Photo of the day

Damien Belleveau, seven, holds portrait of his great grandfather

Persistence of Memory

One of my early memories is attached to an English garden. One of my father’s aunts is telling me of a great tragedy; how her brother was killed by a shell in the trenches of the First World War. She showed me a ha’penny that was retrieved from the pocket of our fallen family member. I remember holding the buckled coin in my hand. What violence it would have taken to do that kind of damage to a copper coin. One could only imagine what indignities our soldier’s body suffered. The matriarch insisted I take the memorabilia. Why she chose me to inherit it, I can’t imagine.

Somewhere along the line I lost the sad object, but not the shock of understanding what mad things are possible in this world.

Repression of War Experience

By Siegfried Sassoon

Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,
When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.

Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you’re as right as rain …
Why won’t it rain? …
I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.

Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.

*          *          *

You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You’d never think there was a bloody war on! …
O yes, you would … why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft … they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I’m going crazy;
I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.

For the survivors. Lest we forget.