My gran had a bookcase at the bottom of her dark hallway and one day i found a book of poems by Siegfried Sassoon, i vividly remember wedging myself in the corner and reading through the poems, one one of them : Suicide in the Trenches in particular struck home with a power that still affects me to this day
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
