dulce et decorum est

[Skipman]

Wonder who the unfortunate soldier was in Owens wonderful poem?(Dulce et decorum est)

[pat geary]

Any and every one of thousands.

[hudson]

Could you give us who don't know it a few lines of the poem

Thanks

[eviltaxman]

The following has been taken from www.warpoetry.co.uk

The numbers relate to footnotes

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest3 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 hoots4

Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that dropped behind.

Gas!7 Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets8 just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . . .

Dim, through the misty panes10 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,11 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 cud12

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest13

To children ardent14 for some desperate glory,

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est

Pro patria mori.15

8 October 1917 - March, 1918

1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country

2 rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines (See illustration, page 118 of Out in the Dark.)

3 a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer

4 the noise made by the shells rushing through the air

5 outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away from the scene of battle

6 Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells

7 poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same effects as when a person drowned

8 the early name for gas masks

9 a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue

10 the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks

11 Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling

12 normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth

13 high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea

14 keen

15 see note 1

[Alan Tucker]

We will never know. Even though the circumstances of death of the sentry at Redan Ridge (Jan 1917) were detailed in a letter to his mother Susan he does not name him. There is no reference to a specific incident which inspired Dulce unlike 'The Sentry'.

[Skipman]

Am sure read somewhere,the incident was recorded.Owen was good at navigating and managed to get his men back to their"distant rest".On their way to the rear a gas shell dropped among them and man was killed.I agree it's unlikely we will ever know his name .He was in the manchester regiment.If a date could be found we could look up CWGC and find a casualty on that date and put 2&2 together.Does that make sense?

[hudson]

Could you give us who don't know it a few lines of the poem

Thanks

Thanks for the poem. Never have I read such heart wrenching verses.

Thanks again

Sylvia

[Richard Matlock]

Thanks for the poem. Never have I read such heart wrenching verses.

Thanks again

Sylvia

Thanks for the poem. Never have I read such heart wrenching verses.

Thanks again

Sylvia

[Richard Matlock]

If you think those words were heart felt , you should read the rest of his war poetry truely stunning , everyone from this period, his selected letters are also very moving especially the one were he was out in no mans land that the poem the sentry is based on a fasinating man especially with his connection to Sassonn Graves and Blundel.

Rich M

[Skipman]

Don't want to turn it into a poetry forum but... also read sassoon's "the Hawthorn Tree" ,think only men who had been through it could write like that.90 yrs on and they can still shock!