Margaret Postgate: "The Veteran" (1918)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The ongoing scandal at Walter Reed brought this poem to mind. It's by Margaret Postgate (later Dame Margaret Isabel Cole), a prominent Fabian socialist, writer, and public servant who lived from 1893 to 1980. It was first published in Margaret Postgate's Poems (1918). For more on her life and work, see here.

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We came upon him sitting in the sun,
Blinded by war, and left. And past the fence
There came young soldiers from the Hand and Flower,
Asking advice of his experience.

And he said this, and that, and told them tales,
And all the nightmares of each empty head
Blew into air; then, hearing us beside,
'Poor chaps, how'd they know what it's like?' he said.

And we stood there, and watched him as he sat,
Turning his sockets where they went away,
Until it came to one of us to ask
'And you're -- how old?'
'Nineteen, the third of May.'