem urges the reader to take up the torch of the men who have died and carry on the fight, while the other actively dissuades the reader from war...

“Take up our quarrel with the foe:/To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high./If ye break faith with us who die/We will not sleep, though poppies grow/In Flanders fields”

versus

“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.”

Just. The change in tone throughout the war. Both of these were written during WWI; IFF in 1915, and DEDE in 1917-1918. Neither poem makes light of loss, but Flanders Fields describes the surroundings of the battles rather than the death and destruction of the soldiers themselves, while Dulce doesn’t bother pulling punches and describes in great detail what happens to soldiers in the trenches. Flanders Fields still had the spirit of the fight, urging new soldiers to take up the torch and continue the work of the dead. By contrast, Dulce downright rejects the spirit of war in the face of the horrors that are brought by war.

For translation, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” means something to the effect of “It is sweet and just to die for one’s country”.

Reading these poems rly puts existentialism in a new light man. Also one cannot read DEDE and leave without feeling at least a little horrified.

#Tw death #tw gore #To clarify I am not an existentialist #I think God put us here for a reason #but boy golly can i understand where those people were coming from #religion and trauma is a delicate balance #and back then #trauma really wasn’t understood like it is today #so these soldiers lived with all the horror and memories with little support #watched as killing after senseless killing happened around them #watched as their fellow soldiers died horrible #gruesome deaths #seemingly at random #and then it all happened again in WWII #those people probably had a frick ton of unresolved trauma with no healthy way to cope with it #or with no guidance on how to cope with it in a healthy way #war ruins more than the dead #even in the lives of the surviving soldiers and their families #war leaves its mark #my history teacher tells us stories of his father who fought in Vietnam and how he was always drunk after he got home. Always. For decades #and how much that damaged the relationship between his father and the rest of his family #realistically #that’s way more common than one thinks #and many of these vets don’t have access to or can’t afford mental health resources #or internet access #or a home #And of course the US government drops them like a sack of potatoes the second they get home #not to mention unlearning the conditioning of the army #just. all of it. all of it is fricking horrifying. #who the heck thinks of war as glorious