Main message

• War is the conflict. However there is conflict within the speaker himself- he cannot quite understand why war takes place and cannot quite see that it happens because of politicians.

  Short powerful poem. Working class soldier shows the absurdity and futility of war, demonizing the enemy as “foe” is an important device to justify murder and dreadful randomness of war. Anti-war poem.
• The speaker in the poem reflects on the shooting of an enemy soldier, and wonders whether he and the soldier could have been friends had they met in a pub rather than the battlefield.