Wilfred Owen was a relatively young man when he died in battle a week before the end of what became known as the First World War. His experience on the battlefields of Europe didn’t take long to kill the romantic view of battle that was commonly inculcated into his generation and was attempted to be inculcated in my own. In this poem, he describes the horror of a gas attack from the perspective of a common soldier.

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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas!⁷ 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.

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

The Latin phrase is from Horace and is usually translated as “It is sweet and just to die for the fatherland.” It seems to me that we’re hearing sentiments something along those lines these days, little logical quandaries such as “freedom isn’t free” and raising, it seems, whole families that are dedicated to the military sacrifice.

I hope we can reconsider all this. Surely, the purpose of our so-called wonderful experiment isn’t perpetual war.