For ‘although’ without any punctuation to follow it leads straight into verse four, with all its spur- of-the-moment whims for enlisting in the army. And the enemy’s reasons for enlisting were precisely the same as the speaker’s. “He thought he’d ‘list’; ‘Off-hand like’, in other words, for no particular reason, he just thought he would. Maybe he ‘Was out of work’, maybe he had ‘sold his traps’ (belongings). ‘No other reason why.’ This wasn’t a thought-out action born of patriotism, just an impulsive one. There are four dashes in this quatrain, suggesting plenty of unconvincing, half- thought-through reasons for enlisting in the army which turned out to be such a momentous step.
War is, Hardy concludes, ‘quaint and curious,’ strange and odd. You shoot a fellow down that you’d treat to a drink if you met in a bar. The last verse comes full circle to where the first verse began: ‘Had he and I but met / By some old ancient inn’ they would have had a drink. Writing in the same war, in his poem ‘Strange Meeting’, Wilfred Owen was to give words to something very similar: I am the enemy you killed, my friend.’
For ‘although’ without any punctuation to follow it leads straight into verse four, with all its spur- of-the-moment whims for enlisting in the army. And the enemy’s reasons for enlisting were precisely the same as the speaker’s. “He thought he’d ‘list’; ‘Off-hand like’, in other words, for no particular reason, he just thought he would. Maybe he ‘Was out of work’, maybe he had ‘sold his traps’ (belongings). ‘No other reason why.’ This wasn’t a thought-out action born of patriotism, just an impulsive one. There are four dashes in this quatrain, suggesting plenty of unconvincing, half- thought-through reasons for enlisting in the army which turned out to be such a momentous step.War is, Hardy concludes, ‘quaint and curious,’ strange and odd. You shoot a fellow down that you’d treat to a drink if you met in a bar. The last verse comes full circle to where the first verse began: ‘Had he and I but met / By some old ancient inn’ they would have had a drink. Writing in the same war, in his poem ‘Strange Meeting’, Wilfred Owen was to give words to something very similar: I am the enemy you killed, my friend.’
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