Friday, October 29, 2021

Let's Not Do This Again!

 Remembrance Day

Canadians, Courseulles Beach 6-6-44

Once again it is the time of year when we are admonished to remember the past and to not repeat it.

In other words, “Don’t do something stupid!”

But apparently we aren’t paying attention, or not placing enough emphasis on Remembrance Day.

However, the ongoing denial of the scientific and technical developments of mankind, developments already proven by the experience of the developers, further testing and the obvious produce of that denial is subject for a future post.

Right now, it’s to try and remember the cost of war.

The cost of wishing for a specific goal but not considering all the costs of realizing that goal.

The cost of supporting a “stand-up guy”, “my type of person” or “a real strong-man” without studying that person right to the core.

The cost of believing such a person’s lies at face value.

Canadians on Juno Beach 6-6-44

 Here is a video I made to go along with my poem, “Native Sons in World War I” with which Karen helped to smooth out a couple of rough spots.

This has appeared here in years past as has “Deacon”, but never as a video

It has appeared in several publications and is part of the collection, or anthology “Deacon” --- which is a World War II story.

Includeds “Marker of Stone” ,“Deacon” and the rhymes, “Native Sons in WWI”, “Inclusion” and “Education”.

You can follow this link - https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B004V9WZVI 

but clicking on one of the book covers to the right will get you to the same place.


Native Sons in World War One

By D.M. McGowan and K.L. McGowan

© 2018

 

Seventeen native boys left the Upper Peace

The only land they’d known, all in their teens.

They’d all grown up wild out among the trees.

Knew where to find pelts, beaver ponds or streams.

They hunted for their supper, trap or single shot

And only their mothers gave safety a fleeting thought

 

After two hundred years of Scott and Fleur de Lis

They knew some other talk, sometimes two or three,

English, French and German were spoken in the land,

And whatever tongue was spoken by their particular band

Some of them could read and write more than just their name

But the army didn’t care, green privates all the same

 

An amazing great adventure for young trapper men

From freedom of the wild to a Canadian Army pen

Across the land in trains, something never seen.

Mistreated by a Sergeant, but still bright and keen.

Dropped off in camps and marched around a square

“Dig some dirt from here and put it over there.”

 

On the trains again east to Canada’s Maritimes

March down to the docks in perfect double lines

Then up a gangplank to a big steel canoe

Then told to put their kit where you couldn’t fit a shoe

A dozen ships in convoy from the Bedford shore

But count on German U boats sinking two or more.

 

More camp time in England, weeks without the sun

Then finally sent to France to show them how it’s done

Trenches that collapse from rains that never end

Bodies on the wire or sprawled out in no man’s land.

All caked in mud, “Are they ours? Are they theirs?”

Days and weeks of boredom, then terror and despair.

 

 

Vimy Ridge, the Somme or maybe Regina Trench

Maybe English on the left other times the French

High Wood or Kitchener’s, Avion as well

With the Aussies at Gallipoli, some lived to tell

Passchendaele, Arras, knowing each the end

If not for the war, surely for the men

 

Métis, Cree and Dane a total of Seventeen

On a great adventure, young, naive and keen

But the Great War wasn’t a great place to learn

For seventeen go but only two returned.