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Monday – Veterans Day
When Siegfried Sassoon talks about soldiers as dreamers, he knows what he’s talking about since he experienced trench warfare in the first World War. Today we honor all those who have encountered humankind at its worst.
Dreamers
By Siegfried Sassooon
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
Readers may think, as they begin the poem, that the soldiers are dreaming of great deeds in battle. In “Dulce in Decorum Est,” fellow World War I soldier Wilfred Owen writes of “children ardent for some desperate glory.” But Owen calls out the lie behind such dreaming while Sassoon, in his quieter poem, shows us what soldiers really want.
It is what we should all dream of.
