[Peace-discuss] The old Lie

[C. G. Estabrook]

The novel I mentioned at the meeting tonight in connection with Conrad's reading 
of Wilfred Owen's poem was "Regeneration," by Pat Barker, first published in 
1991, when it was described by the NYT Book Review as one of the four best 
novels of the year.

It is the first of three novels in the Regeneration Trilogy of novels on the 
First World War, the other two being "The Eye in the Door" and "The Ghost Road." 
  They are based on the actual experiences of British army officers and poets 
Owen and his mentor Siegfried Sassoon, who was being treated for shell shock at 
Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh by the (historical) psychiatrist and 
anthropologist Dr. W.H.R. Rivers.

	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 out 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
	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