I remember World War 1 veterans marching in the 4th of July parades of my youth. They seemed so old to me, but they were no older than today's Vietnam veterans are to my own middle school students.
My own grandfather was a World War 1 veteran. Harold Swedberg.was a farm boy and pioneering auto mechanic from Illinois. He served in France during WWI unloading cargo and transferring it to trains for the front and working in some kind of mysterious capacity, perhaps helping to develop early airplanes for war purposes. He never talked about his service with family members.
My own grandfather was a World War 1 veteran. Harold Swedberg.was a farm boy and pioneering auto mechanic from Illinois. He served in France during WWI unloading cargo and transferring it to trains for the front and working in some kind of mysterious capacity, perhaps helping to develop early airplanes for war purposes. He never talked about his service with family members.
My grandfather had a German "potato masher" hand grenade, similar to this one, which is in the National World War 1 Museum in Kansas City. He used his as a doorstop. He always warned us kids not to touch it, that it was live. I believed him then, but now I wish I had that little memento.
Will Streets, the poet of A Lark Above the Trenches, never lived to frighten his grandchildren with strange souvenirs. He died in the Somme in 1916.
Will Streets, the poet of A Lark Above the Trenches, never lived to frighten his grandchildren with strange souvenirs. He died in the Somme in 1916.
A Lark Above the Trenches 1916
Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.
I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings
That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!
Hushed is the shriek of hurtling shells: and hark!
Somewhere within that bit of soft blue sky-
Grand in his loneliness, his ecstasy,
His lyric wild and free – carols a lark.
I in the trench, he lost in heaven afar,
I dream of Love, its ecstasy he sings;
Doth lure my soul to love till like a star
It flashes into Life: O tireless wings
That beat love’s message into melody –
A song that touches in this place remote
Gladness supreme in its undying note
And stirs to life the soul of memory –
‘Tis strange that while you’re beating into life
Men here below and plunged in sanguine strife!
