DULCE ET DECORUM EST PRO PATRIA MORI
trans:
LET ME......ENTERTAIN YOU.
trans:
LET ME......ENTERTAIN YOU.
It's a bit like Live Aid, all this, don't you think,
only with uniforms? The rich putting on a show for the poor. To show how much they care.
Well, I can get my people to run you up a few, if you like.
No, fuck no, one doesn't have to have served or anything, Colonel in Chief, Admiral of the Fleet, whatever you like, medals, too; ribbons, sashes; jolly good, stand at ease, Sambo.
I'm your next King, you know.
No, Mater gave me my medals, no blood and shit for me.
I'm your next King, you know.
Still, all comrades together, eh, all die for each other, only not me, because I'm your next King. You know, King and Country, what you're happy to die for?
Pushing it a bit, isn't it, the idea that anyone in their right mind'd die for this worthless, idle, pampered piece of shit?
Royalism aside, though, it seems that every telly historian who can mix and mangle a metaphor has had a gig this year.
All it needs is for Sir Tony Robinson and the TimeTeam GraveRobbers to take a JCB to the Menin Gate and the nation will be gorged, replete with ersatz martial history.
We have had our eyes opened-up to every conceivable point of view regarding WW1; celebrity professor, Neil Ferguson,
has said that it was grade one arseholery, short-sightedness and stupidity on the part of European statespersons, especially the beardy, inbred Ruritanians, ancestors of Good Queen Brenda the Immortal; Field Marshal Professor Sir Max Hitler Hastings, VC, liberator of the Falklands
has avowed, contrarily, that his great somebody-or-other died on the Western Front and so it was all a jolly good show, spiffing, we'd all a been jolly well fucked without it; Radio Four has had its share, professors Maggie McMillan and Christopher Clark and the insufferable Peter Hennessy
have delivered media-professorial insights into, well, into whatever arcane, especial aspect of WW1 they and their agents have colonised; even Housewives' Choice hunk, Jeremy Vine,
God, I'm so moved I could eat my own shit.
has mixed-in a bit of, you know, warhistory, 'swotitsallabout this year, 'swot all the top jocks're playing, along with the hits of yesteryear and of course the traffic news, where you are, but only little bite-sized bits of warstuff, because Radio Two listeners have a short attention span, being so old, yet so young at heart, so wise, yet so fucking stupid, their dotage fuelled by dreams of playlists goneby. Bit of Ypres, bit of the Carpenters, even Status Quo; that's the stuff to give the troops.
All it needs is for Sir Tony Robinson and the TimeTeam GraveRobbers to take a JCB to the Menin Gate and the nation will be gorged, replete with ersatz martial history.
We have had our eyes opened-up to every conceivable point of view regarding WW1; celebrity professor, Neil Ferguson,
has said that it was grade one arseholery, short-sightedness and stupidity on the part of European statespersons, especially the beardy, inbred Ruritanians, ancestors of Good Queen Brenda the Immortal; Field Marshal Professor Sir Max Hitler Hastings, VC, liberator of the Falklands
has avowed, contrarily, that his great somebody-or-other died on the Western Front and so it was all a jolly good show, spiffing, we'd all a been jolly well fucked without it; Radio Four has had its share, professors Maggie McMillan and Christopher Clark and the insufferable Peter Hennessy
have delivered media-professorial insights into, well, into whatever arcane, especial aspect of WW1 they and their agents have colonised; even Housewives' Choice hunk, Jeremy Vine,
God, I'm so moved I could eat my own shit.
has mixed-in a bit of, you know, warhistory, 'swotitsallabout this year, 'swot all the top jocks're playing, along with the hits of yesteryear and of course the traffic news, where you are, but only little bite-sized bits of warstuff, because Radio Two listeners have a short attention span, being so old, yet so young at heart, so wise, yet so fucking stupid, their dotage fuelled by dreams of playlists goneby. Bit of Ypres, bit of the Carpenters, even Status Quo; that's the stuff to give the troops.
There was even some snooty old trollop at the Chelsea Flower Show, angling for business, hungry for recognition, enunciating to Mad Monty Don all the ways in which her Chelsea Garden, her tarted-up bits of grass and flowers movingly evoked the spirit of her great, great something or other who fell at the Somme; you'd think she spent her every weekend volunteering to maintain the Commonwealth war cemetries of the Western Front.
If I'd been there I'da run a hedge-trimmer down her face. I don't know, maybe - probably - I have some distant connection to a white stone cross atop a bag of bones in Flanders but even if I don't, we have mrs ishmael's grandfather's death medal hanging behind glass in the hall with later medals awarded to her father, for hosing-down and mucking-out Auschwitz. Most people are connected, quietly, one way or another to Slaughter, although few are lavishly paid for rehearsing their own distant genealogy, building a memorial garden for the Chelsea flower Show, make you puke, really, the New Britons. Anything for a few quid, sell anything, steal anything; Larceny in Virtue's clothes; Thatcher's legacy. And Blair's. And Brown's. And that other prick. The bloke in the underpants.
With Monty, though, he's pure, unadulterated showbusiness; be it gardens about poverty, disability, heroin addiction or, as now, the annihilation of a generation, Monty has an earnest horticultural apercu with which to lighten our collective, human load - At the end of the day, viewers, for me, it's what gardening's all about and what better way to commemorate all those dead blokes than for you all to buy my books and watch my shows, whether you're a pacifist - as I obviously am, look, I even have a dog - or whether you're another sort of person - and that really is a matter of personal choice- gardening, through feast or famine, high or low, war and peace, is what it's really all about. Everyman, down his garden with his dog, a camera crew, a producer, a scriptwrier, a make-up girl, a director and a team of sturdy workers to do the actual digging, y'know, the gardening part, rather than, though I say it myself, doing the most important part, the presenting; well, what could be more diligent and painstaking and honest and virtuous and quintessentially British than that?
Join me next time on Gardeners World for some more well-rehearsed, spontaneous, specious and insincere homilies and you, too, could live a life like Monty - humble, sincere, worthy, essentially carbon-neutral, compostible and completely cuntish.
Jeremy Paxman,
Jerry being sombre at a war memorial, take 3.
That's lovely, darling, but let's do it one more time.
a distinguished member of the Queen's Own Ringo Starr Regiment of Luckiest Men Alive, has brought his leaden, million-pounds-a-year sneer to the proceedings.
Good for fuck allness personified, Paxman, can't even anchor the tamest, blandest news show in the world. I watched that mythologised interview with Michael Howard and my dog, Harris, would've wrung a better answer from the worthless, rotten, oily bastard;
Two Oxbridge Tory bullies putting on a bit of a show.
BAFTAs all 'round.
Twelve times Paxman asked Howard, the PrisonWorks man, if he'd done such and such to his underling, prisons' commandant, Derek Lewis, and twelve times he wriggled away, smirking; Paxman's Cambridge education, you see, and a lifetime poncing at the PBC, that's what makes him the nation's premier, forensic interlocutor. He has obviously spent his life sucking on the collective BBC knob, for his skills, his personality are non-existent; Robin Day would've nailed Howard, Ludovic Kennedy, even the repulsive David Frost would have obtained an answer; Paxman, instead, is celebrated, weirdly, for his failure, as though he and not Howard was the victor, the BBC claims that Paxman's interview - and not Howard's own oleagenous worthlessness - stalled his political career, it would say that, wouldn't it? I have watched most of Newsnight and I can't actually remember even one triumph of political interviewing and the only significant investigative reporting - into Sir Jimmy Savile - was shelved. Just a chat show, really, for Jerry and his chums, for Kirsty and her shrieking, arty slappers.
Even on University Challenge the only spanner in Paxman's presenters' toolbox is his impatient, schoolboy sneer; the show's original presenter, Bamber Gascoigne, at least had some personal charm and a genuine, patient, easy erudition, the show was fun, competitive and informative; under Paxman's browbeating stewardship it is brutish and dull; such a pair of hands, everything they touch turns to shit, shit for us, gold for him. And of course, being a veteran investigative journalist at the Beeb, Paxman, like all the other hotshot journos, would have known nothing of his own organisation's instititionalised paedophilia, its extortion scams run by Yentob and Thomas and the rest; makes the Borgias look almost Presbyterian, does the BBC.
In a proper country, one a little less compulsorily inclusive and tolerant, the BBC would by now have been burnt to the ground. Anyway, Paxman on WW1, I gave him a miss, not even a starter for ten. I am one of those who, somehow, does not see Paxman's indispensibility; he's like that little fat fucker, Hislop, an Establishment stooge, one of them, pretending to be one of us; while they pretend to joust Truthwards, they all have their cocks up each others arses; a daisychain of conceit and entitlement.
Dan, son-of-Peter, cousin of Jon Snow has had a good war year, too.
Dan, who made his first tellyhistory programmes
in tandem with his dad, Peter Snow
Well, viewers, no harm in giving the boy a leg-up;
it is, after all, what the BBC was set up to do,
provide jobs for the well-connected.
now makes programmes more or less without holding Daddy's hand. He has passions, Dan. For boats. For war. For history. For WW1. For Rome. For anything he makes a programme about; whatever it is, he's passionate about it, Dan. Amazing how one can have such passions and remain such a clunking dunderhead; makes Andy Murray look vivacious and well-adjusted, does Peter's boy, Dan.
Jerry being sombre at a war memorial, take 3.
That's lovely, darling, but let's do it one more time.
a distinguished member of the Queen's Own Ringo Starr Regiment of Luckiest Men Alive, has brought his leaden, million-pounds-a-year sneer to the proceedings.
Good for fuck allness personified, Paxman, can't even anchor the tamest, blandest news show in the world. I watched that mythologised interview with Michael Howard and my dog, Harris, would've wrung a better answer from the worthless, rotten, oily bastard;
BAFTAs all 'round.
Twelve times Paxman asked Howard, the PrisonWorks man, if he'd done such and such to his underling, prisons' commandant, Derek Lewis, and twelve times he wriggled away, smirking; Paxman's Cambridge education, you see, and a lifetime poncing at the PBC, that's what makes him the nation's premier, forensic interlocutor. He has obviously spent his life sucking on the collective BBC knob, for his skills, his personality are non-existent; Robin Day would've nailed Howard, Ludovic Kennedy, even the repulsive David Frost would have obtained an answer; Paxman, instead, is celebrated, weirdly, for his failure, as though he and not Howard was the victor, the BBC claims that Paxman's interview - and not Howard's own oleagenous worthlessness - stalled his political career, it would say that, wouldn't it? I have watched most of Newsnight and I can't actually remember even one triumph of political interviewing and the only significant investigative reporting - into Sir Jimmy Savile - was shelved. Just a chat show, really, for Jerry and his chums, for Kirsty and her shrieking, arty slappers.
Even on University Challenge the only spanner in Paxman's presenters' toolbox is his impatient, schoolboy sneer; the show's original presenter, Bamber Gascoigne, at least had some personal charm and a genuine, patient, easy erudition, the show was fun, competitive and informative; under Paxman's browbeating stewardship it is brutish and dull; such a pair of hands, everything they touch turns to shit, shit for us, gold for him. And of course, being a veteran investigative journalist at the Beeb, Paxman, like all the other hotshot journos, would have known nothing of his own organisation's instititionalised paedophilia, its extortion scams run by Yentob and Thomas and the rest; makes the Borgias look almost Presbyterian, does the BBC.
In a proper country, one a little less compulsorily inclusive and tolerant, the BBC would by now have been burnt to the ground. Anyway, Paxman on WW1, I gave him a miss, not even a starter for ten. I am one of those who, somehow, does not see Paxman's indispensibility; he's like that little fat fucker, Hislop, an Establishment stooge, one of them, pretending to be one of us; while they pretend to joust Truthwards, they all have their cocks up each others arses; a daisychain of conceit and entitlement.
Dan, son-of-Peter, cousin of Jon Snow has had a good war year, too.
Dan, who made his first tellyhistory programmes
in tandem with his dad, Peter Snow
Well, viewers, no harm in giving the boy a leg-up;
it is, after all, what the BBC was set up to do,
provide jobs for the well-connected.
now makes programmes more or less without holding Daddy's hand. He has passions, Dan. For boats. For war. For history. For WW1. For Rome. For anything he makes a programme about; whatever it is, he's passionate about it, Dan. Amazing how one can have such passions and remain such a clunking dunderhead; makes Andy Murray look vivacious and well-adjusted, does Peter's boy, Dan.
He's seen here, above, with the prerequisite dead relation; we're talking moving, here, humbling, awesome, all that shit.
They've all been at it. The Great War Feast has been going all year long and now it's hushed-tones D-Dayitis that's broken out, warporn, wall-to-wall landing craft, Mulberry harbours and grateful French peasants.
They've all been at it. The Great War Feast has been going all year long and now it's hushed-tones D-Dayitis that's broken out, warporn, wall-to-wall landing craft, Mulberry harbours and grateful French peasants.
I was moved to write this - whatever it is and wherever it goes - by a simple line of gratitude to the class of June Sixth, over on mrs woar's blog, The Raft Journal; Thank You, was all it said.
Now, my Citroen rocket car has two little vibrators, one on the left and one on the right of the driver's seat squab; if you doze off and cross a white line on the offside without indicating, it stabs you arythmically in the right buttock; if you do it on the nearside it happens to the left buttock, it is, for a gentle, conventional soul such as I, quite disturbing and instantly effective. Every now and again Citroen are years ahead of everyone else - the Traction Avant, the 2CV, the glorious DS 21 and recently the C4 VTS, these are automobile magic. The sleepy-arse prod, though is probably uniquely French; my new Volvo V40 is excessiveley, bewilderingly and infuriatingly high-tech but it doesn't have the sleepy-arse prod. Life, herself, however, sometimes gives me her sleepy-arse prod and mrs woar's simple, dignified post prompted my most recent discomfort, it was a twinge at first but grew into that breathless, ball- and bowel-twisting sciatica which makes you so sick you wanna die.
Now, my Citroen rocket car has two little vibrators, one on the left and one on the right of the driver's seat squab; if you doze off and cross a white line on the offside without indicating, it stabs you arythmically in the right buttock; if you do it on the nearside it happens to the left buttock, it is, for a gentle, conventional soul such as I, quite disturbing and instantly effective. Every now and again Citroen are years ahead of everyone else - the Traction Avant, the 2CV, the glorious DS 21 and recently the C4 VTS, these are automobile magic. The sleepy-arse prod, though is probably uniquely French; my new Volvo V40 is excessiveley, bewilderingly and infuriatingly high-tech but it doesn't have the sleepy-arse prod. Life, herself, however, sometimes gives me her sleepy-arse prod and mrs woar's simple, dignified post prompted my most recent discomfort, it was a twinge at first but grew into that breathless, ball- and bowel-twisting sciatica which makes you so sick you wanna die.
I was all set to just agree with that Thank You; Fuck, yes, we all owe them all this whatever it is, this, this fact that we're not all speaking Herman now, and then I started to feel suckered; who, exactly, am I being grateful to and why; are my strings being fretted, as if by MediaMinster's own Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, are my stops known, my depths? Am I being given breath that I might discourse music most eloquent? And all as easy as lying?
Well, this warfeasting, it's outgrown the simple remembrances made by those who fought, those bereaved and those who just survived the Blitz and the deprivation; most of those are now dead or nearly dead, so what is it, exactly, which we who were not then born are remembering? What is it upon which we feast? Is it Private Ryan? Is it some Colonel Blimp propaganda balderdash from Pathe News; is it a thousand war movies and a hundred newsreel-filmed annual gatherings of hypocrite politicians and freeloading Ruritanians, togged-up in fake medals, whoring themselves at the Cenotaph? Few of us are remembering anything, we may well simply be swirling around in a maelstrom of counterfeit emotions driven by watching The Battle of Britain or The Longest Day, we may feel loftily detached or mordantly cynical as a result of reading the Great War poets; we might have come over all Farage, all John Bull, all Winston Churchill, all crying God, for Harry, England and Saint George but whether it is by the BBC, Pathe News, Pinewood Studios or William Shakespeare, himself, we are not - even in this, this sanctimonious, scripted memorialising - we are not remembering, we are being played, instruments in a comic opera of audience participation, a pious, Knees-up Mother Brown community singalong. No business like showbusiness.
It is a drab, clodhopping melody they wring from us, of trite, meaningless, enforced national mourning, mourning safely and painlessly for the long-dead, it's not proper mourning but it's the best sort, the sort that doesn't hurt, doesn't require denial, sacrifice or temporary withdrawal; it's sort-of garage-flower mourning, PoundLand mourning, cheap and cheerful; we have grown adept at it, it has become a national default setting, if something bad has happened get yerself down the garage, quick, that'll sort it. Bring closeya.
We need to be our own poison-taster, lest we choke on all these tawdry blooms; they are overwhelming, jerking tears whilst stiffening upper lips. I fall for it often but this time, like an asteroid just being nudged out of its collision path, I drifted away from the targeted we-will-remember-themism, just a degree at first and then, gathering speed, I hit escape velocity; I escaped, that's what I did, while everybody knelt to pray. I wish there was something, some national act of quite what I am unsure, but something more aligned with never-again atonement, than with schmaltzy, meaningless mourning; more Fuck, no, never again, than with Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?
Well, this warfeasting, it's outgrown the simple remembrances made by those who fought, those bereaved and those who just survived the Blitz and the deprivation; most of those are now dead or nearly dead, so what is it, exactly, which we who were not then born are remembering? What is it upon which we feast? Is it Private Ryan? Is it some Colonel Blimp propaganda balderdash from Pathe News; is it a thousand war movies and a hundred newsreel-filmed annual gatherings of hypocrite politicians and freeloading Ruritanians, togged-up in fake medals, whoring themselves at the Cenotaph? Few of us are remembering anything, we may well simply be swirling around in a maelstrom of counterfeit emotions driven by watching The Battle of Britain or The Longest Day, we may feel loftily detached or mordantly cynical as a result of reading the Great War poets; we might have come over all Farage, all John Bull, all Winston Churchill, all crying God, for Harry, England and Saint George but whether it is by the BBC, Pathe News, Pinewood Studios or William Shakespeare, himself, we are not - even in this, this sanctimonious, scripted memorialising - we are not remembering, we are being played, instruments in a comic opera of audience participation, a pious, Knees-up Mother Brown community singalong. No business like showbusiness.
It is a drab, clodhopping melody they wring from us, of trite, meaningless, enforced national mourning, mourning safely and painlessly for the long-dead, it's not proper mourning but it's the best sort, the sort that doesn't hurt, doesn't require denial, sacrifice or temporary withdrawal; it's sort-of garage-flower mourning, PoundLand mourning, cheap and cheerful; we have grown adept at it, it has become a national default setting, if something bad has happened get yerself down the garage, quick, that'll sort it. Bring closeya.
We need to be our own poison-taster, lest we choke on all these tawdry blooms; they are overwhelming, jerking tears whilst stiffening upper lips. I fall for it often but this time, like an asteroid just being nudged out of its collision path, I drifted away from the targeted we-will-remember-themism, just a degree at first and then, gathering speed, I hit escape velocity; I escaped, that's what I did, while everybody knelt to pray. I wish there was something, some national act of quite what I am unsure, but something more aligned with never-again atonement, than with schmaltzy, meaningless mourning; more Fuck, no, never again, than with Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?
The awful thing is that some, much of what is said about D-Day on the idiotbox and in the filthsheets, is true - youth, bravery, blood and guts; scale, logistics, invention; fascism, tyranny, resistance and sacrifice. A scant moment's thought about these events should render redundant and entirely superfluous the mewlings and pukings of showbiz arseholes like Paxman & Co. Are we all now entirely bereft of imagination, must everything be spelled-out for us, directed, edited and voiced over? I know that young people are stupid, waving worthless degrees and talking gibberish but both of the European wars were hugely significant, the one for its incessant industrialised slaughter of the troops, the other for its globality, for twenty million Russian dead, for the gassed and incinerated Jews, Gipsies and Queers and for the atom fucking bomb; why don't people know this without it being told to them, Jackanory-style, by dingleberries like Hastings and Snow, Paxman and Vine?
But it is wise to draw the line at the assumption, the declaration of ubiquitous - and thus devalued - heroism; there is nothing heroic about obedience. We are not here comparing like with like, comparing us with them and what-iffing. No question that a lot of those boys were bold and daring and phlegmatic in the face of horror. Even allowing for the hyperbole of the obituarist, the preening of the grandiose, puffed-up regimental CO and the vagaries of some possibly hugely heroic actions being invisible, overlooked or unknown, there can be but little doubt that wartime circumstances combine and collide to prompt acts of crazed, incredible, inspiring, self-negating bravery. But mostly they were just doing what they were told.
Wouldn't happen now, couldn't happen now, everybody'd want counselling, medication, therapy, com-pen-say-shun; their wives'd be wetting themselves all over Breakfast TeeVee; their screeching, peroxide single mothers'd be unstoppable. Christ, if Operation Overlord's shit-yourself fear and nightmare-horrors had been called by their modern name of post-traumatic stress disorder the biggest armada in history would have turned 'round before it was out of sight of land. Nah, can't go Sarge, gotta condition, me, a disorder; fuck Rommel and his 'Lantic Wall, fuck the Frogs; nah, fuck all that, need to go 'ome an' 'ave a lie down; anyone invented 'Elp For 'Eroes yet?
The ordering of society was much more stringent in 1944, people did what they did not that I might live in indolence, they did what they did because that's what they were told to fucking do. Get in this landing craft, son, and then, when you get out, just go and charge them machine guns, you'll be alright, just remember yer training son. Right, Sarn't Major. 'Sfor King and Country, lad.
That naivety, is that brave, or is that stupid? Depends how you look at it. But you cannot compare that attitude with today's widespread, idle, empty-headed narcissism, they are not both on a continuum of nobility, we cannot stretch back our greedy, pampered hands and shake theirs. Nor can you say that they did it for us, because I'll bet you a million quid to five Woodbine that if they could see us, Facebooking, Tweeting and X-Factoring, they wouldn't piss on us. Yet somehow we are force-fed the idea that all these young men, as they writhed, dying in agony, all muttered to themselves, well, I mighta popped me clogs, me legs are over there, me arm 'anging up there, on that wire, but at least I can die knowing that millions of morons will consent, in the future, to being shat upon by some cunt called Clegg;
somehow, knowin' that, it makes my dyin' at eighteen all worthwhile, keep the 'ome fires burning, eh, night-night, dear old Blighty.
Isn't it enough to make you weep, weep tears of rage, that filth like Nick Clegg suborn even the Glorious Dead to their own vanity?
No, they didn't die that I might live they did it it because, by means fair and foul, they were compelled to do it. Great men, men to whom statues are raised, had fucked-up, just like they always do and for remedy there came a six-year bloodletting. And in recognition of this sleight of jingoistic hand, we place the remains in neat graves and entrust their surviving comrades' needs not to the Exchequer which sent them there but instead to the meagre comforts and reassurances of begging bowl charities. Tony and Imelda Blair will want for nothing, ever; athough they are completely corrupt millionaires we pension, secure and pamper them from our taxes; veterans, even today, maimed to the glory of Blair, - remember how he said No prime minister has ever been so well-served by his troops? - are in eternal want, of money, of limbs, of love; thrown not into the infinitely comforting arms of ministerial pension but into the worn, crabbed fingers of collecting-tin charity. That Blair's warriors depend, for their ease, upon Help For Heroes and not upon a properly funded military welfare system is a fucking disgrace. Never mind trekking across the Antarctic with Prince Pisshead, some of these publicity-hungry limbless squaddies should storm the MoD, take what's theirs.
On June 6th 1944, though, it was kill or be killed, better them than us. Unlike the recent BlairWars4Money, D-Day had to be done, had to be done in all its awful magnificence; amphibian tanks and their crews, dipping and sinking, on launch, to the bottom of the sea; teenagers never placing a foot ashore before being smashed, shocked and ripped by hot machine gun fire, dismembered and eviscerated by mortars; crippled, legless and armless by anti-personnel mines. Fuck me, Jesus, it must have been awful, jumping out of aircraft; strapped into plywood, deathtrap gliders; every desperate, terrified minute potentially your last, slip-sliding around in the guts of others; your tiny, treasured life, conscripted from you, uniformed and brainwashed and utterly expendable en route to the triumph of governments and their statesmen, mostly safe at home, pampered with cognac, cigars, fortified with whores, whilst you shit yourself and call for your mother. I think it is mr richard, here, who is the sternest on the professional soldier and I generally agree with him but conscripts are a different kettle of fish, we were talking a while back about conchies and I think maybe making the decision not to fight requires more courage than doing as you're bid by HMG, the Daily Express and the Home Service. It's all so frightfully fucking mediaeval, the idea of killing and dying for King and Country; anybody's King, anybody's Country.
But it is wise to draw the line at the assumption, the declaration of ubiquitous - and thus devalued - heroism; there is nothing heroic about obedience. We are not here comparing like with like, comparing us with them and what-iffing. No question that a lot of those boys were bold and daring and phlegmatic in the face of horror. Even allowing for the hyperbole of the obituarist, the preening of the grandiose, puffed-up regimental CO and the vagaries of some possibly hugely heroic actions being invisible, overlooked or unknown, there can be but little doubt that wartime circumstances combine and collide to prompt acts of crazed, incredible, inspiring, self-negating bravery. But mostly they were just doing what they were told.
Wouldn't happen now, couldn't happen now, everybody'd want counselling, medication, therapy, com-pen-say-shun; their wives'd be wetting themselves all over Breakfast TeeVee; their screeching, peroxide single mothers'd be unstoppable. Christ, if Operation Overlord's shit-yourself fear and nightmare-horrors had been called by their modern name of post-traumatic stress disorder the biggest armada in history would have turned 'round before it was out of sight of land. Nah, can't go Sarge, gotta condition, me, a disorder; fuck Rommel and his 'Lantic Wall, fuck the Frogs; nah, fuck all that, need to go 'ome an' 'ave a lie down; anyone invented 'Elp For 'Eroes yet?
The ordering of society was much more stringent in 1944, people did what they did not that I might live in indolence, they did what they did because that's what they were told to fucking do. Get in this landing craft, son, and then, when you get out, just go and charge them machine guns, you'll be alright, just remember yer training son. Right, Sarn't Major. 'Sfor King and Country, lad.
That naivety, is that brave, or is that stupid? Depends how you look at it. But you cannot compare that attitude with today's widespread, idle, empty-headed narcissism, they are not both on a continuum of nobility, we cannot stretch back our greedy, pampered hands and shake theirs. Nor can you say that they did it for us, because I'll bet you a million quid to five Woodbine that if they could see us, Facebooking, Tweeting and X-Factoring, they wouldn't piss on us. Yet somehow we are force-fed the idea that all these young men, as they writhed, dying in agony, all muttered to themselves, well, I mighta popped me clogs, me legs are over there, me arm 'anging up there, on that wire, but at least I can die knowing that millions of morons will consent, in the future, to being shat upon by some cunt called Clegg;
somehow, knowin' that, it makes my dyin' at eighteen all worthwhile, keep the 'ome fires burning, eh, night-night, dear old Blighty.
Isn't it enough to make you weep, weep tears of rage, that filth like Nick Clegg suborn even the Glorious Dead to their own vanity?
No, they didn't die that I might live they did it it because, by means fair and foul, they were compelled to do it. Great men, men to whom statues are raised, had fucked-up, just like they always do and for remedy there came a six-year bloodletting. And in recognition of this sleight of jingoistic hand, we place the remains in neat graves and entrust their surviving comrades' needs not to the Exchequer which sent them there but instead to the meagre comforts and reassurances of begging bowl charities. Tony and Imelda Blair will want for nothing, ever; athough they are completely corrupt millionaires we pension, secure and pamper them from our taxes; veterans, even today, maimed to the glory of Blair, - remember how he said No prime minister has ever been so well-served by his troops? - are in eternal want, of money, of limbs, of love; thrown not into the infinitely comforting arms of ministerial pension but into the worn, crabbed fingers of collecting-tin charity. That Blair's warriors depend, for their ease, upon Help For Heroes and not upon a properly funded military welfare system is a fucking disgrace. Never mind trekking across the Antarctic with Prince Pisshead, some of these publicity-hungry limbless squaddies should storm the MoD, take what's theirs.
On June 6th 1944, though, it was kill or be killed, better them than us. Unlike the recent BlairWars4Money, D-Day had to be done, had to be done in all its awful magnificence; amphibian tanks and their crews, dipping and sinking, on launch, to the bottom of the sea; teenagers never placing a foot ashore before being smashed, shocked and ripped by hot machine gun fire, dismembered and eviscerated by mortars; crippled, legless and armless by anti-personnel mines. Fuck me, Jesus, it must have been awful, jumping out of aircraft; strapped into plywood, deathtrap gliders; every desperate, terrified minute potentially your last, slip-sliding around in the guts of others; your tiny, treasured life, conscripted from you, uniformed and brainwashed and utterly expendable en route to the triumph of governments and their statesmen, mostly safe at home, pampered with cognac, cigars, fortified with whores, whilst you shit yourself and call for your mother. I think it is mr richard, here, who is the sternest on the professional soldier and I generally agree with him but conscripts are a different kettle of fish, we were talking a while back about conchies and I think maybe making the decision not to fight requires more courage than doing as you're bid by HMG, the Daily Express and the Home Service. It's all so frightfully fucking mediaeval, the idea of killing and dying for King and Country; anybody's King, anybody's Country.
And, true to nationalism's cynical form, what better recognition of all this could there be, this Hell on Earth, seventy years on, than the praise of the unGodly, the sloppy, wordy salutes from this cowardly, villainous shower.
MediaMinster threw everything at it. How better to memorialise the trench-footed, blinded, gassed, eviscerated, atomised Fallen of the Western Front than in the sombre, grating tones of Huw Welshman or Joanna Gosling or even Jayne Tits, the grinning bint who does the weather, beaming at us that she's now going to show us just what that weather was really like, on June the wotsaname and how Supreme Commander Wotsisname had a really tough call to make with his weathermen, because - do you know what - they didn't have sattelite weather back then. Full steam ahead it was, at the BBC, for Juno Beach.
But if we quell, in our heads, the jingo-gibberings of Huw Welshman and the rest and if we just take a peek at them individually, les poseurs gallantes, we can see the true colour of their cowardice and knavery.
I say, you do know that if you live in a council house,
one with a spare room, you'll have to hop it, don't you?
Only don't try dossing-down around any govament buildings
because we've put spikes down.
To deter your sort.
Disability benefits?
No, we're putting a stop to all that nonsense.
It's not what you fought for is it, to be mollycoddled, no, work's the thing; Jerry, your old, valiant adversary, here, and I'm sure my opposite number and very good friend, Mrs Frau Lardarse, have a word for it - Arbeit Macht Frei, well three words, actually, and after all this time I feel that we should let bygones be bygones and adopt this motto for our country, too, Arbeit Macht Frei, it sort of sums up what Mr Duncan Smith is trying so bravely to achieve, slave labour.
Pardon, whadidyasay? Who'm I?
I'm your elected prime minister. Well, not exactly elected. What? A coup? A junta? No, certainly not. We put our mandates before the people and we are acting exactly according to what was not in them.
Cameron is busily ripping-up the social justice compact forged immediately after the very war which he now hymns; the NHS is being sold-off, the sick and disabled are gleefully, vengefully demonised, the unemployed - the price worth paying - are shat upon, the old, the young, the vulnerable of every hue are hectored, corralled and bullied by imported companies of social security benefits entitlement assessment carpet-baggers, hardfaced spivs, paid on results, nearly half of their decisions are reversed on appeal yet they still enjoy the full confidence of the wheezing, grimy, vengeful buffoon, Ian Smith; a million or more depend upon food banks, scandals wrack the hospitals, the care homes, the schools and of course, axiomatically, the rich get richer while the poor get fucked. Prices rise, wages fall yet we are deemed to be in growth. Cameron's cronies, Coulson, Brooks, Murdoch, have a common criminality which would shame Goebbels, he surrounds himself with criminals, appoints them to cabinet and entrusts them with the reins of government communication, spivs and crooks, degenerates and hustlers lecture us on our shortcomings; seventy years on, filth like David Cameron piss on those who perished that he and his rotten tribe might prosper. To whom do I offer my thanks for this betrayal?
And then there's SonnyBoy Obama, strutting about in Normandy, fresh from another military shame-fest, back at home. His military veterans, too, treated like shit.
Some other cunt. Than me.
MediaMinster threw everything at it. How better to memorialise the trench-footed, blinded, gassed, eviscerated, atomised Fallen of the Western Front than in the sombre, grating tones of Huw Welshman or Joanna Gosling or even Jayne Tits, the grinning bint who does the weather, beaming at us that she's now going to show us just what that weather was really like, on June the wotsaname and how Supreme Commander Wotsisname had a really tough call to make with his weathermen, because - do you know what - they didn't have sattelite weather back then. Full steam ahead it was, at the BBC, for Juno Beach.
But if we quell, in our heads, the jingo-gibberings of Huw Welshman and the rest and if we just take a peek at them individually, les poseurs gallantes, we can see the true colour of their cowardice and knavery.
one with a spare room, you'll have to hop it, don't you?
Only don't try dossing-down around any govament buildings
because we've put spikes down.
To deter your sort.
No, we're putting a stop to all that nonsense.
It's not what you fought for is it, to be mollycoddled, no, work's the thing; Jerry, your old, valiant adversary, here, and I'm sure my opposite number and very good friend, Mrs Frau Lardarse, have a word for it - Arbeit Macht Frei, well three words, actually, and after all this time I feel that we should let bygones be bygones and adopt this motto for our country, too, Arbeit Macht Frei, it sort of sums up what Mr Duncan Smith is trying so bravely to achieve, slave labour.
Pardon, whadidyasay? Who'm I?
I'm your elected prime minister. Well, not exactly elected. What? A coup? A junta? No, certainly not. We put our mandates before the people and we are acting exactly according to what was not in them.
Cameron is busily ripping-up the social justice compact forged immediately after the very war which he now hymns; the NHS is being sold-off, the sick and disabled are gleefully, vengefully demonised, the unemployed - the price worth paying - are shat upon, the old, the young, the vulnerable of every hue are hectored, corralled and bullied by imported companies of social security benefits entitlement assessment carpet-baggers, hardfaced spivs, paid on results, nearly half of their decisions are reversed on appeal yet they still enjoy the full confidence of the wheezing, grimy, vengeful buffoon, Ian Smith; a million or more depend upon food banks, scandals wrack the hospitals, the care homes, the schools and of course, axiomatically, the rich get richer while the poor get fucked. Prices rise, wages fall yet we are deemed to be in growth. Cameron's cronies, Coulson, Brooks, Murdoch, have a common criminality which would shame Goebbels, he surrounds himself with criminals, appoints them to cabinet and entrusts them with the reins of government communication, spivs and crooks, degenerates and hustlers lecture us on our shortcomings; seventy years on, filth like David Cameron piss on those who perished that he and his rotten tribe might prosper. To whom do I offer my thanks for this betrayal?
And then there's SonnyBoy Obama, strutting about in Normandy, fresh from another military shame-fest, back at home. His military veterans, too, treated like shit.
My fellow motherfuckers.
I am your commander in chief.
I
make the decisions. To put people. Good people. In harm's way. Our people. My fellow motherfuckers. To whom
we owe. An immense debt of gratitude. I am responsible. I am responsible. And I alone.
And
that is why, my fellow motherfuckers, when things go wrong. In our
treatment. Of those good folks. Those veterans. All of whom have served
our country so well. Some other cunt.
Has to resign.
Some other cunt. Than me.
I have today, therefore. Reluctantly accepted. The resignation of Seckatry for Veterans, General Whoosists.
General Whoosits has my complete confidence. And the nation's. And the nation's veterans. Owe him. A huge debt. Of gratitude. And that is why. I had to sack him.
General Whoosits has my complete confidence. And the nation's. And the nation's veterans. Owe him. A huge debt. Of gratitude. And that is why. I had to sack him.
Some sonofafuckinbitch hadda be sacked.
And it wasn't gonna be me.
Wall Street's houseboy, Obama, global torturemeister, coward, omnisnoop, fascist warmonger and stuttering megalomaniac; what's he doing, at Omaha Beach, dusting himself with Valour's glitter?
And this shrunken, cock-waving, gabshite imbecile.
Actually more socialite than socialiste, he was going to rein-back Austerity's dark German squadrons, going to borrow to spend, invest in French workers. Enough of all this merde capitaliste et globale. First thing he did was queue jump over Cameron, in order to stand next to Obama and his urgent need to bomb the working class, the poor and the hungry of Syria.
Aye, right.
It's a long way to Tipperary.
| I have a rendezvous with Death | ||||||
| At some disputed barricade, | ||||||
| When Spring comes back with rustling shade | ||||||
| And apple-blossoms fill the air— | ||||||
| I have a rendezvous with Death | 5 | |||||
| When Spring brings back blue days and fair. | ||||||
| It may be he shall take my hand | ||||||
| And lead me into his dark land | ||||||
| And close my eyes and quench my breath— | ||||||
| It may be I shall pass him still. | 10 | |||||
| I have a rendezvous with Death | ||||||
| On some scarred slope of battered hill, | ||||||
| When Spring comes round again this year | ||||||
| And the first meadow-flowers appear. | ||||||
| God knows 'twere better to be deep | 15 | |||||
| Pillowed in silk and scented down, | ||||||
| Where love throbs out in blissful sleep, | ||||||
| Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath, | ||||||
| Where hushed awakenings are dear... | ||||||
| But I've a rendezvous with Death | 20 | |||||
| At midnight in some flaming town, | ||||||
| When Spring trips north again this year, | ||||||
| And I to my pledged word am true, | ||||||
| I shall not fail that rendezvous. |
Allan Seeger 1888-1916
And nor did he.
32 comments:
Sat here in silent wonder. Jesus, if you're going to come back, do it in style.
Magnificent, Mr. I.
Thank you.
Glad you are back, Mr Ishmael and guns ranging right on target.
"...whatever it is and wherever it goes..."
It is what it is and it goes right here.
Nicely done.
verge//
Have to read this a second time when I recover from the first time. Work in 5 hours and too annoyed to drop off. Need a cig.
Good to see you back.
-richard
Welcome back Mr I. Magnus Opus, indeed. As Mr Anonymous said, need to recover before re-reading.
Top that, as they say..
I can’t so won’t try.
Can abody be thrilled and relived at the same time?
Great youf back. Albeit with a dustant, bugle lament.
Thank goodness. It is getting worse by the day, what with Blair popping up like herpes, and I don't want to go through that without a writer who can see through the blizzard of shit which is about to be blown at us.
Never having had a television, and my only interaction with the press being a weekly visit to the 'Observer' website (to print out the azed crossword), I managed to avoid the puke fest of politicians and pundits commemorating D-day. I kept a pile of sick bags by the wireless (sic) though, especially for the 'Today' programme. They came in handy. (Anyone else bemused as to how quickly that Radio 4 flagship has gone down the pan?)
Mrs. Mirage tortured me with her bedtime entertainment 'I prod' and some merderous cookery fuckery whereby tossers devised dishes 'inspired' by the landings. I found it rather obscene, told her so, and had to reach for the Oromorph.
I'm so glad you're still around Mr Ishmael.
Magnificent.
My long deceased Dad once said, at a remembrance sunday parade on the PBC, ..."aint no good for the dead, remembering, just don't let it happen again." What he would've made of the shower of shits we have 'ruling' us today I dread to think.
As mrs.WoaR said, Blair has reared his ugly head, won't be content 'till every sandnigger is buried in the desert.Doing Israel's work, on the cheap.
See we're best friends with Iran now, according to Hague, maybe fancies a few young Persian boys added to his collection.
What a week. Survived the doctorbastards and an unexpected return. Post us an evensong soon, Mr Smith.
Dear Mr Smith
Echo Mr noblest prospect and also earlier posts as too printed this out and read it on a train and bus and probly should have given it to the pretty girl on the bus home.
Not wanting to sound like a proper psycho mental bastard but if some barbaric arseholes want to cannibalize other medieval fucknuggets then we've got Burma, Central African Republic, Mexico, Somalia etc etc - why don't they get the holiday brochures out? What's the middle east got that principle doesn't? Can't be oil anymore - frak the fuck out of Surrey.
The Kurds seem alright and that's the main thing and Assad is the only tyrant who seems to give a fuck about the Christians. Cameron's just given Albanians free passport to Blighty (as if they didn't already have it) but for fuck's sake - spot thine fucking enemy!
Anna Raccoon's got a thing about Blair calling any criticism of his initial decision to be 'irrelevant' - you'd kinda think with all his training he'd hav thought of a better word. Cunt - that'd fit. They had Paul Bremer on Rd4 - the 1st US Ambassador who terminated the Ba'ath Party although he didn't - and the cunt said that if Iraq hadn't been invaded then both Iran & Iraq would have nukes by now. He's probly right which is the dirty thing.
You really proper cheer me up, man. Thank you very much :-)
Cheers dude
DtP
Oh so welcome back, and better than ever.
Those murdering b*stard politicians, My Dad tossed his medals into the sea and told me if I ever singed up he'd dissown me, now I understand. Thank you Mr Ishmael.
Mick.
You see, this is why I can never think of anything to say - except, as I think it must be about the right time of year, along with the seals, happy birthday to you.
Today, thank you, mrs n.
Happy Birthday!
Thank you, mr dtp, and I refer you to the next post, further on up the road.
Scorcher. Heartfelt congrats and thanks. Carry on.
Globadeath…and they’re all part of it…the royals…the incumbent presedente ..share options on the megasuffering of the poorer class. I have always held that the biggest enemy of the people is government.
Them are the ones that will fuck you over ..tax, vat, allowing bankers folly and rewarding them for it…taxing pensions…sending you out to get ripped apart in somebody else back yard to consolidate their ownership of every fuckin’ thing on the planet.
Those ribbons on whatisnames chest? What the fuck kind of insult is that? Do the royals get a medal for pulling on a uniform or something.?
I'm glad to see Monty Don coming in for some stick. Environmentalist my arse.
What a wonderful poem: I must confess I had never heard of Alan Seeger.
Thanks, Mr I, and belated happy birthday.
Johnny.
"garage-flower mourning"
Worth coming back just for that!
Great poem by the way and here is a bit of the English Graves by G K Chesterton...
Were I that wandering citizen whose city is the world,
I would not weep for all that fell before the flags were furled;
I would not let one murmur mar the trumpets volleying forth
How God grew weary of the kings, and the cold hell in the north.
.
.
.
And what is theirs, though banners blow on Warsaw risen
again,
Or ancient laughter walks in gold through the vineyards of
Lorraine,
Their dead are marked on English stones, their loves on English trees,
How little is the prize they win, how mean a coin for these —
How small a shrivelled laurel-leaf lies crumpled here and
curled :
They died to save their country and they only saved the world.
You are most welcome, I am heartened that you liked it for I have always known it, mr johnny, from a childhood illness, during which I read one of those Oxford anthologies of Great War Poetry. I have a rendezvous with Death, at some disputed barricade has forever been part of the furniture of my being; starkly martial or shrieved and cossetted in our own beds, we all have such a rendezvous, on our own lifelong battlefields.
Monty gets a few kickings in this allotment, mr anonymous; there are others, further back down the road.
He is entertainer, rather than environmentalist, and such a shallow, sighing, simpering fraud, even in that menial role.
The prevalence of garage-flower mourning, mr mark, is one of Ruin's more regrettable advances. I believe it occurred before the death of poor, poor, pitiful Diana but it has spread, since, like the Black Death. I can remember a time when it didn't happen but then I can remember that hopefully is an adverb and text is a noun.
I did not know English Graves but I will certainly read it in full, thanks.
Late to the party Mr Smith, I was premenstrual on 6th June so I cried every time I put the radio on and some old fella said he'd never wanted to talk about how he'd carried his mate's body parts up the beach. I hope you had a good birthday. I got this ridiculous gizmo for mine: a "tablet computer" and this is my first attempt to post a cment with it. I am thinking of placing some garage flowers and a teddy bear at the base of a telegraph pole opposite....to see if it slows down the idiots driving past at 60mph x
Lilith's comments reminded me of this from the Mash:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/business/inventor-unveils-all-in-one-portable-tragedy-shrine-201009083072
Good to see you back in action Mr I. SG
Ihave one of those razorstrop things which your husband recommended, ms lilith, and it is the dog's bollocks. I need, reluctantly, to change my laptop and I might get one of those things; my iPad, I fear, is of use only to the New People, every day it moves closer to my Great Hammer of Cleansing.
Cracks me up, too, those remembrances. Happy birthday.
Sounds like something from Private Eye's Christmas Range, mr sg, the portable shrine. I will take a look.
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