The biggest example of situational irony in the poem is probably the poems main protagonist. He figured he was being unique and cool by drinking, being part of the Union, and playing it safe. What he was actually doing was being as normal as possible for this time period (WW2) while he thought himself unique. An example of verbal irony is is the last two lines, ( Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard). The writer is talking about how all these statistics made it seem as though he was happy, but really, he could have been miserable, but never said anything.