A Tomb Guard Remembers

Pasquale

Description

This anthology compiled by a former Tomb Guard is a collection of the many poems and songs that left a legacy of wartime life.
A Tomb Guard Remembers, compiled by a former Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, Pasquale Varallo, is a commemoration to the centennial of the Armistice of the Great War November 11, 2018 and the centennial of the laying of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The centennial of the reburial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery is November 11, 2021.
This anthology is a collection of some of the many poems and songs, which those men who fought and wrote about that conflagration (and the women who waited for them to come home again) have left us as part of their legacy. Poets from the English-speaking world like Joyce Kilmer (Rendezvous With Death) for one. Wilfred Owen (Dulce et Decorum Est) and Edgar Guest (Things That Make A Great Soldier) are two more. It is through their eyes we see this war.
Included in this anthology will be works that glorify the soldiers who fought and died. It will also contain works that show the sad side and horror of war, the destruction of the lives who gave all. We see a changed attitude to war in some of our poets. Also, we hear from the mothers, wives, brothers and sisters. Humorous poems like The Guns of Verdun where the poet writes a conversation between the German guns and the French artillery.
This work is geared toward anyone with an interest in the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, war history, as well as poetry in general.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Pasquale
• World War I
• Military
• History
• Première Guerre mondiale

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798823007870
• Langue: English

Extrait

A TOMB GUARD REMEMBERS
 
 
 
 
PASQUALE WITH JEN GORDON
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
© 2023 Pasquale with Jen Gordon. All rights reserved.
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
Published by AuthorHouse 05/04/2023
 
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0786-3 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0785-6 (hc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0787-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908414
 
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
A
TOMB G UARD
REMEM BERS
 
 
Commemorating the Centennials
of the Armistice of World War I
 
and
 
The Founding Of
The Tomb Unknown Soldier
Arlington National Cemetery
(c) 2015
PROLOGUE
WAR HAS BEEN a preoccupation of mankind since the very beginning of time. Perhaps it is because men have been waging war within their souls from the beginning. It is a simple thing: Good versus Evil. With freewill man has been given the ability to make choices. He may or may not choose to be good; in many cases he may choose the worst of courses. War has progressed to such a point that killing has become an exact science. The first weapon of war was the fist. Then the rock, the club and so on to launching axes, arrows, missiles and more. Now, man has made them so efficient that he can kill from an office chair behind a desk and go home to dinner after a “hard day at the office.” In the beginning of the twentieth century, it still hadn’t reached this proficiency. It wouldn’t until the latter part of the century to realize such weapons. But weapons in use then were terrible enough.
There is a book entitled The Last Romantic War , the author is a woman named Smith; it is about The Crimean War in the late 1840’s. And to be specific, The Charge Of The Light Brigade, how the gentry would pack picnics and get “grandstand” seats on high hills and watch the “fun.” Well the fun wasn’t funny; the aristocrats were horrified at the mayhem. They had no stomach for war after this.
However, the idea that war was romantic was put to bed forever at the start of the Civil War in the United Sates of America. More specifically, at the first Battle for Bull Run a few years after Crimea. This country had yet to learn the lesson of the Crimean debacle for at the beginning of the American Civil War the gentry from Washington got into their horse drawn buggies in holiday dress and mood to go watch the Union Soldiers put the rebels in their place. Well, they near broke each others necks getting the hell out of the way of retreating blue coats, their bleeding way, who were fleeing from Bull Run, that little run of water in Virginia near Washington, DC. It would be different the second time at Manassas, but there would be no “grandstand” ever again. That was the last “romantic” battle.
From then on, war was for warriors only.
And for the most part, it would be left to the men who fought and a selected few whose job it was to report on war. Trench warfare by the end of The Civil War would be in its infancy. This was the kind of war that would come to France and much of Europe in 1914.
There has always been a fascination in the hearts of men and women for war, to know what it is like, to know it if it can be known without being in it. It is something in us like why we are fascinated at seeing certain fierce creatures that would be too daunting for most of us to face, for instance a giant crocodile or a great white shark. And it is also because we memorialize the men who sacrificed to defend our land we try to commemorate wars in which these heroes sacrificed life and limb. So we come to the reason for this endeavor: The centennial of the Armistice of the Great War November 11, 2018 (the war to end all wars) and the centennial of the laying of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The centennial of the reburial of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National
Cemetery is November 11, 2021.
In this little book we will collect some of the many poems, which those men who fought and wrote about that conflagration (and the women who waited for them to come home again) have left us as part of their legacy. Poets like Joyce Kilmer ( Rendezvous With Death ) for one. Wilfred Owen ( Dulce et Decorum Est ) and Edgar Guest ( Things That Make A Great Soldier ) are two more. It is through their eyes we see this war.
Included in this anthology will be works that glorify the soldiers who fought and died. It will also contain works that show the sad side and horror of war, the destruction of the lives who gave all. We see a changed attitude to war in some of our poets. Also, we hear from the mothers, wives, brothers and sisters. Humorous poems like The Guns of Verdun where the poet writes a conversation between the German guns and the French artillery.
We take no part in the philosophical argument for or against war. We only take part in the commemoration of The Great War’s centennial. We leave the individual to his or her own philosophical bent.
In his introduction to The Oxford Book of War Poetry , Jon Stallworthy underlines the emotive power of poems about war: ‘Poetry,’ Wordsworth reminds us, ‘is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ and there can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war: hope and fear; exhilaration and humiliation; hatred – not only for the enemy, but also for generals, politicians, and war-profiteers; love – for fellow soldiers, for women and children left behind, for country (often) and cause (occasion ally).
Oxford University English lecturer Dr. Stuart Lee says , The First World War was one of the seminal moments of the twentieth century in which literate soldiers, plunged into inhuman conditions, reacted to their surroundings in p oems.
Roughly 10 million soldiers, of all the combatants combined, lost their lives in World War I, along with seven million civilians. To say nothing of the countless who were maimed and tormented for the rest of their lives. The horror of the war and its aftermath altered the world for decades (and led to an even more horrible war barely twenty years later) and poets responded to the brutalities, losses and the heroism in new ways.
Many collections of poems from and about the First World War have been drawn together over the past hundred years. With a little imagination it might be any war. These are the works of the war poets, war songs by composers such as Irving Berlin who was drafted and wrote the song, Oh, How I Hate To get Up In The Morning , as a protest about it. There are works by the women who stayed at home and worried about their sons and husbands. What we have tried to do is give the reader an idea of the time.
They are arranged according to the poet’s seniority, the eldest to the youngest. The youngest is a patriotic boy of nine who will never be ten. War is a hell that only demons and saints can really know.
- Pasquale Varallo
 
 
 
 
The proof of poetry is, in my mind, that it reduces to the essence of a single line the vague philosophy which is floating in all men’s minds, and so render it portable and useful, and ready to the hand no poem ever makes me respect its author which does not in some way convey a truth of philos ophy
James Russell Lowell 1819-1891
CONTENTS
01: And Then There Was A Great Calm
02: Summer In England
03: In War Time
04: Better To Die
05: A Holiday
06: The Brave Highland Laddies
07: On The Italian Front, MCMXVI
08: The Kaiser’s “Place In The Sun”
09: Mothers
10: Sock It To ‘Em
11: Here Dead We Lie
12: Soldier From The Wars Returning
13: Glory
14: A Liberty Bond
15: The Cry Of Women
16: Of Gases
17: To France
18: Belgium
19: Any Woman To A Soldier
20: Moving On
21: The Question
22: My Boy Jack
23: War Girls
24: We Shall Keep The Faith
25: June, 1915
26: The Cenotaph
27: Keep The Home Fires Burning (song)
28: September
29: The Pacifist
30: I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (song)
31: It’s Time For Every Boy To Be A Soldier (song)
32: Guns Of Verdun
33: In Flanders Fields
34: The Anxious Dead
35: A Ballad Of Footmen
36: A Soldier
37: For A War Memorial
38: In Memoriam A.H.
39: Lights Out
40: Reveille
41: Lament
42: Breakfast
43: Over There
44: Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag (song)
45: He Who Serves
46: From A Full Heart
47: Billy Boy (song)
48: Marching Men
49: Dusk In War Time
50: A Generation 1917
51: How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down On The Farm
52: There’s A Girl In Chateau Thierry song
53: Memorial Tablet
54: How To Die
55: Glory Of Women
56: In The Memory Of Rupert Brooke
57: Memorial Day
58: The Cricketers Of Flanders
59: Peace
60: The Soldier
61: If I Should Die
62: Rendezvous
63: Their Frailty
64: Oh! How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning song
65: Break Of Day In The Trenches
66: Till We Meet Again song
67: To