1943

Throughout the poem 1943 by Donald Hall it switches back and forth between being "in" the war and being away from the war.
It begins by talking about two males - one who "knocked out" the other in a high school boxing tournament and ten months later Dominick Esposito is killed in the third wave at Tarawa. War changed the boys' lives so quickly; one minute they were carefree high school students, the next they were fighting for their country.
The poem goes on to talk about how every morning the milkman brings each house bottles of milk. The daily task of getting fresh milk every morning symbolizes the idea that life goes on. Even in times of war, life goes on.
The poem then switches back to describing events about the war - soldiers marching "with frost bitten feet as white as milk." Popping up into the readers' mind (because of the blatant pause in the poem to ask "what could we do?" is the question what are we (the citizens who are not "in" the war) supposed to do? How are they supposed to help their country? are they supposed to enlist in the military also? Maybe their whole job is to keep the country "alive" so the soldiers have something to fight for.
War is a tragic worldwide occurrence that can alter many thousands of people's lives in an instant. Perhaps throughout the poem Hall is trying to portray the idea that as life goes on when people are away from the war, and time stops when faced with the difficult situations and obstacles soldiers had to overcome in the war. For the boys in the beginning life was drastically changed (and ended) so differently than had the war not even happened.