VintageBetter
Senior Member
Can read the article if you don't meet a paywall:
D-Day at 80
But the most important part, IMO, is this wonderful poem, Speaks to the hell of war and even the hell of PTSD:
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
- Siegfried Sassoon.
*****************
I live in an area THICK with smugness. There is so much smugness here that I wish the TV news would incorporate a Smugness Forecast in the daily news. In fact, it's safe to say I left a graduate program in the past three years because my young (there's that evil word again) colleagues were so overflowing with smugness toward me and my generation that I could not deal with the mud of it. (All but one colleague. There was one who was not so quick to make baseless assumptions. But the majority did not like or respect me, nor Any Evil Baby Boomers, so I left.)
My dad was a mostly silent man and an alcoholic. I think that could be from a lot of stuff he went through as a child, but I'm sure 12 years in the Navy for two wars didn't help. The war is not an excuse for his alcoholism, but it is at least a partial explainer. Plus, booze was as widely promoted and endorsed as cannabis use is today. It was accepted and expected to have a drink before dinner. That was normalized in the culture of the 50s and 60s.
Anyway, that's why I posted this. The Greatest Generation did not all survive unscathed. But they did the work. There is value in being a good soldier, stepping up and doing the jobs that no one else wants to do.
I should pitch that idea to the local news:
"Dear News Director,
What I think this blankety-blank region needs is a Daily Smugness Forecast so viewers might be able to guess how many *******s they will meet today."
D-Day at 80
But the most important part, IMO, is this wonderful poem, Speaks to the hell of war and even the hell of PTSD:
Suicide In The Trenches
I knew a simple soldier boyWho grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
- Siegfried Sassoon.
*****************
I live in an area THICK with smugness. There is so much smugness here that I wish the TV news would incorporate a Smugness Forecast in the daily news. In fact, it's safe to say I left a graduate program in the past three years because my young (there's that evil word again) colleagues were so overflowing with smugness toward me and my generation that I could not deal with the mud of it. (All but one colleague. There was one who was not so quick to make baseless assumptions. But the majority did not like or respect me, nor Any Evil Baby Boomers, so I left.)
My dad was a mostly silent man and an alcoholic. I think that could be from a lot of stuff he went through as a child, but I'm sure 12 years in the Navy for two wars didn't help. The war is not an excuse for his alcoholism, but it is at least a partial explainer. Plus, booze was as widely promoted and endorsed as cannabis use is today. It was accepted and expected to have a drink before dinner. That was normalized in the culture of the 50s and 60s.
Anyway, that's why I posted this. The Greatest Generation did not all survive unscathed. But they did the work. There is value in being a good soldier, stepping up and doing the jobs that no one else wants to do.
I should pitch that idea to the local news:
"Dear News Director,
What I think this blankety-blank region needs is a Daily Smugness Forecast so viewers might be able to guess how many *******s they will meet today."