They

In responding to "They," focus on the two different meanings given to the idea that the soldiers will not be the same when they return from the war.

This poem takes two different points of view that are both true. The Bishop explains to “us” as the speaker puts himself on the level with the reader, that the “boys are changed” in which he means they’ve been changed by the horrors of war. They have seen their friends die and have killed other men. “They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.” They could have easily died, but they have not. “Their comrades’ blood has bought//New right to breed an honourable race” The boys have gone to war and as they have survived where their friends hadn’t, it’s as though they have been given this second great chance and their children will be children of honorable men. The boys see their return differently. Yes, they are changed, but they are changed from injury and illness. “George lost both his legs; and Bill’s stone blind” One man is “shot though the lungs and like to die” while another caught syphilis. So the boys are certainly changed in more ways than one. The soldiers are surely changed as the Bishop suggests, mentally altered by the war, but the fact that the men don’t speak of this and concentrate on their physical changes is pretty understandable. Those are far more obvious.

Good on the differing points of view about the changes, but which change does Sassoon want us to see as the more real (and valid) one? Why? And how can we tell?