Anthem for Doomed Youth
Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, --
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Genealogy is a funny thing: it likes to mess with your preconceptions and cast new light on things you thought you knew. Who do you think you are indeed.
My great-grandmother was a lady called Rebecca Hunter Little. She married a fellow named Charles McDade in 1901. They had a family, and on the outbreak of what was to become the Great War, Charles enlisted. He died in the aftermath of the Battle of Loos, on 10th November 1915. In January 1919, Rebecca remarried, to a miner named Henry McKenna (though he was dead by the end of 1920) and they had a son named Samuel - my grandfather.

So if it hadn't been for the utterly pointless waste of millions of young men's lives and the near-ruination of a continent, I would never have been born. Not much of a silver lining really...



Notes:
The image above is from the film All Quiet On The Wetsern Front, adapted from the book by Erich Maria Remarque.

A radio adaptation of the play Not About Heroes, which documents the relationship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon can be heard for the remainder of this week at the BBC 7 listen again page (not sure whether or not this service works outside the UK)