Veterans Day / Remembrance Day

I was off work today and oh Momma ... how we would have talked about Veterans' Day. Do you remember when you and I used to go to Veterans' Day celebrations? Now you're gone and I just can't bring myself to go without you ...

There's an amazing account of an amazing recording ... truly unique and truly haunting, and very very moving ... of a British gas shell battery near the close of WWI. Teachout's article is at
http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/2008/11/tt_the_eleventh_day_of_the_ele.html

There's an amazing story at http://uk.reuters.com/article/UKNews1/idUKTRE4AA28E20081111 that Momma you would have loved.

Poems by Philip Larkin at
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mcmxiv/ and by AE Housman at http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/housman.html are so moving. At http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/FWW_index.html there is an amazing collection of WWI poems.

Iain Murray at National Review Online shares three poems that are deeply moving:

Wilfrid Owens' "Anthem for Doomed Youth"
Including http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen2.html

Laurence Binyon's "For the Fallen"
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2008/11/age-shall-not-w.html

Private Isaac Rosenburg's "The Immortals"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-immortals/

John Derbyshire gives us O Valiant Hearts by John Stanhope Arkwright, a hymn for Remembrance Day. http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Readings/ovalianthearts.html. Momma, you seemed to me to know all the old hymns ... would you have known this one?

There's a wonderful collection of comments and movies and clips at Dirty Harry's Open Thread for the day: http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=5577#comments to which I felt moved to contribute this for myself:

Awesome thread. God bless USS Ben, Rather Read’s father, Lord Jiggy ,Carol’s Dad, Major Graham, John McClain’s uncle, and all veterans. Including my Dad, now deceased … he was in Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. And never, ever talked about it. Mom said he just once told her that it was hell. Thank God for all those who endured hell so that we can be free today.

I liked The Patriot and We Were Soldiers. Has anyone mentioned The Longest Day? The theme song always puts a lump in my throat, still does. Great movie.

For readings today, I read from Churchill’s WWII memoirs … very moving. Before that, yesterday, I got off work earlyand went to see An American Carol which is still in the dollar theatres around here. For any movies actually in theatres today, my vote would be for this for a good Veteran’s Day tribute flick … if your taste in humor runs to the slightly insane, which mine does. But there’s a scene near the end at the Trace Adkins concert showing soldiers lined up over the years into the Revolutionary past that really brought tears to my eyes.

Happy Veterans Day to all. And to veterans, it’s too small a word, but it’ll just have to do:

*THANKS*

Charles Delacroix

And on this wonderful feast day of that wonderful Soldier of Christ, St Martin de Tours, O Lord I ask your continued blessing for my dear Momma ... and my Dad ... oh Lord ... those two were in so many ways the true WWII generation at so many levels ...

Thank you ... thank you all.

Love in Christ,

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Martin de Tours