Today is the 100 year anniversary of the 3rd Ypres. They called it Passchendale

Passchendale Wiki


Found on a memorial

SQUIRE nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby’s Scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell 5
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.

At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare:
For, though low down upon the list, I’m there;
‘In proud and glorious memory’ ... that’s my due. 10
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed.
Once I came home on leave: and then went west...
What greater glory could a man desire?
Aerial photo before and after



What these men lived through. Went through. Died through.
What struggles we deal with these days pale in stark comparison to the absolute hell these men, boys really, went through. On both sides. We complain if the AC is out. They lived for months on end in the mud and the blood, with bodies rotting in the walls of their trenches, reaching out for them in deathless embraces.

Poison and shell and lead and misery were the order of the day. Brave boys far away from home for a pointless cause.
Let us lift our glasses and toast to their sacrifice that scarred a generation.



On These Fields of Passchendaele


On these fields of Passchendaele, skylarks sing and cattle graze;
in these fields of Flanders lives were spent in far off days.
No hint of what went on here! No sign of blood and bones;
but sixty thousand souls rest here beneath the white headstones;
on these fields of Passchendaele, where roam the silent sheep,
the only sound the wailing winds; those mothers who still weep:
Over fields of Passchendaele…..

On these fields of Passchendaele, men walked against the fire,
while lead and splinters fell like rain, they clung to bloodied wire.
They prayed to God almighty that this day they might get through,
but Gods not listening Tommy son, he hasn’t time for you
on these fields of Passchendaele; where donkey’s planned their war.
Far from the filthy trenches they were spared what lion’s saw
on these fields of Passchendaele…

On these fields of Passchendaele I stand without a clue
of what you poor men suffered, or what you had to do.
But I can feel your pain as a vice surrounds my heart,
that crushes breath within me till it forces tears to start
for men who died so bloodily, from gas or lead and shell,
who drowned in blood and mud, in this place of utter hell:
On these fields of Passchendaele….
-Daniel Lake





My own

The men were chewed like burger,
Wilting wheat before the thresher,
As chattering machine guns claimed whole pals brigades of sons,
The war that was to be a jolly rout was far from pleasure,
As mankind met modern murder in that hell of World War One.

Artillery rained down and blew me mate's brains out his backside,
As hills were turned to plains without a single plow in sight,
And forests turned to toothpicks,
Grass to mud and blood and gore,
As the cannons flashed unending belching thunder through the night.

The Vickers gun spewed lead as fast as we could keep it loaded
The barrel got so hot it steamed like fog in the Ardennes,
I couldn't hear the screams when the grenade fell and exploded,
As O'leary held his belly trying to keep his insides in.

The trenches lay like rows of graves grave where only frost flowers bloomed,
Where we shivered in the frigid mud and spoke with steaming breath,
'Til gas shells came and rolled towards us bringing clouds of doom,
And cried out for our mothers as we drank in poison death

The galloping of hooves awoke me cruelly from my dreaming,
The whiz-bang boomed and I could feel the wet earth raining down,
The dirt fell from my ears and I could hear the horses screaming,
The riders strewn like broken toys all scattered on the ground.

Our boys they died in droves with each charge that was undertaken,
A generation cut to ribbons for a bit of mud,
The dying cried out through the night, the song of the forsaken,
And paid the price for cravens with each drop of valiant blood.

Were that that war to end all wars had ended senseless dying,
For politicians safe at home who sent them all away,
And no more children wept o'er graves to sounds of mothers crying,
But still they die in foreign lands up to this very day



Some 800,000 men perished in the muddy fields there. Countless more were crippled, blinded and maimed.

All for a scant 5 miles of worthless ground, a hellacape blasted by artillery and poisoned by gas. And all for naught, for it was all watered by the fresh blood of a new generation before the scars of old had fully healed.



Let's hope we can learn the lessons and honor the sacrifice of these men. Alas, I fear many haven't.