Thought Process

The first time I read this poem it went through one ear and out the other. I felt like I was reading the poem but my mind was somewhere else because I had no idea what I had just read. In order to answer the question in the prompt I used a portion of the TPCASTT Directions on how on how analyze poetry ( I figured it might help me understand the poem better considering the fact that I was completely clueless). Since the first T stands for title I asked myself what could "Base Details" mean and combined that with some paraphrasing. When I looked back in the poem it seemed like base was being described as a place, "I'd live with scarlet Major at the Base...(2). The poem mentions war so that led me to believe that Major was similar to a sergeant major or someone of high authority in the  military. So I started thinking of "base" as the main camp. I started skipping around with the TPCASTT because I eventually decided to just flow freely through my thought process. I looked at poem closer and read each line carefully over and over again. I realized that the speaker starts his first word with "if" and then continues on to give what seem like examples of what he would do if he were "fierce and bald and short of breath (1)" so I'm getting the feeling that this man is in combat running for his life away from gunfire. Everything after line one is merely an example of what would take place if he were fierce, bald and short of breath. So my first inference can be that he's not any of those things that he just described. These are all things that he would do. One specific poetic device that writer used to help convey the speakers sarcastic attitude is diction. In line 10 when the speaker says "I'd toddle safely home..." I felt like he might be aggravated with the war because he uses the word safely, implying that his place in the war right now is not safe and he'd rather  grow old and die on his death bed rather than get shot to death.