War Poetry

1. War Poetry World War One

2. World War One • Unlike World War Two, the First World War was not ideological. • It began with the assassination of the Arch-Duke of Austria by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo.

3. Alliances • Throughout Europe various countries had alliances with one another. • This meant meant they must join a war if one of their allies did. • Though the UK had absolutely nothing to do with the assassination, they had to join the war because they were allied to France.

4. UK, France and Russia Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy Allies

5. Nationalism and the Military • The late 19th/ early 20th century was time of increased nationalism throughout Europe. • Huge amounts of money were spent on weapons technology in European countries.

6. Empire • The desire for power and national kudos is reflected in the way European countries were claiming other parts of the world as their own. • Because so many European countries had global empires, it became a WORLD war.

7. Indian and African soldiers

8. World War One • We call it World War One or The First World War. • It was also called “The Great War” and ironically, “The War to End All Wars.”

9. Wilfred Owen 1893 - 1918

10. Wilfred Owen • Wilfred Owen died in the last week of the war. • He just was 25 years old. • Despite his youth, his poems are the most famous descriptions of the war.

11. Dulce et Decorum est 1917-18

12. Dulce et Decorum est • Dulce et decorum est is probably the most well-known poem of the First World War. • Like all Owen poems it gives a very detailed description of the horrible and exhausting realities of a soldier’s life.

13. Stanza One 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.

14. Stanza One • This stanza evokes the exhaustion of the men. • Many are marching without boots on feet covered with blood. • Five-nines are shells that hold mustard gas.

15. Mustard Gas Mustard gas doesn’t necessarily kill you. It burns your skin and eyes and lungs. It leaves victims scarred and disfigured.

16. Mustard Gas

17. Stanza Two 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.

18. Stanza Two • One man does not get his gasmask on in time. • He is therefore blistered and burned by the mustard gas. • Owen describes being still able to see him in his dreams.

19. Stanza Three 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.

20. Stanza Three • Owen is saying that if you (the reader) had been there too, you would never encourage young men to come to war.

21. The last lines • Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is latin for: “It is sweet and fitting to die for your country.” • This is a quote taken from the Roman poet Horace. • Owen is describing this as “the old lie.”

22. Propoganda • This quote was being used in the UK to encourage young men to become soldiers. • They were told that the war was glorious. • Owen wrote this poem as a message to anyone who supported the war.

23. Soldiers • Conscription (National Service) was not introduced in the UK until 1916. • Initially the war was being fought by volunteers. • Young men were promised excitement and glory if they were willing to fight.

24. Wartime Propoganda

25. Anthem for Doomed Youth 1917

26. Sonnet • Anthem for Doomed Youth is a sonnet (almost). • It is 14 lines long. • Most of the lines have 10 syllables. • It almost has a sonnet’s rhyme structure • The last two lines rhyme.

27. Anthem for Doomed Youth What passing-bells for those who die as cattle? A Only the monstrous anger of the guns. B Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle A Can patter out their hasty orisons. B No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; C Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, D The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; C And bugles calling for them from sad shires. D What candles may be held to speed them all? E Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes F Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes. F The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall; E Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, G And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. G

28. Anthem for Doomed Youth • This poem uses traditional images of an English funeral: Prayers, church bells, choirs, candles • But this traditional mourning will be denied the huge number of men who die in the war.

29. Owen Quote “This book is not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

30. Craiglockhart War Hospital • Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon met in hospital during the war in 1917. • Sassoon helped Owen to complete both of the poems we just read. • In 1918, Owen returned to the trenches, though Sassoon threatened to stab him in the leg if he went back.

31. Siegfried Sassoon 1886 - 1967

32. Siegfried Sassoon • Unlike Wilfred Owen Sassoon did not return to the trenches when he left hospital and therefore he survived the war.

33. Trenches • The trenches were just muddy holes dug in the ground. • Soldiers had to stay in them for months. • When it rained they filled with water.

34. Trenches

35. A modern war fought with old strategies. • The First World War was the first war to be fought: Using chemical weapons With machine guns In trenches • But the military strategies had not been updated.

36. Death • This meant that thousands of (very) young men were sent to walk out into machine gun fire. • The generals were used to wars fought with muskets (rifles).

37. True stories of war • Both Owen and Sassoon felt they had an obligation to tell the true story of what was happening in the war. • The truth was that for long periods things were very tedious, then horrific.

38. The Counter-Attack 1918

39. Stanza One: WE’D gained our first objective hours before While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes, Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke. Things seemed all right at first. We held their line, With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed, And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench. The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud, Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled; And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair, Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime. And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!

40. Stanza One • The soldiers are deepening the trench. • It is filled with the rotting bodies of soldiers. • It is deliberately casual, ending by complaining about the rain.

41. Stanza Two: A yawning soldier knelt against the bank, Staring across the morning blear with fog; He wondered when the Allemands would get busy; And then, of course, they started with five-nines Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud. Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell, While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke. He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

42. Stanza Two • The stanza begins with a bored soldier waiting for something to happen. • When the five-nines start to fall, he crouches terrified watching the dead and dying.

43. Stanza Three: An officer came blundering down the trench: ‘Stand-to and man the fire-step!’ On he went... Gasping and bawling, ‘Fire-step ... counter-attack!’ Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left; And stumbling figures looming out in front. ‘O Christ, they’re coming at us!’ Bullets spat, And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire... And started blazing wildly ... then a bang Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom, Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans... Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned, Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

44. Stanza Three • An officer tells him to “counter-attack.” • He is sent out of the trench into machine-gun fire. • He is shot and he dies unnoticed.

45. Irony • A lot of the poem and particularly the last line is ironic: Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned. Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed. • It shows how a general or a politician would describe the event: “the counter attack had failed” • But the poem has already shown us the real human suffering involved.

46. Effects of the war

47. Human Cost • Altogether more the 60 million men fought in World War One. • More than 8 million men were killed across Europe. • The returning soldiers were called “the lost generation.”

48. Injury and Shell-shock • 7 million men had arms and legs amputated. • Post-traumatic stress disorder, (which was then called shell-shock) affected millions of the men who survived.

49. Financial Cost • The war was the most expensive thing that Europe had ever done. • It cost the equivalent of billions of dollars.

50. Geography • The geography of Europe had changed forever as well. • New countries had been created and old powers were now split apart.