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Sassoon and Owen
Is anyone here familiar with the works of Siegfried Sassoon or Wilfred Owen? Two young men who were soldiers in the first world war, serving for Britain. Owen perished, but Sassoon survived, was decorated as a hero (his nickname in the trenches was "Mad Jack"), and went on to protest the poor treatment of soldiers to the British government. Their poems seem (IMHO) to be some of the simplest and truest accounts of soldiering, and are filled with a moral fury. I don't have time to seek out the entire verse, but a piece (from memory, so bear with me if its wrong) that I always liked from one of Sassoon's poems...
"...You smug-faced crowds, with kindling eye,
who cheer when soldier lads march by,
creep home and pray you never know,
that hell where youth and laughter go."
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