HAPPENING NOW: American Legion Post 160 offering Memorial Day poppies

| Holidays | How to help | West Seattle news

It’s a Memorial Day tradition that’s almost a century old – American Legion red-crepe-paper poppies, made by, and benefiting, veterans. You can get yours today until ~5 pm and again tomorrow, 8 am-5 pm, at West Seattle Thriftway (4201 SW Morgan; WSB sponsor). This morning’s poppy distributors were American Legion Post 160’s Walt DeLong, a U.S. Navy veteran, and Keith Hughes, a U.S. Army veteran:

Post 160 also welcomes your help taking down and/or putting up the West Seattle Junction flags on Monday – meet at the northeast corner of California/Alaska at 9 am and/or 5 pm. And inbetween those times, you’re invited to the 2 pm Memorial Day service at Forest Lawn (6701 30th SW; WSB sponsor) and 3:15 pm community cookout at Post 160 HQ (3618 SW Alaska).

sc May 26, 2018 (2:00 pm)

In Flanders fields the poppies blowBetween the crosses, row on row,That mark our place; and in the skyThe larks, still bravely singing, flyScarce heard amid the guns below.We are the Dead. Short days agoWe lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,Loved and were loved, and now we lieIn Flanders fields.Take up our quarrel with the foe:To you from failing hands we throwThe torch; be yours to hold it high.If ye break faith with us who dieWe shall not sleep, though poppies growIn Flanders fields.by John McCrae, May 1915

WSCurmudgeon May 26, 2018 (10:57 pm)

Many great poets fought in WW I. The McCrae poem posted above is by far the best known poem to most Americans. To many veterans, such as this writer (VN War), it doesn’t express the futility of most wars. The following poem by the English poet Siegfried Sassoon describes how his view of the war, and his poetry, changed from early enthusiasm to later cynicism because of the incompetence of the political and senior military leaders and their indifference to the suffering of the actual warriors. The poem is in the public domain. The Poet as HeroYou’ve heard me, scornful, harsh, and discontented, Mocking and loathing War: you’ve asked me why Of my old, silly sweetness I’ve repented– My ecstasies changed to an ugly cry. You are aware that once I sought the Grail, Riding in armour bright, serene and strong; And it was told that through my infant wail There rose immortal semblances of song. But now I’ve said good-bye to Galahad, And am no more the knight of dreams and show: For lust and senseless hatred make me glad, And my killed friends are with me where I go. Wound for red wound I burn to smite their wrongs; And there is absolution in my songs.

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