Veterans Day

[L E Bryan]

The British produced a fair number of poets reflecting on the Great War.


In the late 90’s they made a feature film, Regeneration, which included as characters, two of the poets, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Both fought in the war. Sassoon survived, Owen did not.

Siegfried Sassoon, Suicide In the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy 
Who grinned at life in empty joy, 
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, 
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum, 
With crumps and lice and lack of rum, 
He put a bullet through his brain. 
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye 
Who cheer when soldier lads march by, 
Sneak home and pray you'll never know 
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Wilfred Owen, The Parable of the Young Man and the Old

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. 

Lawrence

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