{"id":6419,"date":"2014-10-04T08:43:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-04T08:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikewish.wordpress.com\/?p=6419"},"modified":"2019-12-08T07:34:05","modified_gmt":"2019-12-07T20:34:05","slug":"weekly-photo-challenge-signs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=6419","title":{"rendered":"Weekly photo challenge: Signs"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Australian government, among others, announced this week they’re sending troops off to Iraq to fight (if only in the skies for now), I thought Here we go again.\u00a0 As I rode past this bin today, the sign “General Waste” reminded me of the futility of war.\u00a0 It might seem an obscure connection, but when you see the page from my father’s anthology of war poetry compiled in about 1942, you’ll think what I thought.\u00a0 First, the bin:<\/p>\n

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Second, a poem entitled “General Waste”, originally written in World War One by Reverend Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, who volunteered as a British chaplain to the army on the western front.\u00a0 He was also known as Woodbine Willie for the Woodbines he smoked and handed out to the wounded and dying.\u00a0 But he had a threefold reputation, for he was also a great anti-war poet.<\/p>\n

In Dad’s poetry book, I’ve often read “General Waste” and felt the hollowness of war.\u00a0 Studdert Kennedy wrote it in about 1917, but his poems were recalled by soldiers fighting again in World War Two.\u00a0 Dad has called it “General Waste”, though searches online suggest it was called simply “Waste”.\u00a0 There are a few spelling errors in his script, so I’ve transcribed it:<\/p>\n

Waste of muscle, waste of brain,
\nWaste of patience, waste of pain.
\nWaste of manhood, waste of health,
\nWaste of beauty, waste of wealth.
\nWaste of blood, waste of tears,
\nWaste of youth’s most precious years.
\nWaste of ways the saints have trod,
\nWaste of Glory, Waste of God.
\nWar!<\/p>\n

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“Waste” by Rev. Studdert Kennedy, c1917 (“General Waste” in my father’s script)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Thanks WordPress for this week’s photo challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the Australian government, among others, announced this week they’re sending troops off to Iraq to fight (if only in the skies for now), I thought Here we go again.\u00a0 As I rode past this bin today, the sign “General Waste” reminded me of the futility of war.\u00a0 It might seem an obscure connection, but … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Weekly photo challenge: Signs”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,13,35],"tags":[657,7,8,33,21,568,658,659,660,270,661],"class_list":["post-6419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-photos","category-wwii","category-wwii-poems","tag-general-waste","tag-photography","tag-photos-2","tag-poetry","tag-postaday","tag-postaday-2014","tag-studdert-kennedy","tag-war-poetry","tag-weekly-photo-challenge-signs","tag-writing","tag-ww1"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13016,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions\/13016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}