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"My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

So wrote Wilfred Owen. His words, his still all too goddam pertinent [thinking here, just now, of photographers Tim hetherington and Chris Hondros], words, are inscribed on the tombstone that marks the final resting place for Rupert Brooke, who died on the 23rd of April, 1915... thus sharing a deathday w/ Wm. Shakespeare....

. He was another British poet, another 'Tommy," one of the many thousands of British soldiers whose lives were lost in the Great War. Owen was 25, as a matter of fact, when he was killed in France in 1918, a week before the guns went silent.

Young men - and women - dying in the wake of the misdeeds of the old.