Hard to even imagine the carnage Holmes witnessed

Hard to even imagine the carnage Holmes witnessed
by sprack (2024-02-26 12:54:51)
Edited on 2024-02-26 12:58:35

In reply to: “Our dead brothers still live for us,” posted by BeijingIrish

He was wounded three times, including a bullet in the neck at Antietam, and was at Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg and the Wilderness as well, among other battles.

I first read about his war service in fifth or sixth grade in one of those Catholic comic books we used to get in school. I was fascinated by his story. Who says you can't learn anything from comic books? I don't think it covered any of his famous dissents, though. Maybe that was in volume 2.

Anyway, I read all I could find on Holmes in the encyclopedia. My dad had a book of "101 Famous Poems" which had his father's "The Deacon's Masterpiece" (aka "The One-Hoss Shay") so I knew of the father but nothing of the son, but soon found out he was one of the greatest men this country has ever produced.

On an unrelated side note, I'm not a poetry guy by any means, but that poem from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. has always stuck with me due to it's unique cadence. I'll be traveling to Portugal for the first time in April, and have had these words in my head for a very, very long time:

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down

So if you ever want to know when the great Lisbon earthquake was, I'm your guy.