1943... Poem Response 1

Why is the title of this poem a year? Of course when I think is the year 1943, I don;t automatically think, "Wow wasn't that the year the Golder Globes started?" No... What the majority of people relate 1943 to, is US involvement in World War II. Summing the whole poem up to one year, took me directly to that time in history and gave me an idea of what to expect. After reading the poem once, I did not fully understand it. The time went from a high school auditorium, with a fun event to a dull, painful, war. let me break this down. Line one read "They toughened us for war. In the high school auditorium Ed Monahan knocked out Dominick Esposito in the first round..." This line, as an opening to the poem, led me to confusion. Was this before the guys knew there was going to be a war? Before war had even started? Who was "they" and how were they "toughened?" These questions I feel are not as important as the rest of the poem. I decided that the reference to the fighting might partly be to say that later, one of the men who was in the boxing fight at the high school dies in war in Europe.
The second time I read the poem, I really got into the meaning. The relationship between the lifestyle at in the US and the war in Europe. The author used milk to tie both the soldiers in the war, and Americans together. The way I interpreted the references to milk when talking about Americans was in a negative way. Almost as if the author is saying how the Americans in Southern Connecticut were blind to the war. They were unaffected by it. The line "...frozen cream lifted the cardboard lids of glass bottles Grade A or Grade B, while marines bled to death in the surf." The paradise like life of people here because of the death there. The choices we have at home, because the boys are dying there. The climax of the poem was the line, "or troops marched-what could we do?- with frostbitten feet as white as milk." Who is "we" in this line? It has to be Americans here at home, because when I remove the clause, it reads, "troops marched with frost bitten feet as white as snow." What could we do? We couldn't, can't do anything. That is the mind set, we are helpless?