Siegfried Sassoon is one of the better known war poets, serving in the British Army on the Western Front. He was somewhat controversial at the time because his poems were angry, showing the brutality of life in the trenches. In this fact he differed markedly from the sentimental and jingoistic tone of other writers who offered an anodyne - and a dishonest one at that - to the reading public back home. He came close to being court-marshalled for his strident views. Today it is clear that his honesty was simply too much for those who wanted to prosecute a pointless conflict no matter what the cost, though largely at no cost to themselves. These folks are still in our midst and we ignore them at our peril.

The Kiss is fairly typical of Sassoon's penchant for biting satire. It is certainly not the kiss you might be expecting. For a contrast, have a look at Brooke's much loved and collected poem, The Soldier, which romanticizes the idea of "Englishness", ennobles war and which might have penned by a propagandist in the War Office in London.

The Kiss

To these I turn, in these I trust-

Brother Lead and Sister Steal.

To his blind power I make appeal,

I guard her beauty clean from rust.

He spins and burns and loves the air,

And splits a skull to win my praise;

But up the nobly marching days

She glitters naked, cold and fair.

Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this:

That in good fury he may feel

The body where he sets his heal

Quail from your darting downward kiss.

'At the going down of the sun and in the morning,

We will remember them.'

Lest We Forget.