"In Flander’s Fields" by John McRae.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

South Knox Bubba has a nice Veteran's Day story.

We were in England, in a little village called Burwell, in 1969. (I see that it won the 2000 Best Village competition!) I was trying to cope with three little ones one morning when this old lady came to the door (she must have been 75 or so) selling poppies for Remembrance Day. I suppose she was curious about the Yanks, anyway. It's a small-enough village that everyone knows it when you sneeze, especially at the same end of the village. I bought a poppy and chatted awhile, and got to know her.

At first I thought I had a Burwell native, but in fact she had only lived there 45 years or so. She was born in Yorkshire, and her earliest memory was her Dad kissing her goodbye as he went off to the Boer War. (He didn't return.) She worked on airships in a Yorkshire factory during the Great War. Later, she worked as a housemaid at an estate in East Anglia, where she met and married the butler. They left service and came to Burwell, where Alfred set up as a photographer.

They had one of a row of cottages, one-up one-down, with the bathroom at the bottom of the garden till they got the modcons in. It surprised me how many people had only recently gotten indoor plumbing in 1970. Eventually they also acquired the unit next door and put in a passage between the two lower rooms, though the bedrooms upstairs were never connected. When I knew her, the 2nd-from-the-right unit was the living room, with a backdoor into the wonderful English garden. (She discovered some heritage plants in the '70s there.) A dark passage led past the bathroom to the kitchen, where she often made yummy sausage rolls. The place was chock-a-block with pictures and knickknacks as well as the two cats. This 1904 picture shows her house on the left. It's four cottages in this picture. See how close to the road they are. The sidewalk is about a foot deep here.

Albert died (of syphillis, so the last years were pretty awful) in the 50s and Dorothy continued the business. These pictures may be from the Grainger collection. She'd seen Coventry (50 miles away) burning during WWII. Albert was buried in the churchyard close to the path. I wonder if she's now next to him. (She died in 1980.)

Auntie Dot had other American friends, too. My kids loved her. We went together to a Woman's Institute meeting in Cambridge and she introduced me to a Duchess! We took her to Yorkshire to visit her family. I gave her a birthday party when she turned 77, and I have a neat picture of her blowing out the candles. After we left, she had a motorized wheelchair so I made Hell's Angels type of jokes. I missed her so much I went back in 1977, with Bernadette, mostly to see her, and I cried when I left because I knew I wouldn't see her again. She was getting really paranoid about "that woman" the home help stealing her mail and selling all her treasures. My Brit friend, who had visited her a lot, sort of stopped because it was getting dangerous... she would have been accused of theft or abuse or something. It was pretty much a blessing when she died, but still very sad. They had no children (see syphillis, above) but all the photographs.

One of the things about growing older is you keep telling the same stories.

Holy toledo, I remember the mill, but look at this!

I enjoyed PBS's The 1940s House. They were only there for nine weeks and they know how the war turned out, so they knew there'd be an end to it. They still got a feel for the real experience. I was amused by the sweets rationing thing. They weren't over that in 1969, there were sweeties in every kind of store, and small wonder their teeth were so bad. I saw the kids using boards as rifles, and thought "Careful! You'll get arrested!" The show had a lot of info. The British put a lot of their pets down in the first months of the war, and there were a lot of them who couldn't raise and eat the rabbits. After the war, and while they were still rationing, the Brits sent food to the starving Europeans.

One of the nice things about history is that we know the ending! Unlike the insecurity and fear of the present, for instance. I'm sure we'll win it, but it's going to be a long painful slog till we do.

The Armed Liberal has advice for the Democrats.

ObGoe: Metropolis. I gave him the tape, which he loved. Also, oops!