Monuments To World War's Fallen Now Include Dissenters

A visitor to the World War One museum "In Flanders Fields" in Ypres, Belgium, viewing the only authenticated photo of a deserter being executed. (Jock Fistick for the New York Times)

From The International Herald Tribune:

YPRES, Belgium: Ninety years after it ended, World War I still hangs over this small Flemish town, a focal point of slaughter during the Great War, as they called it when they thought it would be the last. Monuments to the war's fallen sprouted like mushrooms after the armistice, but it took nearly 85 years to erect a monument to a different group of dead: soldiers executed by their own side for refusing to continue the fight.

About eight kilometers, or five miles, from Ypres, in a quiet courtyard in the village of Poperinge, stands a pole of the sort used to support the twining vines of hops, a common local crop. It is about the height of a man. Just behind it is a steel plaque engraved with a verse from Rudyard Kipling: "I could not look on death, which being known, men led me to him, blindfold and alone."

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My Comment: Soldiers rarely want to be mixed with those who deserted from the battlefield. If the Government wants to put up a monument .... I guess they can do so .... to give pity to those who gave up, ran, got caught, and were then executed. My only recommendation is that such a monument be put far away from the buried soldiers who did not desert but unfortunately paid the ultimate sacrifice.