...we will remember them.
Wilfred Owen is often regarded as the greatest of the World War I poets (and he is in some fine company indeed: Graves, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Apollinaire, Masefield and Mackintosh to name just a few).
Owen composed nearly all of his poems on the battlefield in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. One week before the Armistice on November 11, 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25.
In my opinion the greatest poem written during the war is Owen’s extraordinary, “Dulce et decorum est”. Taking the full Latin phrase “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (from the Roman poet Horace’s Odes), it means “How sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country”. The soldiers who were slaughtered in the trenches came to epitomise how hollow those words rang. Owen gives us the true picture:
“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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 a 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.”
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen
We remember those young men (and women - my great Aunt was a nurse in WWII) who went away and never returned to family, friends and homeland. We remember that ordinary people became pawns in a much larger game.
We remember so that we can say: Never again!
...we will remember them.
Wilfred Owen is often regarded as the greatest of the World War I poets (and he is in some fine company indeed: Graves, Sassoon, Rosenberg, Apollinaire, Masefield and Mackintosh to name just a few).
Owen composed nearly all of his poems on the battlefield in slightly over a year, from August 1917 to September 1918. One week before the Armistice on November 11, 1918 he was killed in action at the age of 25.
In my opinion the greatest poem written during the war is Owen’s extraordinary, “Dulce et decorum est”. Taking the full Latin phrase “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (from the Roman poet Horace’s Odes), it means “How sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country”. The soldiers who were slaughtered in the trenches came to epitomise how hollow those words rang. Owen gives us the true picture:
“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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 a 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.”
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen
We remember those young men (and women - my great Aunt was a nurse in WWII) who went away and never returned to family, friends and homeland. We remember that ordinary people became pawns in a much larger game.
We remember so that we can say: Never again!