"To the world you were a soldier but to me you were the world"

Inscribed on the wall of Fort Vaux, Verdun.

A MON FILS
Depuis que tes yeux sont fermees
Les miens n'ont cesse de pleurer

 Why was it that we soldiers stabbed each other, strangled each other, went for each other like mad dogs? Why was it that we who had nothing against each other personally fought to the very death? We were civilised people after all, but then I felt that the thin lacquer of civilisation of which both sides had so much, chipped off immediately. To fire at each other from a distance, to drop bombs, is something impersonal, but to see the whites of a man's eyes and then to run a bayonet into him - that was against my comprehension.

Sergeant Stefan Westmann - 29th Division, German Army

(After an attack on French positions south of the Aire-La Bassée canal, 1915)

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
(Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!

Mary Frye (1932)