This Kipling poem is one that I’ve memorized off and on, and one of the first I tumbled into (I think “The ‘Eathen” was the first) in the process of discovering Kipling as a poet. It too would have been fitting for Memorial day, and no, I wasn’t going to wait for veterans day. The …
Tag Archives: soldiers
Cells
I first ran into this poem while reading an early, collected version of Pournelle’s “Falkenberg” mercenary stories set in a future “CoDominium”. This is much earlier in the same timeline as the classic first contact science fiction novel “Mote in Gods Eye”. Needless to say – Kipling was well aware that soldiers were hardly saints. …