I chose this poem, as short as it is, because I believe it said a lot about a topic I found interesting in our class discussions, that being the dependancy that soldiers feel towards their weapons, machinery and bullets. Rightfully so, soldiers on either side of the war, and in all wars, depend on their weaponry in any form it takes, but with the Great War we obtained a viewpoint on the advanced weaponry used combined with the isolation that soldiers on the front experiences, relying on a personal connection to their weaponry to imbue their trust.

Personally, this piece spoke to me simply because of the idea and emphasis of devotion and connection in such a small piece of writing was moving. It personifies guns and the accompanying bullets, highlights the prayer and dedication to the maintenance of their lifeline, and the dependancy within a sort of wish.

Through all our readings and discussions this semester of the war as a whole, the people struggling back home, the racial and gender-based diparities, and the grey lives of the soldiers stuck at the front, we spoke and read very little about the aforementioned dependancy on their weapons. We have spoken about production back home, and about soldiers strategies both big and small, but when it comes to the connection a soldier makes with their own rifle, how they put their lives and the lives of their comrades in this weapon of destruction, we have covered very little. I believe it prudent to see how hopeless the war was for these soldiers, how low they must have become to find companionship in a piece of metal, a metal used to take the lives of men they don’t even know.