Tom stepped onto the Hoboken Pier weak-kneed and sick, the ten-day trip from LeHavre stretched to fourteen by the unrelenting Atlantic weather.
Two years before on this same jetty, his life had been full.
He’d had patriotism and the backing of his family, a home to return to, a just cause to fight and maybe die for.
Now he had lungs seared by mustard gas during the Argonne and three pieces of shrapnel in his left leg.
He’d picked up some swell souveniers, but left them in the barracks when he got word of his family.
All dead by the influenza.
Dulce et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
-WIlfred Owen
WW1 was a truly hideous conflict.
They all are
The flu epidemic was a sorry postscript to the horror of that war. Well told, Joshua
Many lose their lives in wars. The rest lose everything but the shell of life. War is a rich man’s toy.
One doesn’t have to speak Klingon to get that even a glorious death isn’t sweet. Good job of capturing the horrors war can inflict in so few words.
By the way, you transposed the C & L in your title.
Thanks!
Dear Josh,
You painted a grim and grisly picture. Well done and true to history.
Shalom,
Rochelle
It’s funny, I googled the poem before seeing you had included it.
As if war itself is not bad enough; coming home to no family is beyond awful.
Well written, josh
Wonderful poem, and wonderful share. Let’s cut through the crap of glorifying war and tell it raw and true like these are. Great writing!
Thanks!
I read recently that more people died–between 20-40 million, from 1918-1919 from influenza than all those who were killed during WWI.
I haven’t had a flu shot yet. Maybe I will.
As many as 100 million, actually. More deaths than all the wars of the 20th century combined.
Wow. Must have been terrifying.
My grandmother told me the story of them converting the high school gymnasium into a makeshift morgue. By the time she turned 20 she had already buried a dozen of her peers
Wow. Literally a pandemic. What really makes you wonder is how anyone survived the flu!
Hard to imagine the irony of surviving all that to find your family wiped out by a common virus. Well done.
I took a class about WWI. So many dead. Slaughtered. Many boys were sent to the frontlines without weapons. So cruel.