Life in Newburgh on Ythan

By Talpa

We seem to have learned nothing, nothing at all.

Memorial Tablet 

SQUIRE nagged and bullied till I went to fight, 
(Under Lord Derby’s Scheme). I died in hell— 
(They called it Passchendaele). My wound was slight, 
And I was hobbling back; and then a shell 
Burst slick upon the duck-boards: so I fell
Into the bottomless mud, and lost the light. 

At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew, 
He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare: 
For, though low down upon the list, I’m there; 
‘In proud and glorious memory’ ... that’s my due.
Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire: 
I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed. 
Once I came home on leave: and then went west... 
What greater glory could a man desire?

A Great War poem by Siegfried Sassoon. October 1918.
The poem is about a British Tommy butchered at Passchendaele in 1917

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