Categorical Aperitif

A song that never fails to rip my heart out: Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (PDF):

So they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The legless, the armless, the blind, the insane,
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.
And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where me legs used to be.
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve, to mourn, and to pity.

But the band played Waltzing Matilda, as they carried us down the gangway.
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away.

Today is actually the 90th anniversary of the end of hostilities in World War I. In honor of the occasion, the Guardian has been featuring poems and other writings from "The Great War." I remember reading the likes of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon when I was a kid. Decades later, it's still like a kick in the stomach.

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.

Peace.