[LMB] "Mercenaries! With a glad cry..."

[Peter H. Granzeau]

At 03:23 PM 4/10/2007, Marna Nightingale wrote:
>Someone just posted this to LJ and I thought of Miles and Co immediately.
>
>_Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries -- WH Auden_
>
>These, in the day when heaven was falling,
>The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
>Followed their mercenary calling,
>And took their wages, and are dead.
>
>Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
>They stood, and earth’s foundations stay;
>What God abandoned, these defended,
>And saved the sum of things for pay.
>
>Marna.

The Old Contemptibles.  Seven infantry and three 
cavalry divisions; the entire professional 
British Army in 1914.  By November 22, 1914, they 
had been nearly wiped out.  Their formations 
remained, filled with reserves and volunteers, 
and they were reinforced by the Indian Corps and 
a division from Canada, as well as the new volunteer army in 1915.


-- 
Regards, Pete
pgranzeau at cox.net