- Aftermath
- (1920)
- HAVE you forgotten yet?...
- For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
- Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
- And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
- Like 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 dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
- Do you ever stop and 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 stretcher-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.
- Siegfried Sassoon
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