Weekend Steam: War Talk...

 Merle found a great photo on FBook, well worth sharing, illustrative, and food for serious thought. Thank You, Merle!

"US Soldier examines a blown up boiler on a locomotive in Canisy Normandy - July / August 1944

LIFE Magazine Archives - Frank Scherschel Photographer WWP-PD"

One of my thoughts when seeing this was whether the enginemen were part of the German army, or Frenchmen who had no choice but to continue their jobs under the control of their invaders. Sober business for those who have to go....

Don't Cheer, Robert W. Service

Don't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.

See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew; so strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing as they sing to-day.

Send to the glut of the guns
Bravest and best of you sons.
Hurl a million to slaughter,
Blood flowing like Thames water;
Pile up pyramid high
Your dead to the anguished sky;
A monument down all time
Of hate and horror and crime.
Weep, rage, pity, curse, fear -
Anything, but . . . don't cheer.

Sow to the ploughing guns
Seed of your splendid sons.
Let your heroic slain
Richly manure the plain.
What will the harvest be?
Unborn of Unborn will see. . . .

Dark is the sky and drear. . . .
For the pity of God don't cheer.
Dark and dread is their way.
Who sing as they march to-day. . . .
Humble your hearts and pray.