remembering war

It isn't what you're taught in class,
but the old monument in the town square;
the lesson's a short moment, it will pass,
but listen to the ones who once were there.
I learned of war at my kind mother's knee,
stories of death, tales that were all of woe;
I learned from that what it means to be free,
and how easily into the giant maw we go.
The names I read on school wall or church plaque,
with 'eternal memory' and 'honour' are the way
that I translate both 'battle' and 'attack'
into sharp images of frightening day.
Young men who once, for country and for king,
took arms and gave them their most precious thing.