“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”  “It is sweet and right to die for your country.”  The line, in Latin, is from Horace’s Odes, 3.2.13.  It is a memory from Miss Lovering’s 8th grade Latin class at the Beaver Country Day School.  Everyone said Miss Lovering was a truly great Latin teacher, mostly because she was old enough that she was surely there in Rome when it happened.  She was one of the older living Radcliffe College alumnae and had, it was said, found marriage a pale alternative to the glories that were Rome.  I remember the above quote as the moment I started thinking Romans were simply not very nice guys. The “lie,” apparently often quoted to soldiers at the beginning of World War I — ostensibly to give them courage — was nicely incorporated into a poem by Wilfred Owen that expresses what yucky stuff war really is.  People die of a lot of horrible things, and anyone who has seen combat veterans or lost family has probably figured out that death is just as ugly, if not more so, when it is for your country.

In the poem, he cites, “vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.”  Our friends at the Center for Disease Control show — avoid this page if you are faint of heart — a syphilis sore on a tongue, which is what this sounds like.  An attempt to get sexy prior to combat is my guess.  Soldiers have tried to use the “I could be in combat and die tomorrow” line on me; it never worked, obviously.  Opening combat to women might be good in some ways.  Good for military rank climbing or professional climbing.  If a woman feels compelled to do this, I guess she should be allowed to. Read more on Women in Combat…