At the time of this writing, I am on my third listen of the Hardcore history podcast on the first world war by Dan Carlin (Episode 50 to 55). I don’t think I am doing it justice by calling it a podcast, it’s more of an audio book. An epic. An art form. There are five episodes and each episode can be up to 5 hours long! Nevertheless there is not one dull moment. Highly recommended if you want to learn more about the first World War. You can buy it here: Hardcore History.
I decided to give it another listen after rediscovering one of my favorite poems of all time while reorganizing some old files on my computer. I will quote it verbatim below:
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.
Aside from the beautiful and hard-hitting prose, I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of industrialized warfare in the 20th centry vs. old romantic ideals of patriotism and dying for one’s country. Hence the title of the poem: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” which is Latin for: “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
A few interesting facts I’ve learned from Dan Carlin’s Podcast:
The code word used by the Germans for unleashing the Chlorine gas at the first battle of Ypres was “God Punish England” (“Gott Strafe England” in German) which was a popular slogan at the time
The use of poison gas was actually outlawed in the 1899 Hague Gas Declaration. The exact wording in the declaration was “to abstain from the use of projectiles the sole object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gasses”. However, the Germans were able to exploit several legal loopholes. For example: