“What are we doing here?”
- identity
- rhetorical question
- questioning their motivation to fight
- asking maybe their are expendable
wearied we keep awake
- Identity
- alliteration making it difficult to say parallels the difficulty of the lives of the soldiers
“We turn back to dying”
- blunt passive statement shows soldiers disillusionment with their cause
“For love of God seems dying”
Religious reference implies the lack of religious imposed morality remaining here emphasising the cruelty of it
“But nothing happens”
Repetition
Juxtaposes reality because it is action packed chaos
Sudden successive flights of bullets
Sibilante and fricativas here creates horrible imagery
“Pale flakes with fingering stealth comes feeling for our faces”
Alliteration here gives connotations of coldness and the hardship that they need to fight two wars.
All their eyes are ice, but nothing happens
Metaphor
Sense of seeing conquered by nature
“Probably armed possibly not”
- repetition
- enjambment
- guilt and regret
“Sort of inside out, pain itself, the image of agony”
Colloquial language
Gruesome imagery
Him trying to pretend like he hasn’t been affected by the experience
“Tosses his guts back into his body, then he’s carted off into the back of a lorry”
Colloquial language and the rhyme shows that this was just casual things they would do
“Blood shadow stays on the street”
Metaphor
Haunted
PTSD
“Drink and the drugs won’t flush him out”
Metaphor
He’s here in my head when I close my eyes
- metaphor
Internal conflict
Guilt
“His bloody life in my bloody hands”
Metaphor
Regrets killing him
“I blink and he bursts in again”
Enjambment across stanzas
Separating reality from memory
Lots of plosives are used because they have a violent sound
