POETRY of WORLD WAR 1: Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen [1893-1918]

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born in Oswestry, Shropshire, United Kingdom. Wilfred took a four-year course as a pupil-teacher gaining not only a good grounding in French, English Literature, the earth sciences and other subjects, but also but also the experience of teaching children from very poor homes.  Studying Wordsworth and Keats made him long to be a poet and he started writing verse.  In 1913 he became a teacher of English in Bordeaux, France, but returned to England in 1915 yo join the Artists' Rifles, a prestigious officer training unit.  In June 1916 he became a second lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment.

In January 1917 Owen arrived on the Western Front, most of his later poems such as 'The Sentry' are based on his experiences during the next four months.  Conditions were appauling with bitter cold, incessant rain, deep mud, obliterated trenches and constant shelling. 

He was blown into the air by a shell while asleep and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. Here he became friendly with poet Siegfried Sassoon.  Until he met Sassoon in August 1917, he had not written any of the poems for which he is now famous, his few war poems had been patriotic and heroic.  Owen's thoughts and style changed dramatically, by October he was writing poems such at 'Dulce et Decorum Est'.  

In November Owen was sent on light duties to Scarborough.  He began to break away from Sassoon's influence, reading other wartime poets such as Robert Graves and Wilfred Wilson Gibson and reflecting on his 'duty' as a poet.  Like Sasson, he wanted to speak for the troops, but his strong allegiance to the great Romantics gave him a wider view.  Some of his 1918 poems 'Insensibility', 'Strange Meeting' and 'Spring Offensive' are among the greatest poems written about war.

In spring 1918, Owen was sent to camp at Ripon to get fit for active service.  At the end of August he returned to France.  He took part in the breaking of the Hindenburg Line, winning a Military Cross.  On the 4th of November, in the last battle of the war, he was killed while his battalion was trying to cross the Oise-Sambe canal at Ors.  He is buried in the village cemetery.

Hibberd, Dominic 2004. Wilfred Owen. Available from: <http://www.warpoets.org/poets/wilfred-owen-1893-1918/>. [17 February 2016]

"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen [1893-1918]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

"Anthem for a Doomed Youth"

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
--Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
 Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
 Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
 And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
 Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
 The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Insensibility

Happy are men who yet before they are killed