1943

1943

Donald Hall

They toughened us for war. In the high-school auditorium

Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round

of the heavyweight finals, and ten months later Dom died

in the third wave at Tarawa.  Every morning of the war

our Brock-Hall Dairy delivered milk from horse-drawn wagons

to wooden back porches in southern Connecticut. In winter,

frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles,

Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf,

or the right engine faltered into Channel silt, or troops marched

--what could we do?--with frostbitten feet as white as milk.

     Donald Hall was born in 1928, and lived throughout World War II.  His poem, 1943, was written at the end of WWII.  Although he wrote a poem about the war, Hall was did not fight in it.

     In the first stanza, Hall is describing how life was on the home front.  When he transitions to the second stanza, he shows how quickly life can change.  One day you can be having a care free time, and the next you can be fighting for your life.  In lines four through eight, Hall is back to describing life on the home front.  He is describing how every morning milk is delivered to the homes.  He then goes on to tell how soldiers are dying.  I believe Hall is trying to say that the people at home aren't sacrificing anything and still have the everyday luxuries, such as milk.  Meanwhile, soldiers are dying on the battlefield and are half frozen to death.  In the last line, he asks, what could we do? By this, Hall is acknowledging that they know there is a problem, but they don't know what they can do about it.