Tina agrees:
Don't mention huge quantities of confiscated fentanyl.
It could have been. LdR told Q our kids would die of thirst.
As was I, anon. You are a hero for putting up with all this. Love you. Be prepared.
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.
Owen's complaint in this poem is that the "old lie" was one told repeatedly in order to induce young men into dying for their country, usually dying horrible deaths. The telling of the "old lie" is an act of hypocrisy, and one which represented the refusal of those at home to accept the realities of the First World War, which introduced soldiers to atrocities previously unknown. The soldiers who joined the army believing this patriotic lie, that to die for their country would be "sweet," could hardly have expected to find themselves "bent double, like old beggars under sacks"—not exactly an image in keeping with that of the noble soldier. Owen says that if those who, ignorant of reality, told this lie could see the sights that he had seen, they would not tell it with such "zest" to the "children" who would so willingly fall for it in their youthful lust for "glory."
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-the-old-lie-dulce-et-decorum-est-why-1288924
Dearest Virginia -
We stand with you.
Now and always.
Find peace through prayer.
Never give up the good fight.
God bless you.
Q