War

Memorial Tablet

SQUIRE nagged and bullied till I went to fight,
(Under Lord Derby’s Scheme). I died in hell—
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight,
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light.

At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew,
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare:
For, though low down upon the list, I’m there;
‘In proud and glorious memory’ ... that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire:
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed.
Once I came home on leave: and then went west...
What greater glory could a man desire?

A Great War poem by Siegfried Sassoon. October 1918.

The poem is about a British Tommy butchered at Passchendaele in 1917; the photograph is of a German soldier killed a year earlier, on the Somme at Beaumont-Hamel; their misfortune and suffering was the same.