Radiohead Song in memory of Harry Patch, WWI survivor and pacifist.
War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings"--Harry Patch
Richard Metzger writes,
Beautiful, somber new Radiohead single available for download on their website.More over at Metzger's blog, including a statement by Thom Yorke. Beautiful.Titled Harry Patch (In Memory Of), the song is a tribute to the oldest surviving Tommy who fought in World War I. Harry Patch was 111 years old when he died on July 25th, 2009. He fought in one of the grimmest battles of the war, the Battle of Passchendaele, where over 325,000 Allied casualties occurred and over, 260,000 Germans. The 99 day battle from July 31st 1917 to November 6th 1917, saw an average of 3,000 British troops killed, wounded, or captured daily. (By contrast, in Iraq, 3,650 US troops have died and approximately 26,000 have been wounded).
Above, embedded, one of the last (if not the last) interviews with Mr. Patch before he died last month. All proceeds from the track will be donated to the Royal British Legion.
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You might want to change that headline. He was in the FIRST World War...
What an amazing guy. The great uncle of a friend of mine died recently; he was the last living survivor of Stalag Luft III (the German POW camp on which The Great Escape was based). Similarly, my great uncle was a POW in a Japanese camp during WWII.
For both my great uncle and my friend's, neither of them could speak much about their experiences in the camps, so horrible was the experience.
I wonder how long before people forget the horrors of such a war enough to start another.
Song also at http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8184000/8184802.stm?ls
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion wrote a poem about him last year
The Five Acts of Harry Patch 'The Last Fighting Tommy'
@#2- Probably not all that long, really. Future warfare might look more like everyday commuting than bayonet charges from the trenches.
Hard to get PTSD from remote-flying a predator drone, and that's just what can be done today...
"It is well, Longstreet, that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it."
"Absolutely right, Lee. The commute's a bitch, and I think I'm getting carpal tunnel from hitting the fire button."
I noticed something really nerdy - the ISRC ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Recording_Code ) in the file's tags is GBSTK0900112, which would normally mean it was Xurbia Xendless (their company)'s 112th recording registered this year (In Rainbows was GBSTK0700001 to GBSTK0700010). First I thought 'huh? they've registered 111 tracks this year I don't know about?' Then I realised - they've skipped 111 because Harry Patch was 111!
I gotta say: the concept of previewing 30 seconds of the song at a time is pretty brilliant.
For 1 pound, it's worth the experience of listening straight-through. All the same, it still feels satisfying to hear the entire song before you buy it.
I'm really, really impressed at the balance between the value of the free version, and the added value of the inexpensive non-free version.
I got all excited until I realized that was Harry PATCH, and not PARTCH. Then I was like, "who?"
@#5 Cicada
"Hard to get PTSD from remote-flying a predator drone"
I've read that they get it worse that guys "on the ground". (looking for the source)
@ 13strong:
I wonder how long before people forget the horrors of such a war enough to start another.
Normal people never forget. Heads of State do, in less than a heart beat if that much. They'll have a song about how hard their decision was to take, their cronies will sing the back vocals, but show me one of them with true PTSD and I'll kiss him/her right on the anus while they fart, with some tongue. (God please help me!)
Mr Patch's funeral is taking place in Wells Cathedral today; it will supposedly be webcast on BBC Somerset.
I am a granddaughter of a veteran of Passchndale. My grandfather was mustard gassed, and, I think, traumatized.
He sexually abused me and physically and sexually abused my father, uncles and aunts. War takes its toll forever. What happened in 1918 still resonates in our time. How dare anyone knowingly send ANYONE to war without considering the toll on future generations.
I have nothing but compassion for the men and women at war today (victims and soldiers) and hope that we can be human and peaceful for all time.
Love and Love
Ali
Not only do normal people forget (unless they were actually involved in one), some of them don't think about it in the first place.
At 109, this guy was still concerned with getting across what he had learned about the sh*tty nature of war. How amazing is that?
Well, Harry, FWIW, your precise definition of war has become my own.
Wow, the strings on the Radiohead song sound amazing.
I downloaded the song last night, and it's one of the best Radiohead songs I've heard in a while. There's something really fantastic about the strings plus Thom Yorke's voice, with very little other instrumentation.
@ #5 CICADA:
"Hard to get PTSD from remote-flying a predator drone"
Might be a little different for the people on the other end of the predator drone. Still, why should we consider things from their perspective?
SOLD. Best pound I've spent in a while.
If both sides use predator drones, won't it end up being like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvy0pTJnE3s&feature=related
War will always be with us.
Always. Sad but true
585,000 people in 99 days? 585,000? Half a million people, destroyed, in 99 days?
OMG. I can't wrap my head around that figure.
I started reading a book called "Europe" (by an author I can't remember - he was Dutch), that followed the history of Europe during the 20th century from the 1900s forward by time period (1900-1910,etc). When he got to the part about WWI, my jaw dropped. I had no notion about the devastation and loss of life that had occurred. We must have glossed over it in any history classes I took. It was truly, truly staggering.
The book, BTW, was excellent, but very long and I had to return it to the library. I'd like to pick it up again. It was great.
"War will always be with us.
Always. Sad but true."
Or until the love of power is replaced with the power of love.
@14- 13Strong- Of course the perspective of the folks being shot at is different. But since when did the side doing the shooting stop because the other side was tired of being shot at?
My wife knows Frank Buckles, America's last surviving WWI veteran. He's an amazing guy, too.
Passchendaele is a great movie..worth a watch for sure
http://www.amazon.com/Passchendaele-Alex-Arsenault/dp/B001RMJZHY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249574632&sr=8-1
"MrsBug: Try looking up the devastation of World War II (e.g. the 400 000 people killed in a single night of firebombing Tokyo).
Gwynne Dyer (political analyst with a military strategy background) posted some thoughts on this last week:
"One thing they would have been quite clear about: we can't do this any more. In World War I we crossed a threshold.
All the advances in science and technology came together and created a kind of industrialized warfare that is simply unsustainable in human terms. It consumes soldiers, civilians, and whole cities at a rate that endangers civilization itself.
All the technological innovations that have been added since WWI ― armored divisions, bomber fleets, nuclear weapons ― only deepen the lesson, they don't change it. Human beings have fought wars since we were all hunter-gatherers, and those who were good at it tended to prosper. Now, if you are really good at war, you will be destroyed."
And, since it seems appropriate:
Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
In the "Great War" men from an an area were sent to their local regiments rather than distributed throughout the military. The tragic consequence being that villages often lost all their young men in a single offensive.
The churchyards of Britain are full of memorials where it's hard to fathom how so many lives could have been lost in one small village.
Am I just a dumbass, or is it not possible for one to buy this song with a US credit card?
The US doesn't show up in the Country drop-down, and when I use "Unknown" it tells me my card is declined.
Any yanks figure out how to buy this track?
I agree with #8: I'm totally psyched to hear the string arrangements on the Radiohead song dedicated to Harry PARTCH...
War is an ugly thing --
But not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war, is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own safety, is a miserable creature; who has no chance of being free - Unless made, and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
@28
That's John Stuart Mill. He was wrong
@#28:
That's John Stuart Mill's opinion, and he was, and still is, dead wrong on the matter.
If anyone wants to read a first-hand account of WW1 I can recommend Robert Graves autobiography, Goodbye To All That. I did it at A level way back in the distant dawn of time, and the images of war have always stayed with me.
In fact, I seem to remember that graves saw Passchendaele just after it was all over. It's one of the most horrific scenes in the book. I'm amazed that anyone survived it.
@#28:
Listen to the guy this post is about: "War is a calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".
War is when they send people to fight because they don't like the idea of diplomacy. I'm not talking about defending your country here. I'm talking about attacking another one.
I went to his funeral today. One of the Ecclesiastical speakers pointed out that today is the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.
Kieran O'Neill: Thanks. Haven't read that for years.
One thing that gets to me about Dulce et Decorum Est is that Wilfred Owen was killed in action on 4 November 1918, a week before the shooting stopped. News of his death reached his hometown on 11 November as the armistice was being celebrated.
@29 and 30- That opinion would suggest that it's preferable to allow a crowd of people to meander into your homeland, take your property, rape you/your spouses/your children, leave you to starve on scraps, enslave you and whoever they didn't kill than it is to go to war to prevent this.
@#35
Is going to war the act of defending one's 'land', or
the act of going to someone else's land to rape/burn/pillage/bringDemocracy/enslave/whatever?
The futility of war is best expressed when two governments fight each other on top of a 3rd government's land. When nobody knows why they are fighting anymore, but still fighting nonetheless.
E.o.M.
@mrsbug, 18:
Starting at the relevant wikipedia article and branching out is depressing reading - I'm left with the feeling that WW1 was, in some ways, more senseless than WW2.
It might be difficult to put into words what I mean, but ... in WW2, there was always a certain motivation - lands were captured and re-captured, armies moved far into enemy territory - whatever was going on at the time, it must have given the people involved a certain sense of purpose.
In (the west front of) WW1, you basically sat there and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of each other with nothing to show for it. It seems like one of the most stark demonstrations of senseless fighting ever, and must have been utterly disheartening to be a part of.
The Great War was disheartening. Follow the links to the people who survived it. For that matter, look at Harry Patch.
I only say: read Barbara Tuchman's "The Guns of August." It changed my life, and only a series of events forced me out of that despair.