4um: Through a Glass, Darkly (Patton on the Cyclic Nature of War)

Title: Through a Glass, Darkly (Patton on the Cyclic Nature of War)
Source: Website of General George S. Patton, Jr.
URL Source: http://www.generalpatton.com/poem.html
Published: May 19, 2009
Author: George S. Patton, Jr.
Post Date: 2009-05-20 00:09:09 by Deasy
Ping List: *Up to the Sun* Subscribe to *Up to the Sun*
Keywords: Asatru, Odin, Norse, Cyclic
Views: 1027
Comments: 69

THROUGH A GLASS, DARKLY
by Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
Have I fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I've called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite's leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor's Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it's quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a'clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell's ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

He's one of the few Generals who deserves the title of "Hero." I'm convinced that was the reason he had a fatal accident. After the successes of Hitler, heros could easily be the worst of problems, second to martyrs.

In the American culture, the public mindset has been most cleverly 're- educated' to the extreme of unknowingly substituting celebrities, for the primal need for heros. AND - what do we eventually do with those celebrities? Ask Britney, et al.

Instead, we get the likes of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman - victims, without an actual record of combat bravery. At least Jessica lived to tell her story and repudiate her own medals, as political imagery. There's a different form of heroism; I'll salute her for that.

After all that I've learned in the past several years, I have mixed feelings about this chance to purchase discounted mattresses, furniture, vehicles, and whatever else is out there.

I guess that I'll try to remember the men of our Revolution and the guys from the South...after that, there is really nothing to celebrate, for me.

Coming from a Viet Nam veteran; we're left to honor what was in their hearts. The salutes & tears are for the unspeakable tragedy.

For the sincere, my advice is to view/review the movie, "We Were Soldiers Once; and Young." That movie says it all, minus the lies which put those soldiers in death's doorway, in the first place. Even dedicated civilians can see and feel the pain & tragedy of the Viet Nam War.

For emotional cowards, don't see it; you'll end up facing yourself. That's not criticism; just an aknowledgment of humanity, with a due & timely warning of a potentially brutal experience. It's a tough one for me to watch.

I haven't gotten up the wherewithal to watch "Born on the Fourth of July."

Coming home was the brutal experience for me. At some point, most of the vets got punished for going - and for surviving, ahead of the kid next door, who didn't. I got both barrels, myself.

As a personal 'test,' I've visited the Viet Nam Memorial Wall a couple of times. I don't want to see it again. Given the current combat nightmares in Afghanistan & Iraq, those 58,000 died a second death - nobody learned a fucking thing!

pinging Cyni to your post, Sky. i was thinking about this today and puzzling as to why in the world returning VN vets were treated with scorn. it makes no sense especially when most of you were drafted.

Back in '66, I told my WWI dough-boy grandfather that I'd been accepted into 'Army Intelligence' and he told me to always be prepared and ready to defend our country, but never volunteer to go over-seas to do so.

he lesson of History is that governments, rather their leaders appear to have learned nothing from it.

People were saying the volunteers and draftees must have been "stupid" and "enablers."

That is the killer question, one cannot ask with out becoming an unpatriotic outcast, the uncomfortable question that well mannered people must not ask. And that is how we are repeatedly and easily swindled.

So we blunder onward with our Parade of Folly, destroying others and ourselves, burdening our progeny with our folly, as they will burden theirs.

Even my thirty-year career USAF Colonel fil saw the scam of it all, after he retired from the service. RIP

We thought that we were the best, the brightest, and the most honorable nation on earth.

oh, but the elite planners and executors of all these wars have learned. they've learned that war pays and pays them well.

I was generally on the wrong side of the law in my early days, but back then, I respected the cops. They were decent people doing a good job. They harassed the shit out of me, but they knew I was a punk. I deserved it.

Then I grew up and was a good boy from there on out. However, over the last 30 years, I have seen the change. The cops now are nothing but a bunch of punks. Though I'm operating on the right side of the law now, I have zero respect for these cowardly pieces of shit. They can't even walk up to a car they pulled over in broad daylight without one hand on the gun. They are scared shitless of us peons.

I can't even imagine how fast they would run away if they ever ran into someone REALLY dangerous. They'd probably piss their pants on the way too.

I give them a hard time any time I can, and though they always start out acting like tough guys, they turn into whiny little wusses when I stand up to them by exercising my rights as a free man in a free country.

They both say that the car dealerships there can't keep BMW's etc on the lots - Big Spenders are every where.

How tired are you of hearing police say, "Our only concern is getting home safely at the end of the day." Such statements reveal two common traits in modern police forces. The first is an over-sized sense of danger. In reality, police work isn't in the top ten dangerous professions. Indeed, no government job is in the top ten. The second attitude is the self-centered nature of police work. Concern for the public takes a backseat to concern for "officer's safety." This current bunch of cops are about putting people into the system to increase the size and scope of government. When I was on that was the least of our concerns.

A retired Houston PD cop friend told me that if there was not blood involved, do not arrest, file a complaint, or otherwise take up their time filing any paperwork.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug- out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people – not those who fight and pay and die – only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:

"And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace... War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."

Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war – anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.

Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.

Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.

Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war – a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.

Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit – fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.

Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.

But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?

Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.

It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people – who do not profit.

TRAITORS TO AMERICA AND BRAINWASHED IDIOTS SUPPORT AND DEFEND ISRAEL. TO HELL WITH ZIONISTS AND THIER AMERICAN FRONTS: AIPAC/PNAC/ADL/JPCA/NAACP/CFR/FEDERAL RESERVE/NWO/SPLC/JINSA/ACLU/FPI/CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS/AEI/FEDERAL MEDIA/HOLLYWOOD, et. al.

I'm not entirely convinced an economic collapse isn't the ultimate goal. I can't explain what's happening without considering intent.

It's a fair statement. In my mind, it would be possible to avoid what we've done even in the past six months. And the media pipes in recommendations for every irresponsible action congress and the executive seeks. It's outrageous.

WWII legendary General George S. Patton 'was assassinated'.

WWII legendary General George S. Patton 'was assassinated'

London, Dec 21 (PTI) -- Conspiracy theories have shrouded the mysterious death of legendary US General George S. Patton for long. Now, 63 years on, a new book has claimed that he was assassinated to silence his criticism of WWII allied leaders.

According to the book, American spy chiefs hatched a plan to assassinate Patton after World War II in connivance with US leaders because he had threatened to expose the allied collusion with the Russians that cost lives of many Americans.

Although Patton had suffered serious injuries in a car crash at Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the verge of flying home. He died in December 1945.

But, according to the book, the wartime Head of Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Gen "Wild Bill" Donovan ordered a highly decorated marksman Douglas Bazatato "to silence" Patton who gloried in the nickname "Old Blood and Guts".

"Patton was going to resign from the Army. He wanted to go to war with the Russians. The administration thought he was nuts. He also knew secrets of the war which would have ruined careers.

"I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would ever have been elected President if Patton had lived to say the things he wanted to say," the author of the book 'Target Patton', Robert Wilcox, was quoted by British newspaper 'The Sunday Telegraph' as saying.

In fact, military historian Wilcox has cited extracts from the newly unearthed diaries of the assassin Bazatato, who died in 1999, as well as interviews with him to corroborate his claims in the newly published book. The book details how Bazatato staged the car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton's Cadillac and then shot the US General with a low- velocity projectile, which broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped literally without a scratch.

Wilcox told the British newspaper that when he spoke to Bazata: "He was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done. He confessed to me he had caused the accident, that he was ordered to do so by Wild Bill Donovan.

"Donovan told him: 'We've got a terrible situation with this great patriot, he's out of control and we must save him from himself and from ruining everything the allies have done.' I believe Douglas Bazata. He's a sterling guy." Bazata led an extraordinary life. He was a member of the Jedburghs, the elite unit who parachuted into France to help organise the Resistance in the run up to D-Day in 1944.

After the war he became a celebrated artist who enjoyed the patronage of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He ended his career as an aide to US President Ronald Reagan's Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Patton could have been elected President. It would have been a very different world.

General George Patton once summoned [cartoonist Bill] Mauldin to his office and threatened to "throw his ass in jail" for "spreading dissent," this after one of Mauldin's cartoons made fun of Patton's demand that all soldiers must be clean-shaven at all times, even in combat. But Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, told Patton to leave Mauldin alone, because he felt that Mauldin's cartoons gave the soldiers an outlet for their frustrations. Mauldin told an interviewer later, "I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

Thanks for that well-timed piece of history, Turtle. For me, it's a reminder that war is a savage business. It shouldn't be pursued unless one understands that.

And had MacArthur (also politically dispatched) had his way in Korea, China would still be a third world country instead of our landlord.

Or if we had not taken military action against Japan's iron and petroleum supply lines before Pearl Harbor. They understood the threat of communism. They had an answer to Mao.

Many tragedies in the world provide us with ready excuses to engage in war, including the horrible Nanking massacre. I concern myself with our own troops who could have been spared if we had let well enough alone.