Ex-Service

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  Derision from the dead
  Mocks armamental madness.
  Redeem (each Ruler said)
  Mankind. Men died to do it.
  And some with glorying gladness
  Bore arms for earth and bled:
  But most went glumly through it
  Dumbly doomed to rue it.

  The darkness of their dying
  Grows one with War recorded;
  Whose swindled ghosts are crying
  From shell-holes in the past,
  Our deeds with lies were lauded,
  Our bones with wrongs rewarded.
  Dream voices these—denying
  Dud laurels to the last.

© Siegfried Sassoon