{"id":23753,"date":"2019-11-11T12:50:26","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T17:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=23753"},"modified":"2019-07-01T09:56:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-01T13:56:13","slug":"poem-for-combat-pilot-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/11\/poem-for-combat-pilot-veterans\/","title":{"rendered":"Poem for Combat Pilot Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It is Veterans Day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was in Ireland back in May\/June, I learned that, despite being part of the UK at the time, Irish men were exempt from the World War I draft. Nonetheless, quite a few volunteered. The most dangerous job was surely that of pilot. William Butler Years wrote a poem about these volunteers: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/An_Irish_Airman_Foresees_His_Death\">&#8220;An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.&#8221;<\/a> The first few lines&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>I know that I shall meet my fate<br>Somewhere among the clouds above;<br>Those that I fight I do not hate<br>Those that I guard I do not love;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>In our risk-averse age it is difficult to fathom how anyone would have volunteered to serve in combat in World War I, let alone volunteer to get into a machine that most pilots would today consider far too dangerous to take around the pattern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is Veterans Day. When I was in Ireland back in May\/June, I learned that, despite being part of the UK at the time, Irish men were exempt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flying","category-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Poem for Combat Pilot Veterans - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/11\/poem-for-combat-pilot-veterans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Poem for Combat Pilot Veterans - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It is Veterans Day. 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