Remembering Our Veterans

A Whispered Tale

I’d heard fool-heroes brag of where they’d been,
With stories of the glories that they’d seen.
But you, good simple soldier, seasoned well
In woods and posts and crater-lines of hell,
Who dodge remembered ‘crumps’ with wry grimace,
Endured experience in your queer, kind face,
Fatigues and vigils haunting nerve-strained eyes,
And both your brothers killed to make you wise;
You had no babbling phrases; what you said
Was like a message from the maimed and dead.
But memory brought the voice I knew, whose note
Was muted when they shot you in the throat;
And still you whisper of the war, and find
Sour jokes for all those horrors left behind.

 --Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

 

In reading Regeneration, the first book in Pat Barker's gripping trilogy set during World War I, I've been getting acquainted with Siegfried Sassoon, the English soldier-poet. Though a Brit, the combat experiences that Sassoon so eloquently depicted resonated with soldiers on all sides of that conflict, including American and Canadian troops.

 

Born in England to a wealthy Jewish family, nothing in Sassoon's privileged background prepared him for the horrors of war, which included the death of his brother at Gallipolli. He made headlines by staging a public protest against the war, for which he could have been found guilty of treason. Instead, thanks largely to the intervention of his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves, he was diagnosed with "shell shock" and sent to recover at Craiglockhart War Hospital, which is where the story in Regeneration opens.Regarding Sassoon poetry, author Paul Fussell wrote, "[He] unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely that had been sleeping all during his pastoral youth." [I had to look up "contumely." According to Webster, it means "harsh language or treatment arising from contempt."]

 

Shell shock was only just beginning to be recognized as a viable diagnosis in World War I. Over the decades since it has been variously called "neurasthenia,"combat fatigue," "soldier's heart," "postconcussional syndrome," and "post-traumatic stress disorder," still suffered by many returning veterans today. Writing North Idaho blogger Anna Goodwin has penned an excellent nonfiction book on the topic, to be released in 2014. And the lingering effects of shell shock in the aftermath of World War I also play a role in my own fictional work-in-progress. We feel it's important to keep the conversation going until all veterans who need it find help.

This Veterans Day, let's remember to thank our veterans of all wars for their service and sacrifice on our behalf--those who are healthy and well, and those still suffering from visible and invisible scars. And let's be especially grateful for soldier-poets like Sassoon, who have used the written word to convey the realities of combat to those of us tucked safely at home.