recycle your World War One soldier poems / "Does it Matter?" by Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

A soldier's prosthetic knee is examined at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. His face is blurred to respect his privacy.

During the Vietnam War and again in the Iraq War, in both the medical/scientific press and the war-friendly political press, the wars have been credited with stimulating great technical advances in prosthetics. With each war, technology gives U.S. troops artificial limbs closer and closer in function to the limbs they went to war with.

Note, and celebrate, that the decorated Lieutenant Sassoon survived the French trenches of World War One and lived to a ripe old age.

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Does it Matter?

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
from "Counter-Attack and Other Poems," 1918

Does it matter? -- losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter ? -- losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? -- those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

© George Sassoon