Topic: aftermath

bush musketeer

AFTERMATH

Have you forgotten yet?...
For the world's events have rumbled on since those gaged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled eith thoughts that flow
Like the clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same--and war's a bloody game...
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz--
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench--
And the dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop to ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack--
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretdher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads--those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YET?...
LOOK UP, AND SWEAR BY THE GREEN OF THE SPRING THAT YOU'LL NEVER FORGET.


Written by Siegfried Sassoon, who served as an officer with the welch fussileers in ww1.

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Although our task was never easy, it was made less difficult by the patriotism and passionate valour of the Australians, Which served as an example to the whole world, you saved Amiens, you saved France.
Feild Marshal Ferdinand Foch 1918