I saw this and thought it might be relevant to your chicken hawk discussion
The guardian did an article today on Siegfried Sassoon (British War poet during WW1), because an early war work of his has recently been discovered:
for sassoon thats a remarkably upbeat assessment, most likely because he hadn't been sent to the front yet. To contrast with his later work:Because We Are Going
Because we are going from our wonted places
To be task-ridden by one shattering Aim,
And terror hides in all our laughing faces
That had no will to die, no thirst for fame,
Hear our last word. In Hell we seek for Heaven;
The agony of wounds shall make us clean;
And the failures of our sloth shall be forgiven
When Silence holds the songs that might have been,
And what we served remains, superb, unshaken,
England, our June of blossom that shines above
Disastrous War; for whom we have forsaken
Ways that were rich and gleeful and filled with love.
Thus are we heroes; since we might not choose
To live where Honour gave us life to lose.
Siegfried Sassoon (1915)
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.
By: Siegfried Sassoon (1918)
Obviously WW1 for 3 years would be a lot more harrowing than a shortish term in Iraq, but I thought the shift in perception was food for thought.
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