In this poem, a soldier claims that if he dies in the war (presumably World War I), the little space of foreign soil in which he is buried will "for ever" become a piece of England. Beneath the soil, another "richer" kind will be concealed, and his body—made of England—will turn that other earth into England as well, because he himself is composed of England. All of his thoughts of England, his home, will return there, and he will be at peace because his final thoughts will have been of his home and his friends. There is nothing that explicitly states that he is an airplane pilot, and he does not save himself in the poem; he simply makes statements about what will happen if he is killed during the war.