Over the course of the unit, many of the readings and films have stood out to me, especially the World War 1 poetry readings, because they were all filled with brutal honesty about the war, also having lots of intensity and emotion in each one. Each author had their own stories to tell about their personal experiences from the war, whether it was from a soldier’s perspective or a civilian’s perspective. In particular, the poem “They” written by Siegfried Sassoon had the biggest impression on me. The poem shows the difference between how people glorify war and what it’s actually like. A bishop says the soldiers will come back as better men because of God, but the soldiers reply by describing their injuries and trauma. The poem exposes the harsh truth of war and how out-of-touch society can be with its real cost. The difference between the bishop’s hopeful words and the soldier’s dark replies shows how far apart people’s ideas of war were from what it was actually like; it made the poem feel more meaningful and emotional to me. Sassoon goes into detail about what the soldiers had to go through: “For George lost both his legs, and Bill’s stone blind; Poor Jim’s shot through the lungs and like to die; And Bert’s gone syphilitic: you’ll not find A chap who’s served that hasn’t found some change.” This quote in particular was my favourite part of the poem because it shows the injuries the soldiers faced and how hard it was on them, while some civilians would ignore what the war was really like. In the end, this poem stood out because it felt real, emotional and meaningful, which helped me understand what the soldiers actually went through.