On Memorial Day
As a boy I read Wilfred Owen’s famous poem about World War I, describing the suffering of young men sent by industrial powers to die in clouds of poison gas. It’s a warning: if you saw what Owen did, and your nights were tormented by visions of blood and death, “You would not tell with such high zest, to children ardent for some desperate glory/The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.”
Owen was killed in November 1918, a week before the Armistice. In his poems you read a soldier’s hope that boys like me would read them before they became old enough to want to prove themselves in combat. God didn’t design us to be killers, he said, noting we aren’t born with claws or talons, and a boy’s teeth are more suited for “laughing round an apple.” I know that’s true of my children, who’ll be taught to remember soldiers like Owen today.
I'm a retired Soldier and a veteran of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. I keep journals where I write to my sons, 6 and 2, to share memories and thoughts that they might not understand until they're older. I'm going to print out two copies of this post and place them in their journals. Thanks, Matt.
Siegfried Sassoon was another warrior poet who was fortunate enough to survive World War I. His chilling poem "Suicide in the Trenches" concludes this way:
"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."