Armistice Day

IN FLANDERS FIELD

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-Lt.Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army


"Rain"
Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying tonight or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be for what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.
-Edward Thomas. 1878-1917


Pray for the living and the dead.

A Historical Post/ Requiem For My Utilities

Wrote this a while ago, but am not going to retcon the date so as to avoid confusion. So yep, it's historical, not current.

Tonight I am writing a requiem for my utilities. In preparation for PCSing, I cut them up and threw them out. And I am sad. To those of you who wore utilities and didn’t like them, I don’t think there’s much I could say that would make you like them. Yes, the waistband hit around bellybutton level, and criticism was leveled at the ‘janitor’ look of the utilities. And tonight I’m not here to take on the idiocy of camo that blends you in with water when you go overboard (I've since been informed that when on the flight-deck or anywhere else that you could fall off from, you get a dye pack that is supposed to dye you and the water you end up in a a fetching and unnatural colour to help search and rescue, but I'm a skeptic). That’s for another post. This is a memorial of my utilities.

Utilities, blueberrys, janitor suits, they had many names- mostly unflattering. Mine were issued to me a distant February ago in a large room with watchful RDCs and inept people who told us our sizes. No sooner were we fitted than our utilites were whisked away to have our nametapes put on them for the purposes of laundry/identification/etc. We got them back a few days later and our little bootcamp selves were first of all, overjoyed to get out of PT gear, which was all we had worn for what felt like forever, and second of all, in for a world of hurt as far as maintenance went. Many nights I would spend staring blearily at an iron and willing it to iron my utilities perfectly without my actually having to move. But while some told horror stories of broken buttons and IPs, I was afflicted with neither in any of my four sets. We wore them with our highly polished boots for everything. You’d think then, that when I cut them up I would get some sort of delight and happiness at seeing the things I had clumped about in non-stop for two months and then at intervals for the next many months finally phase out. But you’d be wrong.
Because one of the good things that even the haters can agree on, I hope, is that when you got to put on that Navy ballcap, your perspective on everything shifted a bit. ‘Recruit’ was no longer literally plastered over your head at nearly all times. It now said ‘Navy’ and it was cool. Also, it was cool because it had your rank on the sleeve if you were a petty officer. And honestly, that uniform went through basic with me. It was kind of like the neighborhood dog when you were a kid. It barked at you and you had nightmares about it chasing your bike and biting you, but when you grew up, went off to college and came back, you saw that it was old and a softie and was more scared of you than you ever were of it. And with the utilities, you put in an effort. I saw lines that were the product of lots and lots of ironing that I did or bartered with others to do. And I thought of all that effort, all the painstaking little details, as I cut them all up.
All?
Well… perhaps not quite all. Sentiment has compelled me to retain one pair, perhaps for work around the house? Or something. I dunno. All I know is I have one perfectly folded pair of utilities that I can’t quite bring myself to throw out yet. And I don’t know how I ought to feel about that, only that it is in fact the case….
And that is all.
PS- I graduated today… Yeah. More on that later.

-End Historical Post-