“Aftermath”

The speaker of the poem is a retired officer from the war.  He is recalling all the horrific days that he endured in his time during the war.  He talks about how he has flash backs of the war as he crossed city-ways and how these flashes haunt his mind.  He asks says to another retired soldier that war is a bloody game and that you will never forget because of the slain of the war.  The speaker talks about the horrible conditions of the trenches and how the dead that surrounded him, wondering if a war like this would ever happen again.  He goes on to talk about the attack and how the fear that struck him and the doom he saw for his soldiers.  Death was surrounding him as he looked around during the attack.

There is a constant occurrence of the word “you.”  I believe that the speaker of the poem is talking to another soldier, asking him if the memories of war are still with him as well.  When the speaker of the poem said, “as you peered at the doomed and haggared faces of your men?” saying that he is seeing the faces of dead men before they even die.  The speaker also tells the soldier he is talking to “Look down, and swear by the slain of the war that you’ll never forget.”  This to me seemed like the speaker and the person he is talking to went back to being there in the war, looking around at the dead bodies at their feet.  The speaker making sure that the person he is talking to will never forget those images.