Trees and WW1

[Bill Morrison]

Mike Hall has posted photos of trees on the Gallery. This brought to mind a rather special one. It is a Hornbeam and the only survivor of Delville Wood. It is next to the South African War memorial at Delville Wood. There are pieces of sharpnel still in the trunk.
Bill.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Bill.
I'm reading a series of detective novels set just after the First World war, very descriptive parts about the war, the mud blood and horrific conditions, nothing was exempt from damage; like your tree, When I think now that I used to wear my Grandads gas cape to school I shudder to think what he went through, he died of gas poisoning in 1925 so I never met him.
DEs

[happy daze john in oz]

Des, no matter what war it is there will always be some who suffer more than others.
Gas as used in WW, cannot think of a more horrible way to go.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

John.
Politicians haven't improved since then, I just read the silliest statement ever published by a Govt. Albanese has just sanctioned North Korea for supplying arms to Russia, he said t was against the UN Charter to do this, this is a week after Australia supplying $2Billion in arms to Ukraine, go figure.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

The problem is that if you manufacture weapons they must be used.
Most ammo has a use by date, so use it do not keep it.
Munitions manufacturing is big business now, many countries make a lot of money from it.
So make and sell id the ideal way to go.

[Harry Nicholson]

Years ago I stood on Lone Pine Hill, Gallipoli. The site of great bravery by NZ troops. Bones could be seen among the War Grave rose beds. A party of NZ folk arrived, and we communed for a while. A pine tree grew there, and her cones littered the earth. Afterwards, I tried to express the emotional charge of such places in a poem:

Lump in the Throat

With beer in hand in Ypres square,
I've sat at table in the sun
to see my father's youthful form
drive to the Gate and to the Line
his Percherons and gun.

Another father might have been -
but Joe the stoker -
in blazing anthracite and steam,
died in Jutland's firestorm,
died a young girl's dream.

Have you seen the Lone Pine Hill
over Dardanelle where the bones still show
in the ground that the young men fill?
Today, in sun, the butterflies float,
but ghosts I see and my anger's bile -
well, it’s fit to burst the throat.