The Stick Soldiers

            Throughout the course the literature that we have read has been at least in my case of wars that have occurred in the past. In The stick Soldier, the poems of Hugh Martin stand out a bit more because I can relate more to the historical events that make up that moment in time.  For Example in his poem The Summer of Crawling, Martin, retells us a day of training and army exercises. At first I just pictured young men just crawling in the dirt, however, the poem ends with an army chant, “gotta train, gotta train, gotta train to kill Hussein”. This made me think of all the media coverage that was giving to the war at the beginning. It made what I was reading feel more real, and every word left a lasting impression. The other poem that caught my attention was titled Tomorrow, We Go Up North. Here we have soldiers who are ready for combat, but that for many is their first time in this sort of situation. I think something that has stood out for me in most of these books, poems, novels and short story is that most of our main characters are young guys that have to face difficult situations at an early part of their lives. These soldiers have not lived enough to be prepared to handle all the curve balls that war has to offer. Just young dude drinking “non-alcoholic beer”