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"The Trench"

The scorched sulphur acid splats melt chaotically down its filthy clay edges, dribbling the tart scent of blood down its rugged walls. The gap yawns wide like a tired mouth with barbed wire teeth. Blood swills the men; knee deep, and crimson stains khaki and green. Rifles held above heads, “Keep them dry”, your gun your only ally in this time of desperation. A steel rain of gunfire brings panic in the trench; shells spitting, grenades splitting, fire torturing amongst tears. Folded flags sent home to families of fallen friends. Machine guns pumping bullets rhythmically into their fallen foe, wrought iron air raid shelters melted in napalms soothing glow.

Dead soldiers drift across the battlefield, whilst families mourn their loss. Replacing absent soldier’s souls with a lone Victoria Cross.
Lies cannot replace the loss of causalities of battle. But now ten thousand poppies grow, amongst peacefully grazing cattle.
The trench is long gone and barbed wire vanished, but the past will not forget the lives lost, befouled, tarnished.

Mav wrote:
> The Trench - was a good film.
>
> Anyone ever see it?

I seen that i think. Is there a part in it where this man is sent to go get some booze to calm the mens nerves but instead he drinks it all himself? and they have to kick a football with them over the top to make it seem like the war is a game?

Spring Offensive:

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.

Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field -
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste -
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun, -
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames -
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder -
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Wilfred Owen

I've read some WWI stuff a while ago, i'll probably get a book as it is usally very emotional and deep stuff.

I'm trying to find some stuff by Byron (famous old english poet) when we went to fight in the naples war and got killed.

Paradox, have a read of some WW1 poetry. Tis marvellous. For the most part.

In particular, Spring Offensive by Owen.

Mav wrote:
> The Trench - was a good film.
>
> Anyone ever see it?

I think so. but somehow it blurrs with deathwatch.

The wonderfulness of Grix's magic music hat in action. Again.

The Trench - was a good film.

Anyone ever see it?

[URL] http://www.google.com [/URL]

Roger Waters was the bassist for Pink Floyd. His father was killed in one of the World Wars, and has been moaning ever since, and the last Floyd album he was involved in, The Final Cut, was basicaly him moaning and trying to write as if he himself had been in a war, and lots of nasty things about Margret Thatcher who was being naughty at the time.

It was, unfortunately, pretty much the end of Pink Floyd.

pb told me who he is.

I'm not sure if its a good or bad thing

Sometimes.


Whats a Roger Waters?