A Brief OVERVIEW

A Brief OVERVIEWA Brief OVERVIEW

World War IWorld War I•Began August 3, 1914•Ended November 11, 1918•Also called

–The Great War–The War to End all Wars

Poets and Poets and POEMSPOEMS

"My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

Wilfred Owen(1893-1918)

poet, patriot, soldier, pacifist

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf 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 stumblingAnd floundering like a man in fire or lime.--Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lightAs under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind 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 bloodCome gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro patria mori.

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 nowThe 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?

Futility

"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..."

Wildfred Owen – A 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.

This was Owen’s

LAST LETTER HOME

Rupert Brooke, 1887-1915

"A young Apollo, golden-haired,Stands dreaming on the verge of strife, Magnificently unpreparedFor 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.

The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quickMy cold gorge rose; the long sea rolled; I knewI 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.

A Channel Passage

If I should die, think only this of me:That there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn 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 lessGives 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.

The Soldier

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.

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.

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES

Does it matter?-losing your legs?...For people will always be kind,And you need not show that you mindWhen the others come in after huntingTo 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 rememberingAnd 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 countryAnd no one will worry a bit.

Does It Matter?

The house is crammed: tier beyond tier they grinAnd cackle at the Show, while prancing ranksOf 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-hallsTo mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.

Blighters

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.was difficult, filthy and morose.

Trench System

The Front Line

Water Logged Water Logged TrenchesTrenches

Trench FootTrench Foot

Result from the daily exposure to filthy, disease-filled water common in the bottom of trenches.

Gas MasksGas Masks

Used to prevent a horrid, painful Used to prevent a horrid, painful slow death resulting from mustard slow death resulting from mustard gas attacks.gas attacks.

Contaminated Water Contaminated Water caused Dysenterycaused 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.