I recall a time when I was young that I’d build army bunkers in the hillsides behind my home in Green River, Wyoming. Digging into the clay and building small huts out of sagebrush and thin slices of shale that chipped away from surrounding bluffs. The scenes spanned from hill to hill and my friends and I would play war all day. We grow up learning that there is a bad guy out there who deserves to die. When we are grown we begin to feel patriotic and proud about these ideas - and call them more sophisticated names. “War” becomes “defense” and the savagery of our childhood becomes something we must tame rhetorically but foster mentally. Instead of the innocent childish brutality of “kill! kill! kill!” we scream “USA! USA! USA!” and cheer our soldiers on. We play these roles over and over not knowing how deep it affects us.

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound'ring 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.

BY: WILFRED OWEN

DULCE ET DECORUM EST

This psychological attachment to the inner child playing with toy soldiers is powerful. From so many perspectives it holds a person to this idea that they must continue playing - because “if they don’t, who will?”

We must be an example of patriotism and love of country - of bravery and selflessness and a willingness to die for ideas that we don’t entirely comprehend yet. 

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” - “Sweet and good is the patriot’s death.” 

The idea of the patriot’s death being something righteous is disappointing to say the least.