Poetry and Remembrance

Poetry and Remembrance

Why do we still need to remember events from so long ago?

Poetry and Remembrance

John McCrae Wilfred Owen Rupert Brooke

Issac

Rosenburg

Siegfried Sassoon

Poetry and Remembrance

The First World War introduced something called ‘conscription’, which meant that men aged between 18 and 41 could be called up to fight, unless their job was thought to be vital to the war effort.

Poetry and Remembrance

The First World War affected lots of people. Some of the soldiers who fought wrote about their experiences. Their poems helped the public in Britain to understand what the experience of fighting in the trenches was like.

Poetry and Remembrance

There are very famous British poets such as John McCrae, who wrote In Flanders’ Fields, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Issac Rosenberg. However, there are also several Scottish poets whose war is not as well known. These include E. Alan Mackintosh, Robert Service William Soutar and W. D. Cocker.

The Legless Man (The Dark Side)

The Legless Man (The Dark Side

) by Robert Service.

My mind goes back to

Fumin

Wood, and how we stuck it out,

Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;

Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,

We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.

Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!

"

Debout

les

morts

!" We hurled them back. By God! they did not pass

.

They pinned two medals on my chest, a yellow and a brown,

And lovely ladies made me blush, such pretty words they said.

I felt a cheerful man, almost, until my eyes went down,

And there I saw the blankets - how they sagged upon my bed

.

And then again I drank the cup of sorrow to the dregs:

Oh, they can keep their medals if they give me back my legs.

The Legless Man (The Dark Side)

I

think of how I used to run and leap and kick the ball,

And ride and dance and climb the hills and frolic in the sea;

And all the thousand things that now I'll never do at all....

Mon

Dieu

! there's nothing left in life, it often seems to me

.

And as the nurses lift me up and strap me in my chair,

If they would chloroform me off, by God I wouldn't care.

Ah yes! we're "heroes all" to-day - they point to us with pride;

To-day their hearts go out to us, the tears are in their eyes!

But wait a bit; to-morrow they will blindly look aside;

No more they'll talk of what they owe, the dues of sacrifice

(One hates to be reminded of an everlasting debt).

It's all in human nature. Ah! the world will soon forget

.

My mind goes back to where I lay wound-rotted on the plain,

And ate the muddy mangold roots, and drank the drops of dew,

And dragged myself for miles and miles when every move was pain,

And over me the carrion-crows were retching as they flew.

Oh, ere I closed my eyes and stuck my rifle in the air

I wish that those who picked me up had passed and left me there.

Poetry and Remembrance

It’s not just the First World War which inspired poets. There are modern day poets who write about more current conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unarmed Response, Dilys Rose

They bring in our woundedflown from Baghdad to A & Eat the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh.Daffodils stand to attentionon Middle Meadow Walk.The hunt for Saddam hots upand the media bombards uswith wall-to-wall war news.The warm spring sun feelsundeserved and out of placeas lives in limbo blur by on stretchers.

Dilys

Rose

Unarmed Response, Dilys Rose

In the glass-walled waiting roomwhere half the chairs are brokenand nobody's mopped the floor for daysa homeless boozer sips his tea,grumbles to the vending machine.A teenage mother snaps at her kidthrashing about in his buggy,cracking his head against the frame.Behind curtains in Immediate Caremy loved one lies, not fighting,not even arguing, barely breathing.The scrawl of his heartbeatcrawls across a bleeping screen.

Why we remember

In The Legless Man, Robert Service says, “Ah the world will soon forget.”This the reason why every year, we buy and wear a poppy, so we don’t forget the sacrifices made by those who served and continue to serve in our Armed Forces.