To Any Dead Officer
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.95729
Summary
Siegfried Sassoon's To Any Dead Officer is a short poem written to an officer who has been left for dead in WW2. It was written by an English soldier, and published in 1918, and read by Siegfried himself.
Transcript
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Well, how are things in heaven? I wish you'd say, because I'd like to know that you're
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alright. Tell me, have you found everlasting day? Or been sucked in by everlasting night?
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For when I shut my eyes, your face shows plain. I hear you make some cheery old remark. I can
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build you in my brain, though you've gone out patrolling in the dark. You hated tours of
00:00:32.400
trenches. You were proud. Of nothing more than having good years to spend. Longed to get home
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and join the careless crowd. Of chaps who work in peace with time for friend. That's all washed
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out now. You're beyond the wire. No earthly chance can send you crawling back. You're
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finished with machine gun fire. Knocked over in a hopeless dud attack. Somehow I always
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thought you'd get done in. Because you were so desperate keen to live. You were all out
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to try and save your skin. Well knowing how much the world had got to give. You joked at
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shells and took the usual shop. Stuck in your dirty job and did it fine. With Jesus Christ.
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When will it stop? Three years. It's hell unless we break their line. So when they told me you'd
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been left for dead. I wouldn't believe them. Feeling it must be true. Next week the bloody
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roll of honour said. Wounded and missing. That's the thing to do when lads are left in shell holes
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dying slow. With nothing but blank sky and wounds that ache. Moaning for water till they know
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its night and then it's not worthwhile to wake. Goodbye old lad. Remember me to God. And tell
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him that our politicians swear they won't give in till Prussian rules been trod. Under the hill
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of England. Are you there? Yes. And the war won't end for at least two years. But we've got stacks
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of men. I'm blind with tears. Staring into the dark. Cheerio. I wish they'd killed you in