light brigade – The Journal of A_C

Content below is from #184 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

UPDATE

Rabies Update
- Episode #178 was about the Rabies virus, how it scares the hell out of me and should scare you too.
- Well recently I played #319 of This American Life podcast (great pod by the way) and the first part was about a woman’s experience with Rabies.
  - There were some VERY important points made on their pod that I didn’t mention on my rabies pod so here we are.
  - This American Life #319 is called “And the Call Was Coming from the Basement”
- If you are bitten by an animal that has rabies… you have only 72 hours to get the rabies vaccine. DON’T WAIT
- Bats can bite you while you are sleeping without you knowing and leave no mark which could transfer rabies.
  - So if you wake up with a crazy bat in the room you were sleeping in, catch the bat and get it tested. If you can’t catch the bat… go to the hospital to test yourself.
    - That sounds excessive… but the rabies virus is horrible and the risk makes all of these precautions worthwhile.
- Some hospitals (like the one in This American Life’s podcast) don’t take rabies seriously. They don’t regard it as an emergency.
  - They might mistakenly tell you that you have weeks to get the vaccine… YOU DON’T HAVE WEEKS. GET IT TAKEN CARE OF NOW
I also recently had a nightmare where I got rabies and it woke me up in a cold sweat. It was horrifying.
- So…. yeah, I may have given myself a nightmare-inducing fear because I researched rabies to make my podcast episode LOL

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

This week I recommend the movie Violent Night
- here’s the plot:
  - An elite team of mercenaries breaks into a family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone hostage inside. However, they aren’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint.
- Shannon and I sat down to watch a movie and she asked if we could watch a Christmas movie…
  - I groaned “No… because it will be some movie we’ve watched a billion times and that will bore the hell out of me…”
  - But I’m glad I chose Violent Night. It was mostly original (sort of like Die Hard, but it was properly Christmas-themed instead of just lightly Christmas-themed).
  - It was funny, action-packed, and gave old Santa a badass backstory.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

I was scrolling through facebook reels yesterday and came across Michael Sheen reading Y Gododdin, an old Welsh poem from the medieval period about Welsh soldiers charging off to battle.
- It reminded me of the Charge of the Light Brigade and how much awe that poem inspired in me.
- And so I went down a rabbit hole of War Poetry.
- I am not the biggest poetry fan. I just haven’t spent much time studying or writing poetry… but I do remember having a distinct fondness for it as a small boy.
- Well, reading/listening to these poems yesterday was a moving experience.
- So I wanted to share some of the poems I listened to yesterday with you now, along with some of the history behind them.
Here are 3 poems that stuck out:

Charge of the Light Brigade

BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!

Charge for the guns!” he said.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!”

Was there a man dismayed?

Not though the soldier knew

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

III

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of hell

Rode the six hundred.

Flashed all their sabres bare,

Flashed as they turned in air

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

All the world wondered.

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right through the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reeled from the sabre stroke

Shattered and sundered.

Then they rode back, but not

Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

Volleyed and thundered;

Stormed at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell.

They that had fought so well

Came through the jaws of Death,

Back from the mouth of hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

(Oct. 25 [Oct. 13, Old Style], 1854) The poem is about a disastrous British cavalry charge against heavily defended Russian troops at the Battle of Balaklava (1854) during the Crimean War (1853-56). The suicidal attack was made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in his 1855 poem of the same name. Military historians and strategists continue to study the attack to underscore the importance of military intelligence and a clear chain of command and communication.

From British Literature Wiki: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade/#:~:text=The%20poem%20recounts%20an%20assault,in%20the%20mid%2019th%20century.

The poem recounts an assault by a brigade of British cavalry under the command of Lord James Thomas Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, which cost the lives of 113 men and injured 143 others. The charge took place at the Battle of Balaclava, during Britain’s war with Russia in the Crimea in the mid 19th century. The charge was regarded as one of the most heroic yet futile assaults in British military history, and was instantly the subject of speculation back home.

The Crimean war, which lasted from 1853-1856, was an example of a war caused entirely by the imperialstic agenda of the major powers involved. With the Turkish (Ottaman) empire in serious decline, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia anticipated its inevitable collapse, and thus took measures to ensure that when it did, Russia would not be deprived of certain valuable territories in the Balkan area. Russia had long been in conflict with the Turkish empire, so this atmosphere was nothing new to the region (Warner, 6). However, Britain and France, both with interests of their own in the territory, were not prepared to allow Russia to muscle in on the region unopposed. Britain supported the Turkish empire (their preservation was taken as essential in protecting trade and lines of communication with their Asian and Indian colonies), and thus came to Turkey’s aid when the confict began. Although the war would conclude with a compramising treaty in 1856, the three years of fighting exposed the British army as ill-equiped and disorganized, and likewise exposed the Russian army as backward and inferior (Warner, 211-213).

Tennyson, like many other Brits at the time, was inspired by the tale of altruistic sacrifice on the part of the Light Brigade. Their action was seen as a defining example of honor and bravery in the face of hopelessness. Their charge, a result of misinformation and miscommunication on the part of British intelligence, both illuminated the British military’s shortcomings and inspired all those around them. This is precisely what Tennyson attempts to capture in Charge of the Light Brigade. The poem was written both as a commemoration to the soldiers and as a testament to the horrors of war. Tennyson was known to have two contrasting styles in his writing. He wrote pieces like Light Brigade in a short period of time, as a reflection of immediate reaction and emotion. On the other hand, epics like his Idylls of the King were written over long periods of time with meticulous attention paid to detail and composition. These two contrasting styles made themselves evident in his poetry. Light Brigade is said to have been written immediately upon hearing the news of the attack.

The Light Brigade were given an order to charge down a valley toward a heavily defended Russian position.
- They knew it was suicide and they knew it didn’t make sense, at least not from their perspective. they were told to charge with Cannons firing from literally all directions. The order came from a complete miscommunication from their superior officers.
- Had their command known what was going on, no one would have given the Light Brigade their death order… but when they got the order… they obeyed.

Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

I love this poem and so do many people. It is one of the most famous poems out there…
- And while it sounds cool and insights bravery… the other blaring perspective is that these men died for NOTHING
While The Charge of the Light Brigade hints at the folly and horrors of war, it ultimately shines upon the epicness of war.
- Tennyson ultimately sells war as a glory trip….
- but that’s not the case for the rest of this episodes poems…

Dulce et Decorum Est

BY WILFRED OWEN

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.

-Source: Poems (Viking Press, 1921)

That latin at the end there “Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” or the “old Lie”, as Owen describes it – is a quotation from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace, in which it is claimed that “it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”
- This was a poem written during WW1, originally published in 1920, published posthumously.
- Wilfred Owen enlisted in 1915 and by 1916 was on the front lines.
- He wrote in 1918 that he had two reasons for joining the war: “I came out in order to help these boys—directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.”
- On April 1, 1917, near the town of St. Quentin, Owen led his platoon through an artillery barrage to the German trenches, only to discover when they arrived that the enemy had already withdrawn. Severely shaken and disoriented by the bombardment, Owen barely avoided being hit by an exploding shell, and returned to his base camp confused and stammering. A doctor diagnosed shell-shock, a new term used to describe the physical and/or psychological damage suffered by soldiers in combat. Though his commanding officer was skeptical, Owen was sent to a French hospital and subsequently returned to Britain, where he was checked into the Craiglockhart War Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers.
- Owen’s time at Craiglockhart—one of the most famous hospitals used to treat victims of shell-shock—coincided with that of his great friend and fellow poet, Siegfried Sassoon, who became a major influence on his work. After their treatment, both men returned to active service in France,
- Owen himself was a casualty of that senseless war.
  - On November 4, 1918, just one week before the armistice was declared, ending World War I, the British poet Wilfred Owen was killed in action.
  - he was shot by a German machine-gunner during an unsuccessful British attempt to bridge the Sambre Canal, near the French village of Ors.
  - In his hometown of Shrewsbury, near the Welsh border, his mother did not receive the telegraphed news of her son’s death until after the fighting had ended.
- Now celebrated as one of the greatest English poets of the 20th century, Owen’s war poems were popularized in the 1960s when Benjamin Britten included nine of them in his War Requiem, dedicated to four friends who had been killed in World War II. The most famous of them, “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” is not only a memorial to those who died in the Great War of 1914-19, but a classic and timeless representation of the waste and sacrifice of war.

Anthem for Doomed Youth

BY WILFRED OWEN

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

— Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

N/a

Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1986)

On that November day when Owens was gunned down in the war he found so horrifying… he was only 25 years old.
- I read these poems and then read how Owens died… just 1 week before the fighting was over… and 25 just seems so young for those words.

CREDIT: