Henry Newbolt's Vitai Lampada https://net.lib.byu.edu/english/wwi/influences/vitai.html Captures a sense of duty against the realities of war.
Randall Jarrell's "Death of the Ball Turret Gunner" https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57860/the-death-of-th... Is a much grimmer perspective.
Richard Grenier captured the truth for civil society: "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." (h/t https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/07/rough-men/)
All we have of freedom, all we use or know – This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law. Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899 https://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/kipling/old_issue/
We need our rough men and nuclear weapons because they have theirs. I think I would sleep deeper if no one had them.
World War 1 was not the kind of war that delivered freedom. It was more the kind that elites entered into without full regard of the costs.