It is sweet and right to die for your country

Listening to a beautiful program depicting the three Great War time poets Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Grieves one is struck by the fragility and sensibility of the compassionate mind in these young men so inadequately provisioned for the horror of trench warfare.

Minds that were already finely tuned to the nature of things around them were blown apart by the incessant pounding of the guns and the carnage it produced.

Rough hewn lads from the farms and factories were no better at coping with this man made hell but they at least probably saw in it all the rough usage of mankind much as in the factories and the poor domestic conditions many of them called home.

 But men like Owen were, like that classic Don McLean song, Vincent, Starry starry night, which recalls Vincent Van Gogh, "the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you".

The counterpoise between the conceptualised beauty in their minds eye and the trauma around them, he used his genius to translate not just the carnage but the strength and character of the situation.

There is also that death wish for the officer who could use his position to withdraw from the front when wounded and fain reasons for staying away, unlike the ordinary soldier who was in the trenches to stay, these young lieutenants and captains chose to return, as did Owen until "that bullet" found him. 

How crazy that the generals still demanded their "hundred yds of ground" whilst an Armistice was being negotiated. With days to go, as the war ground to a halt, Owen leading his men on a needless exercise was shot and killed along with many of his men. What a waste, what a crime !!

Starry starry night

Portraits hung in empty halls

Frame-less heads on nameless walls  

With eyes that watch the world and can't forget.

Like the strangers that you've met

Ragged men in ragged clothes 

The silver thorn of bloody rose

Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know

What you tried to say to me

And how you suffered for your sanity

And how you tried to set them free

They would not listen, they're not listening still

Perhaps they never will.

          -----------------------------

Bent double like old beggars under sacks

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

Till on the haunting flairs 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 went blind

Drunk with fatigue, deaf even to the hoots
Of tired outstripped Five -nines that dropped behind.

Gas Gas! Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time

But someone was still yelling out 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 smoothing dream you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in

And watch the white eyes writhe in his face

His hanging face like a devils sick of sin

If you could hear at every joint 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

(It is sweet and right to die for your country)

Wilfred Owen