... Nine-year-old Boys Usually Turn Ten At

Just Because A Man Glances Up At The Sky At Night Does Not Make Him An Astronomer, You Know.

War Today Is Such A More Visible Thing. We See It On Television, On Cnn. In 1914, War Was A Concept.

The First Thing He Noticed Was How Quiet It Was. This Was Nothing Like The Kind Of Quiet He Heard When He Woke Up In The Middle Of The Night After A Bad Dream. When That Happened, There Were Always Strange, Unidentifiable Sounds Seeping Into His Room From The Tiny Gaps Where The Windowpanes Weren't Sealed Together Correctly. At Those Moments He Could Always Tell There Was Life Outside, Even If All That Life Was Fast Asleep. It Was A Silence That Wasn't Silence At All.

He Looked The Boy Up And Down As If He Had Never Seen A Child Before And Wasn't Quite Sure What He Was Supposed To Do With One: Eat It, Ignore It Or Kick It Down The Stairs.

And I Have Tried To Forget Him, I Have Tried To Convince Myself That It Was Just One Of Those Things, But It’s Difficult To Do That When My Body Is Standing Here, Eight Feet Deep In The Earth Of Northern France, While My Heart Remains By A Stream In A Clearing In England Where I Left It Weeks Ago.