{"id":20753,"date":"2022-05-30T16:31:18","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T21:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20753"},"modified":"2022-05-30T16:31:18","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T21:31:18","slug":"memorial-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2022\/05\/30\/memorial-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\nTo Any Dead Officer (Who Left School for the Army in 1914), by Siegfried Sassoon\r\n

Well, how are things in Heaven? I wish you\u2019d say,\r\n
   Because I\u2019d like to know that you\u2019re all right.\r\n
Tell me, have you found everlasting day,\r\n
   Or been sucked in by everlasting night?\r\n
For when I shut my eyes your face shows plain;\r\n
   I hear you make some cheery old remark\u2014\r\n
I can rebuild you in my brain,\r\n
   Though you\u2019ve gone out patrolling in the dark.\r\n\r\n

You hated tours of trenches; you were proud\r\n
   Of nothing more than having good years to spend;\r\n
Longed to get home and join the careless crowd\r\n
   Of chaps who work in peace with Time for friend.\r\n
That\u2019s all washed out now. You\u2019re beyond the wire:\r\n
   No earthly chance can send you crawling back;\r\n
You\u2019ve finished with machine-gun fire\u2014\r\n
   Knocked over in a hopeless dud-attack.\r\n\r\n

Somehow I always thought you\u2019d get done in,\r\n
   Because you were so desperate keen to live:\r\n
You were all out to try and save your skin,\r\n
   Well knowing how much the world had got to give.\r\n
You joked at shells and talked the usual \u201cshop,\u201d\r\n
   Stuck to your dirty job and did it fine:\r\n
With \u201cJesus Christ! when will it stop?\r\n
   Three years ... It\u2019s hell unless we break their line.\u201d\r\n

So when they told me you\u2019d been left for dead\r\n
   I wouldn\u2019t believe them, feeling it must be true.\r\n
Next week the bloody Roll of Honour said\r\n
   \u201cWounded and missing\u201d\u2014(That\u2019s the thing to do\r\n
When lads are left in shell-holes dying slow,\r\n
   With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache,\r\n
Moaning for water till they know\r\n
   It\u2019s night, and then it\u2019s not worth while to wake!)\r\n

   *   *   *   *   *\r\n

Good-bye, old lad! Remember me to God,\r\n
   And tell Him that our politicians swear\r\n
They won\u2019t give in till Prussian Rule\u2019s been trod\r\n
   Under the Heel of England ... Are you there? ...\r\n
Yes ... and the war won\u2019t end for at least two years;\r\n
But we\u2019ve got stacks of men ... I\u2019m blind with tears,\r\n
   Staring into the dark. Cheero!\r\n
I wish they\u2019d killed you in a decent show. <\/blockquote>\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger remembers.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-litchrachoor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20756,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20753\/revisions\/20756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}