WWII poetry

I know I have covered a war poem already but I have read that there is great contrast between the literature that came from the two great wars.

First, I'll share a source I have used to read a range of WWII poems as it contains many indicative pieces, about the Holocaust, piloting and the life of soldiers after war:

http://world-war-2.info/poems/ This website also has general information on the war as a whole.

While we are on the subject of war poetry, I would like to highlight Tennyson's 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' as it is a beautifully emotive poem about earlier battle methods of the 1800s.

Now onto the poem of the week. I found this poem in an archived section of the BBC website and all copyright goes to the talented soul who posted it there (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/04/a4473704.shtml).

Best Friend

When I was four and almost a half
I loved you with a passion
Only experienced by little girls;
Best friend intensities,
Whispered confidences,
Heads together and joined at the hip,
World-oblivious, world- creating
Absorbed in each other
Through the endless days.

You were the last thing
I waved to at night
Face framed in the window opposite
And, throwing back curtains,
The person I greeted
When I surfaced,
Shooting awake ,
Racing to windows,
Sure in the knowledge
That you would be waiting
With strange signs and our secret language

Wild in the absence of fathers
And bane of our mothers' existence
Life centred around us.
Till the morning when I opened the curtains
And your house was gone.
Direct hit in the night,
While I slept safe
Under the stairs
In the arms of my fearless mother

I never saw you again
Though for months I looked
More awful than death
Was the disintegration
Of flesh And security And trust
But sixty years on
I still remember you.

Although this poem was not written during the war (conveyed by the last couplet) I still classify it as a war poem, as it speaks of the same events and was lived through by the writer, who suffered due to it, even though they did not fight; they lost both 'security' and 'trust', which are key concepts that make human life worth living without worry. The use of polysyndeton captures the sense of build in loss and grief.

Sometimes it is easier to remember those who lost their lives during the war than to remember those whose lives were irreparably damaged as a consequence of the deaths of others. The writer here uses pathos throughout the first two stanzas to recreate the emotions that are felt during a close friendship. 'Four and almost a half' immediately places the reader in their own mind at that age, how vulnerable a child can be in their hope and imagination. This is later returned to in the final stanza, when the narrator looked 'for months' in vain.

The metaphorical phrase 'shooting awake' has poignancy when we consider that a child might play a war game in their innocence, and the word 'shooting' has been used to indicate this dangerous innocence. By the end of the poem, weapons like these have killed her best friend and so could be a form of foreshadowing. To me, 'strange signs' and a 'secret language' do the same by giving connotations of war spies and espionage.

I suppose we can at least say that war does some good as it inspires the creative mind to speak out but would that it weren't necessary!