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Barnhill, Jura. June 2015. (Thanks to the kindness of the Fletcher family).

Dulce et decorum est (Horace's Odes III.2.13)

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“It is the wound in Time. The century’s tides,

chanting their bitter psalms, cannot heal it.”

(Carol Ann Duffy, 2018)

Walter Tull's image on Ayr sands

"On 32 beaches around Great Britain the faces of those who served during World War One are being created in the sand. A picture of the British Army's first black officer Walter Tull is seen on Ayr Beach. He enlisted in the army in 1914, rose to become a 2nd Lieutenant and died in the Second Battle of the Somme at the age of 29."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-46169514

Wilfred Owen's image on Folkestone sands

Wilfred Owen's image on Folkestone sands

"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."

Dulce et decorum est (Wilfred Owen, Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, 1917)

https://www.pagesofthesea.org.uk/

https://www.pagesofthesea.org.uk/the-wound-in-time/


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