Magnificent Sights

A Stodghill Says So blog:

An old friend is on trial this week and that brought back the memory of the time when he was a running back on the football team at a large Indiana high school. His father was a gambling man who always bet against the point spread on his son's games.
One long-ago Friday night it was looking good for the old man. Only seconds remained to tick off on the clock before he'd be a big winner. With his son's team holding the ball deep in its own territory, victory seemed secure for the father, if not the son.
But then my old friend carried the ball, broke free and raced down the sideline with nothing but open space between him and the distant goal line. That in itself would have been a joy to see, but adding to the drama was the magnificent sight of the old man keeping pace on his side of the white line while shouting, "Fall down, damn you, fall down!"
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During the months after returning home from the big war in Europe I was sometimes asked to name the most impressive sight I had seen. Was it the Cathedral of Notre Dame? The Eiffel Tower, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace?
It was none of these, I assured the listener. Instead it was the latrine at a British army camp just outside Southampton, our final stop before boarding ships bound for Normandy.
As you stood at the door of this long, low building, stretching out ahead of you were 75 toilets along one wall. Across an aisle ten feet wide were 75 more facing them. A 150-seater.
As awe-inspiring as this was, its true beauty could not be appreciated until the morning after our arrival when, following breakfast, every seat was occupied. Even so, several hundred men stood in line outside awaiting their turn. When I eventually reached the head of the line I was met with the never-to-be-forgotten sight of 150 men ensconced on stools.
To keep things moving, a corporal named Corrigan paced up and down the aisle calling out, "Let's cut it off short, men. Let's snap shit!"
When a man arose from a stool, Corrigan would race to it, dropping into a crouch and pointing to the available spot with one hand, to the next man in line with the other.
Adding to the poignancy was the realization that with battle looming ahead, these would be the last stools that many men would thrust their buttocks upon.
So while others might talk of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame or Westminster, those sights paled in comparison with that of the magnificent 150-seater latrine.

Those are both hilarious, Dick.

Did your friend manage to make the touchdown?

I shall never look at a toilet the same way again. I can just envision the corporal gesturing to the next in line.

I can just see you staring at those toilets, Dick.

While reading, I thought about a movie made in the early sixties, No Time for Sergeants with Andy Griffith. I was on a date, all dressed up in a new dress and heels, a teenager trying to be dignified, and I laughed so hard that I cried. Mascara ran down my cheeks and I had no tissue. What an evening. Fond memories, and I still love that movie.

Yes, Zada, he scored the touchdown. He also was found not guilty at his trial. Reminds me that for years at my last newspaper we used "innocent" rather than "not guilty" although technically there is no such verdict. The reason was that it was too easy for a Linotype operator to miss the "not."

I agree about the movie, Brenda. Just about anything with Andy Griffith was good.

Today I read an interview with Cheney, and he said that every objective they had going into Iraq was met. I suppose the killing of more than 4,000 American men and women was part of that plan, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties that were referred to as "collateral damage."
Men like him make me sick. Marie, you are right. If the leaders of today had to lead their armies in battle as in days past, I wonder how many would say, "charge!"

Today I just happened to stumble upon the lyrics of a song I have always appreciated. It's called "The Green Fields of France." In it the narrator (singer) while walking through a military cemetery stops to rest by the grave of Willie McBride, a 19-year-old British soldier killed in 1916 during WWI, The War to End All Wars. That probably would have been at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. On the first day, 60,000 casualties were suffered by lunch time. Among them was the British writer Alan Seeger, who had written the poem "I Have a Rendevous with Death" - on some scarred slope of battered hill.
In the fourth verse of the song the narrator says:

And I can't help but wonder, oh Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause,
did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
the killing and dying was all done in vain.
Oh Willie McBride it all happened again,
and again, and again, and again, and again.

In the chorus the narrator asks:

Did they beat the drum slowly,
did they play the fife lowly,
did they sound The Death March as they lowered you down.
Did the band play The Last Post and chorus,
did the pipes play The Flowers of the Forest?

War is always wrong. As a 1946 book (Beach Red) I have quoted before says, "War never proves who is right, only only who is left."

You can listen to the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqStasuU328&feature=related