A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Battalion

Military
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A battalion is a military unit typically comprising several hundred to a thousand soldiers, organized under a single command.

Detailed Definition
The battalion, as a mid-sized military formation, appears in poetry as a symbol of collective identity subsumed within a larger martial machine. Poets often use the battalion to explore the tension between individual soldiers and the anonymous mass they belong to, particularly in war poetry depicting the dehumanizing scale of modern combat. The term evokes both camaraderie among troops and the tragic anonymity of mass casualties in large-scale engagements.
Example
Example in poetry:
Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" implicitly evokes battalion-scale organization within the doomed cavalry charge; A poem might describe a battalion marching to the front, boots falling in unified rhythm; Poets use "battalion" to suggest both collective strength and anonymous vulnerability among massed soldiers; A verse could depict a battalion reduced to a fraction of its number after a single engagement; The term often appears in elegies mourning the scale of loss within a single unit; A poem might contrast the battalion's disciplined formation with the individual fear each soldier hides.
Additional Notes
A battalion is a military unit typically comprising several hundred to a thousand soldiers, organized under a single commander. In most armies, the battalion is the smallest unit capable of independent operation, combining infantry, support weapons, and logistics. A battalion is usually commanded by a lieutenant colonel and consists of companies or batteries. The battalion has been a fundamental building block of armies since the seventeenth century, balancing tactical flexibility with administrative cohesion. In military poetry, the battalion often represents the soldier's immediate community—a family of comrades whose bonds are forged in shared danger. The battalion's flag, or colors, holds deep symbolic meaning, representing the unit's history and honor. Related terms include regiment, brigade, and company. The famous "battalion of the dead" in various war poems underscores the unit's identity even in sacrifice.
Also Known As
Unit Battle Group Battalion Combat Team Infantry Battalion Tank Battalion Squadron (in some contexts) Regiment
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