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Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Quote of the day: A soldier’s deepest wish

From Six Weeks, the book about British junior officers in World War I that I’ve mentioned before, here is a stanza from a poem by Sub-Lt. A.P. Herbert, who fought at Gallipoli, and later saw his battalion destroyed at the Somme: We only want to take our wounds away To some shy village where the ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia
Wikimedia

From Six Weeks, the book about British junior officers in World War I that I've mentioned before, here is a stanza from a poem by Sub-Lt. A.P. Herbert, who fought at Gallipoli, and later saw his battalion destroyed at the Somme:

From Six Weeks, the book about British junior officers in World War I that I’ve mentioned before, here is a stanza from a poem by Sub-Lt. A.P. Herbert, who fought at Gallipoli, and later saw his battalion destroyed at the Somme:

We only want to take our wounds away

To some shy village where the tumult ends,

And drowsing in the sunshine many a day,

Forget our aches, forget that we had friends.

I really like those lines. The emotion they convey is more complex than it may first appear, especially the last five words.

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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