The rest were like the French soldiers who went up to the Front bleating like sheep as their comment on their position, but still went. For Owen and Sassoon to write as they did took courage. For us, now, it is quite easy to be anti-war and believe all the soldiers were back then - a view soon overthrown by reading what they wrote in 'The Wipers Times'and the like: most of them, like my own grandfather who volunteered in 1915, as far as I can establish, never ever spoke of the War at all, under any circumstances. The area now sells itself as 'Wilfred Owen Country', but nobody made much of him at the time: they were still WW1-type respectables. We used to avoid cricket by going to play tennis in what had been Owen's house in Oswestry, Plas Wilmot. To children ardent for some desperate glory, My friend, you would not tell with such high zest Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,. If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodĬome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin, If in some smothering dreams, you too could paceĪnd watch the white eyes writhing in his face, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. In all my dreams before my helpless sight Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumblingīut someone still was yelling out and stumblingĪnd flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-ĭim through the misty panes and thick green light,Īs under a green sea, I saw him drowning. All went lame, all blind ĭrunk with fatigue deaf even to the hoots Many had lost their boots,īut limped on, blood-shod. Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,Īnd towards our distant rest began to trudge. Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
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