Remains

Remains by Simon Armitage is told by a soldier who, with two others, shot a man running from a bank raid in a war zone. He cannot stop seeing the man's death, and the memory haunts him long after he comes home.

Armitage based the poem on interviews with soldiers who had served in recent wars, such as Iraq, for a 2008 documentary. It is about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The speaker talks like an ordinary soldier telling a story to his mates: ‘On another occasion, we get sent out’. This colloquial language, full of everyday slang, makes him sound real and makes the violence more shocking.

He is unsure whether the man was a threat: ‘probably armed, possibly not’. That doubt is the root of his guilt.

The killing is described in sharp detail: ‘I see every round as it rips through his life’. The present tense shows that he is still seeing it now.

The poem is mostly in four-line stanzas. The first half describes the shooting. Then the poem moves home: the speaker is on leave, but the dead man is ‘dug in behind enemy lines’ in his mind, like a soldier who can't be driven out.

He tries to escape, but ‘the drink and the drugs won't flush him out’.

The final line ends with ‘his bloody life in my bloody hands’. The double meaning of ‘bloody’, as both blood-stained and a swear word, shows his guilt and his anger together. The last stanza is shorter and breaks the pattern, as his mind is breaking.

Themes: the effects of conflict on the mind; guilt; memory. The title has several meanings: the man's remains, the memory that remains, and the guilt that remains.

Compares well with:

• War Photographer: memories of war that cannot be left behind.
• Bayonet Charge: one soldier's experience of violence.
• Poppies: the lasting effects of war on someone at home.