"Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go..."See in text(Text of the Poem)
Sassoon points out to his civilian readers that they truly do not understand, nor do they want to understand, the horrors of war that claim "youth and laughter."
"I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy..."See in text(Text of the Poem)
The opening lines of this powerful anti-war poem establish the tension between the innocence of the boy-soldier new to war and the boy, later on, whose innocence has been crushed by experience.