Frigid Florida
- Mike Dickey
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
And when they ask us,
How dangerous it was.
Oh! We’ll never tell them,
No, we’ll never tell them.
We spent our pay in some cafe.
And fought wild women night and day,
T’was the cushiest job we ever had.
And when they ask us,
And they’re certainly going to ask us.
The reason why we didn’t win the Croix de Guerre.
Oh! We’ll never tell them,
No! We’ll never tell them.
There was a front but damned if we knew where.
-We'll Never Tell Them, Fitzrovia Chorus
Taking my coffee upstairs at the farm this morning, where it's a toasty 72 degrees. It offers great vistas that don't generally make it onto this page, even when we're down here.
Why the second floor landing? Certainly not this lovely but incredibly uncomfortable Edwardian couch.
No, I'm here because it's maybe sixty downstairs. I've placed a space heater in the main room, but it takes awhile. Sixty is pretty wonderful for sleeping, but less so when one is up-and-about and cursing the cold. The zoning in this house is quite awful, despite our spending a lot of money on HVAC over the last few years. If we were staying, we'd probably invest some more.
Yesterday's flight down was surprisingly uneventful. A little ice on climb-out, a fuel flow gauge that went mad and kept trying to tell me I'd run out of fuel somewhere over West Virginia, but otherwise not much to do except review trial exhibits and watch the world go by.
Last night after supper I was actually moved by a television program, which happens simply never. Every Veteran's Day PBS presents a concert saluting those who served, and this year was no different. The 2025 offering featured Trace Adkins, lots of military bands and choruses, and the sort of patriotic pablum one comes to expect as our country honors the 6.1 percent of Americans who've served in uniform (and only around ten percent of those see combat, so maybe one out of 140 of my neighbors has actually seen the Elephant). I digress.
That's not the show I watched, however. Blessedly, YouTubeTV thinks I'm still in New York, so instead the local station serving Corning, NY featured American Heart in World War I: A Carnegie Hall Tribute, an amazing onstage multimedia piece featuring readings from F. Scott Fitzgerald, historical passages ranging from letters telling the story of the service and death of Theodore Roosevelt's son as a young fighter pilot in France to the experience of the conductor's own grandfather as an immigrant Jew improbably settled in Montgomery, Alabama, who volunteered and fought in the Great War, and of course the songs of the war and its aftermath. One thing you have to say about those folks down in the City--they sure know how to make a stage come alive.
The song that moved me in an odd way was the one quoted above. It didn't come from the war and its immediate aftermath; rather, it was featured in Oh! What a Lovely War, released in 1969. It was Richard Attenborough's directorial debut, and I've never heard of it. The song comes at the end of the movie, a dark fantastical comedy (from what I've read) parodying the events from 1914 to 1918.
Trying to make those years even remotely funny must've been a real challenge. I'm curious now.
I found a clip of the song, which comes at the end of the movie as the dead are finally made whole again and relaxing in the grass, while nearby the widow of one of them enjoys a day with the child he never knew. And the boys are singing that as they gradually transform into an infinite field of stone crosses. It's a finale that calls you up short.
War is so incredibly stupid.
There I go again.
This morning I need to cram in a tax lesson, then prep for a deposition in a couple hours and send out instructions for the trial prep team before meeting PT in Tallahassee for his grandfather's graveside. He's asked me to say something, so I have my BCP in the travel bag. I probably ought to make that a habit anyway.
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