I cannot read this poem without crying. The continued loss and mutilation of young lives on both sides.

For the Fallen
Laurence Binyon 1869-1943

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam .

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the night;

AS the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of out darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain..

Yes, your opinions are offensive Sophie,on quite a few of your posting on this discussion page.And the foul language is unnecassary. It is an emotive poem and requires respect for our history and the past .I do not believe in War and this poems endorses how futile it is. You should visit the war graves of Europe Sophie, see and feel the hopelessness, it may give you some humility. Think of all those families who will be offended by your words. This discussion page is about poetry and how it influences each and every one of us and is not about politics. You are entitled to your opinions but please stop this ranting.

The reason I posted this particular poem is because tomorrow is Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and this Site is on the World Wide Web . There will be Parades and Remembrance Services through out the country and verses from this very apt poem will be recited. I posted to give people the opportunity to read the whole of this poem.

Rudyard Kipling was seduced by the idea of the glory of war, and so persuaded his son to go to the trenches in WW1, where he was killed.

Later, Kipling wrote:

If any question why we died
tell them that our fathers lied.

It is not often that those who start wars actually fight in them. Tom Paxton's song sums it up for me:

When kings make war
The poor little man must fight them.
that's what the poor little men are for
when kings make war.

And yet to me remembrance is important, though it is personal. My childhood was spent in the shadow of a war that brought my parents together to create me. My father arrived in this country to fight in the RAF, having survived Stalin's camps where he was interned with all Polish military from the east of Poland.

It is probably becasue of his near-death experiences that he could never quite relate to me. And how I knew I could never be a man in his eyes because I could never go through what he went through. So, as a child, I yearned to fight, to prove myself to a father who, I later realised, would not accept any proof I had to offer because his focus was on proving himself to his father...

That war was the reason for my existence, it dominated my childhood: all the comics full of derring-do, the films almost excusively about war, we played Jerries and English, or cowboys and indians, toy soldiers: Bang! you're dead.

Well, Val, you have won me round.
I really go for the quiet common sense stance every time: the ordinary person talking to other ordinary people.
War is not something we can wipe ourselves clean from: all our 'not in my name' claims fell down as soon as that first person was killed. Something else took over then, as always: the horror and the grief. They are always bigger than the reasons, because it is always us, the ordinary people, who have to deal with it.
I don't always buy a poppy, but I always think of those ordinary people caught up in the machinery of war. Too easy to go off on one about it. It changes nothing: we are all part of the system and the culture and the ethos which is perpetrating it, we're all a little grubby with it. It's coming to terms with that in whatever honest way we can, is maybe our biggest task.

It amuses me when people make emotive comments about war and its every consequence. Immortalised in lyrics such as "War - what is it good for..." The very idea of 'war' has people reaching for their metaphorical cannons to shoot off their opinions, which are themselves, based on what they have read/listened to/ watched on their television sets in the comfort of their own central heated homes.
Those people who knew/know that they enter into an environment where it is 'kill or be killed' would not have done so lightly. Some, misguided by early 20th Century propaganda, would have been unaware of all the facts that lead this country (U.K) into WWI and a similar situation occurred in WWII.
To make comments retrospectively about men and women who contributed to what they thought, both at the time and now, was a real effort to defeat an aggressor. What was their alternative?
War is an emotive subject. But if you localise the theory of war it's like a school playground. Bullies only bully until someone makes a stand. The current wars around the world, described for International legal reasons as 'conflicts' don't directly affect everyone of us. But when they do - and it's coming. What do we do? Let somebody else fight our fights? It's always somebody else.
My Grandfathers fought in both WW's. At the time I'm led to believe that both of them did so because they believed that there was a genuine threat to the liberty of this United Kingdom. They perhaps wished they had the luxury of being born two generations later. So that they could look back at history through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars and make highly emotive and moral views from the safety of their double glazed 3 bedroom semi's.
Some things were (and still are) worth fighting for because there are people out there who are potential future aggressors. I include every nation on earth in that remark.
Carry on mocking those that sacrificed their life or their quality of life by dying or suffering immeasurably pain. They were not sure what was happening was right or wrong. They just did what they all FELT was the right thing to do. Kill or be Killed? Make offensive comments. Don't make offensive comments. There is always a choice. There is always a consequence.

Hi everyone I have some strong opinions on this. Will post in chat.

The Man He Killed

'Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a napperkin!

'But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place,

'I shot him dead because-
Because he was my foe,
Just so; my foe of course he was;
That's clear enough; although

'He thought he'd 'list, perhaps
Off hand like-just as I-
Was out of work-had sold his traps-
No other reason why,

Yes;quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.'

Thomas Hardy

I'm sure we poets haven't killed anybody this week, but our taxes have.

Dave