Devotion to Duty

by Siegfried Sassoon (1920) — a poem card from Justes Mots

A brief, dramatic scene in which the King reads a dispatch about an officer's heroic death in battle and prepares to inform the widow. Sassoon captures the formal, ceremonial response to military sacrifice while hinting at the human cost beneath official language. It serves as a meditation on duty, heroism, and personal loss.

I was near the King that day. I saw him snatch
And briskly scan the G.H.Q. dispatch.
Thick-voiced, he read it out. (His face was grave.)
'This officer advanced with the first wave,
'And when our first objective had been gained,
'(Though wounded twice), reorganized the line:
'The spirit of the troops was by his fine
'Example most effectively sustained.'…

Themes: sympathy · grief · reflection