“Robert, there's a war in France; Everywhere men bang and blunder,
Sweat and swear and worship Chance,
Creep and blink through cannon thunder.
Rifles crack and bullets flick,
Sing and hum like hornet-swarms.
Bones are smashed and buried quick.
Yet, through stunning battle storms,
All the while I watch the spark
Lit to guide me; for I know
Dreams will triumph, though the dark
Scowls above me where I go.”— Siegfried Sassoon, from “A Letter Home (to Robert Graves)” (1916)
On this Veteran’s Day, I think we have to do more than just mouth platitudes about honoring service personnel for their courage and bravery. Somehow, as hard as it is to conceive, we have to imagine the horrible cauldron of war through which they pass. Only then can we truly understand their sacrifice. Few veterans have fought so tenaciously--then sought to tell the world about it--with the searing power that British WWI soldier Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) summoned. This particular poem, written in May 1916 to fellow veteran Robert Graves (himself a poet-novelist-memoirist of later note), comes from the collection, The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon (1919).
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