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It's non class 42, I'm not daft enough to spill anything more than a name.

Hi Dah dit,

Re your signature it says "Sweet and fitting it is die for your country".

I thought the idea was not to die for your country, but to make the other guy die for his.

Archie,

Re your signature it says "Sweet and fitting it is die for your country".

The tarnslation that I have is -

"It is a fine and seemly thing to die for one's country"

As I'm not fine or seemly I am therefore still alive (but only just :crazyeyes: )

There you go Archie, a couple of summers under the ozone hole and that Latin from your 1st year at Grammar school is out the window.
The Verb follows the noun. Now repeat after me. "I will buy His Prezzyship beer at Anglesey."

Many thanks to my esteemed latin tutors. My point however remains the same, that the phrase is used in irony and personally I think it would be much better to make the other guy die for his country.

The following is from a google search

I quote:



Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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.


Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) was born in Shropshire, but the family moved to Merseyside when he was four. He began writing poetry at the age of 17, and after failing to attain entrance to the University of London spent a year as a lay assistant to a clergyman before going to France to teach English. He returned to England in September 1915 to enlist, and received his commission in the Manchester Rifles in June 1916, spending the rest of the year in training. He went to the trenches in France in January 1917, where he was caught in numerous explosions, and was evacuated back to Britain in June 1917 suffering from shell shock. It was while in hospital that Owen met Siegfried Sassoon who encouraged his writing, and also introduced him to Robert Graves and H.G Wells; and it was during this period that he wrote many of the poems for which he is remembered. In June 1918 he rejoined his regiment in Scarborough, and returned to France in August where he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery. Tragically, he was killed on the 4th November leading his men across the Sambre Canal at Ors. The news of his death reached his parents on November 11th 1918, the day of the armistice.

The title of this poem is from a line of Horace - "It is sweet and honourable to die for one's country." (The literal translation of the latin "Dulce et Decorum Est" is "Sweet and fitting it is". The translation of "Pro patria mori" is "To die for one's country")"

End quote.



As for a beer, you might be in with a chance if you play your cards right, then again you might not, I do have some jockwegian blood coursing through my veins.

Dead right Sticky a tart and proud of it.

Had I been born female they would have called me Martini* .
When I died they would have had to bury me in Y shaped coffin.
But boy would I have had fun with a capital fu.

As genetics turned out I'm just a shy retiring individual with a penchant for wooly herbivores.









* "Any time, any place, any where, that's Martini"

I see what you mean about the irony, good point, wrong, but good point, another Guinness please.

I had a long chat with my Mum in Law about PTSD and shell shock today, amazing how people of her generation do not see the facts, and prefer the stiff upper lip resolve of the British 'survivor'.