A Brief OVERVIEW
World War I
•Began August 3, 1914
•Ended November 11, 1918
•Also called
–The Great War
–The War to End all Wars
Poets and POEMS
"My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity."
Wilfred Owen
(1893-1918)
poet, patriot, soldier, pacifist
Dulce Et Decorum Est
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 disappointed shells 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 floundering 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.
Futility
Move him into the sun-Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds,-Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved-- still warm,-- too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
-- O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?
Wilfred Owen – A letter home
"Dearest Mother, So thick is the smoke in this cellar that I can
hardly see by a candle 12 inches away. And so thick are the
inmates that I can hardly write for pokes, nudges, and jolts. On
my left, the company commander snores on a bench. It is a great
life. I am more oblivious than the less, dear mother, of the
ghastly glimmering of the guns outside and the hollow crashing
of the shells.
I hope you are as warm as I am, soothed in your room as I am
here. I am certain you could not be visited by a band of friends
half so fine as surround us here. There is no danger down here or if any, it will be well over before you read these line..."
This was Owen’s
LAST LETTER HOME
Only a couple of days before the end of the
war, Owen wrote this letter after he and his
fellow soldiers took refuge from German
shelling in the cellar of a destroyed house.
They were all in high-spirits due to the
speculation that the war would soon be over
and the belief they might survive it. Owens
was killed not long after finishing the letter.
Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915
"A young Apollo, golden-haired,
Stands dreaming on the verge of
strife, Magnificently unprepared
For the long littleness of life."
These lines were written by Frances Cornford for Brooke,
called by W. B. Yeats, "The most handsome
man in England."
Rupert Brooke saw very little combat in the war, because he
Contracted blood-poisoning from a small neglected injury and
Died in April 1915.
A Channel Passage
The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick
My cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knew
I must think hard of something, or be sick;
And could think hard of only one thing--you!
You, you alone could hold my fancy ever!
And with you memories come, sharp pain, and dole.
Now there's a choice--heartache or tortured liver!
A sea-sick body, or a you-sick soul!
Do I forget you? Retchings twist and tie me,
Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw.
Do I remember? Acrid return and slimy,
The sobs and slobber of a last year's woe.
And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I tell ye,
To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart and belly.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Siegfried Sassoon 1886-1967
Sasson’s enlisted in 1914 joining the
Royal Welch Fusiliers. His war service
was a mixture of brave (almost suicidal)
deeds and a growing sense of
disillusionment with the conflict.
During a spell of convalescence in
which he was treated for 'shell-shock'
at Craiglockhart Hospital
he met and befriended Wilfred Owen
who was also being treated there.
Sassoon's poetry presents a savage and
bitter attack on the nature of the War.
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.
Does It Matter?
Does it matter?-losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?-losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter?-those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad,
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.
Blighters
The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grin
And cackle at the Show, while prancing ranks
Of harlots shrill the chorus, drunk with din;
'We're sure the Kaiser loves our dear old Tanks!'
I'd like to see a tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home'.
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
Born in 1890 of a poor Jewish family,
Rosenberg grew up in the East End of
London. He left school at 14 and
became apprentice to a firm of
engravers in Fleet Street. After a brief
convalescence in Cape Town in 1914
he enlisted with the Suffolk Regiment
in October 1915, later transferring to
the King's Own Royal Lancaster
Regiment. He served on the Western
Front from 1916 onwards but never
rose above the rank of Private.
He died on 1 April, 1918,
whilst on night patrol.
Isaac Rosenberg
Life in the Trenches . . .
was difficult, filthy and morose.
Trench System
The Front Line
Water Logged
Trenches
Trench Foot
Result from the daily exposure to filthy,
disease-filled water common in the
bottom of trenches.
Gas Masks
Used to prevent a horrid, painful slow
death resulting from mustard gas
attacks.
Contaminated Water caused
Dysentery
Preparing a fire for food
Food had to be prepared on small fires.
Most governments made sure
that the men in the trenches did not
go hungry, even though there were
shortages of food at home. The
troops received plenty of tinned
food, bread, jam and biscuits and
the British also produced food
called Maconochie, 'a meal in a tin',
which was quite popular.
Nevertheless, the rations were dull
and sometimes inedible.