I recently acquired this bizarre postcard that dates to World War I featuring a training corps of soldiers wearing gas masks. The image caught my attention due to my interest in World War I - specifically my minor obsession with the war poets. Some of these young men eagerly joined the armed services romantically thinking they would be doing their duty and embarking on a worthy campaign that may not have a favorable outcome ala The Charge of the Light Brigade made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
The horrors of the trenches on the Western Front ended the "romantic" notion of war once and for all. Nearly 100 years have passed since these soldiers took up arms against the Kaiser and for all that was learned during that conflict, warfare has become even more terrifying with each passing year. It seems that the smarter the world becomes in terms of science and strategy, the more we lose our humanity. I created this necklace as a talisman against war in our time:
Inspired specifically by
Wilfred Owen, and his 1917/18 poem:
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
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.
It's official! Mark your calendars kids because the 2010 Coney Island Cyclone Season begins next Sunday, March 28th promptly at noon.
