[Clyde]

It is great to have a photo to go along with the history. My ancestors may have lobbed the shell that injured him. This guy would have been my first cousin had I been around at the same time, he died at age 17 at Malvern Hill. View attachment 4086129

Happened to way too many (on both sides, and at many battles). Left both sides (though, I think, predominately the South) impoverished for at least a generation after 1865. Of course, other wars have done the same - I'm sure many can think of examples.

 

[Clyde]

The photo that I posted proves the old saying, "In time of war, old men send young men to die." It always has been and always will be. The try to catch us when we are teenagers and haven't yet got the courage to tell an elder, "Hell No!"

Or the experience to know we ought to (I remember being that way). And then there is the fact that the young think it can't happen to them Those who have learned better without dying in the process have a distinctive gaze...

 

[Clyde]

When WWl started George Bernard Shaw (b. 1856) said the draft should start at about age 60. The old men start the wars, they should have to fight them.

Rudyard Kipling pulled strings to get his son the commission (in the Irish Guards, if that matters) he wanted and had to get (essentially the same sort of waiver i did a half-century later) a waiver for his poor eyesight. The lad was, of course, killed and his grave, essentially, lost. I cannot help but think that Kipling was thinking about that when he wrote some of the "Epitaphs of the War". Especially this one:

common form

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

Do you think Kipling might have felt a trifle guilty for his actions? And support of the war? I don't know, but I wonder.

And then there was this one. The Lord knows I look back and think "Yeah, this could appy to a lot of "Leaders" when I was young. Or now that I am old:

a dead statesman

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?