1943

This poem just shocked me a little at first. The first line " They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round of the heavy weight finals, and ten months later Dom dies in the third wave at Tarawa " was really crazy to me because it's like if we had lived in a time like this, all these boys we know around school would be gone in a flash. They wouldn't be the quarterback or the track star anymore, they would just be soldiers and instead of weight lifting in the gym they would be doing push ups and getting ready to carry a gun through harsh conditions. It was crazy how people at home often watched their normal lives continue and they forgot all the things that were happening to the young men across the world. I just got an email the other day about how people are beginning to realize that we have forgotten all these men and women go through and now people want to show they still appreciate these people and their selfless actions. I didn't understand the whole milk thing at first, but when everyone in class was talking about how it was a kind of child-like, nurturing sort of thing then I understood. These were young men who really had to grow up fast and they were still kids in reality. They had to lose their childhood too soon and the families at home grew up safe and sound and people there got to keep living their childhood and drinking their milk. I really liked the poem overall. Sometimes I just don't understand the way they split stanzas sometimes. For me it is just confusing and not that effective. It just makes me mad sometimes.