Genç bir asker tanırdım,
Gülen yaşama saf bir neşe ile.
Derin uyuyan karanlıklar içinde,
ve ıslık çalan tarla kuşları ile sabahın köründe.
Yılmış, bezmişti kış siperlerinde
Bir damla rumsuz, kırıntılar ve bitlerle.
Sıkıverdi bir kurşun beynine...
Adını anmadı bir daha hiç kimse.
Siz gözleri kanlı, gururlu korkaklar
Genç askerler geçerken alkış tutanlar
Dönerken sesizce evlerinize,
Dua edin bilmediğinize
Gençliğin ve kahkahanın gittiği o cehenemi....
Siegfried L. Sassoon
Çeviri: Feza -28.06.1984
Edward Dullard Photography. Kilkenny, Ireland.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
By Siegfried L. Sassoon
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...
3rd Batt: Royal Welsh Fusiliers
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of agression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Finished_with_the_War:_A_Soldier%E2%80%99s_Declaration
