For Veterans' Day, a remembrance in a diary

For Veterans’ Day weekend, part of a 1916 poem by Robert W. Service, whose brother was killed in World War I.

       Ima Hogg copied this into her summer 1918 diary.

The Fool---Service

“But it isn’t playing the game,” he said--

And he slammed his books away.

“The Latin & Greek I’ve got in my head

Will do for a duller day.”

“Rubbish!” I cried,

            “The bugle’s call

Isn’t for lads from school.”

D’ye think he’d listen?

Oh not at all:

So I called him a fool, a fool.

Now there’s his dog, by

            his empty bed.

And the flute he used to play.

And his favorite bat--

But Dick he’s dead--

Somewhere in France

            they say

Ima Hogg was mourning someone she lost in that war in 1918. We may never know who.