The Last Of The Light Brigade

By Rudyard Kipling

There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighen the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin’ your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an’ we thought we’d call an’ tell.

"No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be continued’ and ‘see next page’ o’ the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell ’em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to "honour the charge they made – "
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

US Cemetery at Normandy, August, 2009.

Advertisement

Veterans’ Day reflection on two military cemeteries in France

“To the living we owe respect, to the dead we owe only the truth.” — Voltaire

There are 28 military cemeteries in Normandy. Sixteen for British & Commonwealth troops, two American, two Canadian, one Polish, six German and one French. The best known is the American Cemetery and Memorial at Omaha Beach in Colleville-sur-Mer, featured in the opening and closing scenes of Saving Private Ryan. It is located just yards from Omaha Beach, one of three American landing areas in the D-Day invasion. The fighting here was the day’s fiercest, responsible for almost half of the nearly 6,000 Americans killed and wounded.

Today it is difficult to imagine a battle here. The German fortifications have been removed and the craters filled in, replaced with an official memorial and the graves of 9,387 American men and women who died in Europe during the World War II.

To get to the graves you walk on a path along the top of bluffs overlooking the beach. It is a serene view. Dense, green shrubbery runs down the hillside and ends at a wide, sandy shore. Two paved walkways make it easy to go from the beach to the heights. It is a beach you could take your family to and not once think of men at the top and bottom of the bluffs trying to kill each other and stay alive at the same time.

The path ends at the structures and statue formally designated as the memorial. The structure contains things better suited for a text book: Maps swarmed over by large red arrows showing the outlines of the battle at the most impersonal scale. The statue, Spirit of American Youth, is a highly polished bronze giant. It is rendered in a WPA/socialist realist style meant to embody Every Man and therefore reminiscent of no one.

Look out from the statue and you see the cemetery. It  immediately makes all the other construction superfluous. Row upon row upon row upon row of white headstones, crosses and the occasional Star of David, all perfectly aligned – as if still in military formation. Kneel directly in front of one and look down the row and they seem to curve over the horizon. This emphasizes the group over the individual. It is easy to be awed by the number of dead without a trace of the grief which comes from the loss of a person you actually know.

The largest German cemetery in Normandy is a few miles away from Omaha in the town of La Cambe. It gets far fewer visitors than Omaha, which is a major tourist attraction. The cemetery here is a muted, hidden place. It sits close to a highway but is screened from it by a high wall. Near the wall is a stone marker with this inscription:

The German Cemetery at La Cambe: In the Same Soil of France Until 1947, this was an American cemetery. The remains were exhumed and shipped to the United States. It has been German since 1948, and contains over 21,000 graves. With its melancholy rigour, it is a graveyard for soldiers not all of whom had chosen either the cause or the fight. They too have found rest in our soil of France.

Entering the cemetery all you see are groups of five small, dark crosses placed far from each other. They bring to mind small groups of people separated by vast distances who are not part of any greater cause or effort. Initially the lack of headstones is disconcerting. Walk a little farther in and you see the markers lie flat on the ground, filling the areas between the crosses. The multiple crosses are a reminder that many graves here contain several bodies. Because of this La Cambe has far fewer graves than Omaha but contains more than twice as many dead.

At the center of the graveyard is a large stone cross atop a circular mound. The mound is a memorial to some 300 unknown soldiers buried beneath it. At the foot of the mound are a number of wreaths, most donated by former foes.

At Omaha there is a memorial with this inscription: “This embattled shore, portal of freedom, is forever hallowed by the ideals, the valor and the sacrifices of our fellow countrymen.” This statement was made for the living, not the dead. The US cemetery is designed to console the survivors that those who died here did so for an important and worthwhile reason.

While losers of wars often make similar claims for their dead, in World War II the Nazis’ acts made this impossible. As a result the private group that built and maintain this German cemetery was free to ask a question their foes could not: Why do we still consider war to be just “a continuation of politics by other means?”

The Last Of The Light Brigade

There were thirty million English who talked of England’s might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant’s order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin’ your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o’ the Light Brigade, sir. Here’s all that isn’t dead.
An’ it’s all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin’ the mouth of hell;
For we’re all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we’d call an’ tell.

"No, thank you, we don’t want food, sir; but couldn’t you take an’ write
A sort of ‘to be continued’ and ‘see next page’ o’ the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an’ couldn’t you tell ’em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England’s might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children’s children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

— Rudyard Kipling

IRAQ: My 10 Lessons Learned

1: I can hold my breath for six months. It’s not that hard, really. I just inhaled when my brother shipped out and exhaled again when he returned for R&R. I did it again when he went back until he returned from his tour. This is a convenient literary description of what it felt like – but in my memory it is the literal truth. I know people who’ve done it for 15 months, several times.

2: How to listen to the news. A mental flow chart I followed whenever I encountered any reports about Iraq. An answer of “that’s not my brother” at any step allowed me to return to my daily life.

• Has somebody died?
• Iraqi or American?
• Civilian or military?
• Was it someone in the Army?
• What part of the country?
• Is this near Fallujah?
• Is it my brother?

When I reached that final question, I felt relieved and then horrible. I knew my reprieve was someone else’s loss.

3: What to send. Batteries. Hot sauce – MRE’s are bland. Hard candy. Chewing tobacco – it’s a form of currency. DVDs. Baby wipes – help people clean off when they’re in the field. My son sent some of his toys and stuffed animals to give to Iraqi kids.

4: What not to send. Don’t send chocolate. It will likely melt during shipping because of the temperatures in Iraq. There have been many reports that the military is trying to develop a chocolate with a higher melting point. Officially you’re not supposed to ship porn, alcohol, and/or anything with pork in it. While there are serious doubts as to whether or not anyone actually checks for these things, people at home disguise them anyway. A friend of my brother’s got some mouthwash in a box from home, screwed the top off and took a swig out of it. He spit it out and said in total surprise, “It’s mouthwash!”

5: Nothing bigger than a shoe box. That’s the optimum size for shipping. Anything bigger than that will take forever to get there. For some reason speed of delivery mattered even when he was going to be there for a year.

6: The USPS is very helpful. When shipping overseas you have to fill out one of two different customs forms depending on the weight of the package. I was always filling out the wrong one. No matter how long the line behind me, when the clerk saw the address on the package he or she invariably said something kind and didn’t mind waiting while I filled out the right one.

7: People are very kind. You send things because there’s nothing else you can do. I asked other people to send things, too. And they did. Lots of things: packages and dozens of birthday and Christmas cards and prayers. Always prayers. You send those, too, because there’s nothing else you can do.

8: I don’t care what you think about the war. Before you tell me that, tell me if you’ve had someone over there. If you know what that constant dread is like or what it’s like to be terrified when the phone rings late at night, then I’ll listen to what you have to say. I’ve disagreed with people who’ve been through this, but I’ve never argued. We have too much in common. It’s irrational, but I think we are the only people who should get to discuss the topic. Anyone else – even the ones who agree with me – I tend to view as a clueless fool.

9: Many people have it worse. And it’s not just the families that have had someone killed or injured. He is my brother but he is Stacy’s husband and my parent’s child. The times they were awake at 3 AM were much darker than the times I was.

10: I am a hypocrite. If truth is the first casualty of war, then the first truth to die is the fact that your opponent is human, too. I passionately believe that all human lives are equal. For the entire year my brother was over there I didn’t care how many Iraqis died or what else happened to them. Now that he is back, I am compassionate again.