Thread: Small Beer?
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Old 25-05-2015, 16:46   #12
Eric
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Re: Small Beer?

Maybe at some point one has to narrow things down. I don't think the fact that there is only one "Unknown Soldier" is an insult to all those lying in graves marked "Known Unto God." Or that the fact we have over here only one disabled child to represent the thousands of poor little sick kids in the Easter Seals campaign is a sign that they are being ignored. I don't consider myself unintelligent; but there are certain things I just can't wrap my head around: the horror of the trenches, the holocaust, the sexploitation of vulnerable kids ... and no doubt anyone can come up with lots more. The single image is a way of getting through that difficulty. Indeed, it may help focus the limited capabilities of the mind to handle the overload of millions of dead.

As a kind of aside, Captain Wilfred Owen of the Manchester Regiment was a keen photographer. He took many pics of the trenches in all their horror. But when he showed these to folks on the home front, they couldn't handle it, and preferred the fiction of glorious battle that the propagandists dished out. He found that short, vivid poems, concentrating on specific, limited incidents, and expressed in metaphor got his message over much more effectively.

By the way, let's not forget the wounded, like the guy who stands as my avatar, Private Albert Ashton of the King's Own, who lived for 30 years after the war; and every breath he drew was a painful reminder of Third Ypres. My own personal hero.
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