burntcopper | November 11th

For the first time in my life I slept through the two minutes silence. Stupid. But sunday I won't.

But anyway. Today is rememberance. Not celebration. That's all.

At school, for GCSE, we had to study WWI poetry. Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting was one I remember having to slog through to understand, (I'm not very big on complex poetry, having been basically raised on short, blunt stuff), but at the end it was... necessary. Still, the one that always hit me hardest because of its simplicity was this one by 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.

I don't have much more to say. Only remember the message.