The cruelest month: Guttering, choking, drowning

The First World War is one of my research concentration areas as a military historian. It was a cataclysmic convergence of technological advances, imperial and nationalistic policies, and just plain unfuckingbelievable stupidity. What a way to usher in the 20^th Century, eh?

Rather oddly, a lot of poetry came out of those four years—at least amongst the British forces. Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon are a few of the best-known. My favorite, though is Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action just seven days before the Armistice of 11 November 1918.

It’s hard to choose which of his poems to share; every one of them puts you through some horror that the Western Front vomited forth to everyone in the vicinity of the trenches. “Anthem for Doomed Youth” could be applied to any soldiers of any war

But the first poem of Owen's I ever read was “Dulce et Decorum est”, so that’s what I’m giving you.

One of the examples of monumental stupidity during that war was the use of lethal gas, either delivered via artillery or just released. It’s like the morons running the show never considered that they were surrounded by winds, which can shift and send your hot-shot latest chemical weapon…well, anywhere, including through your own lines. Chlorine, phosgene, mustard and other types were all deployed by armies on both sides. They caused serious damage to individual pulmonary systems without having any serious effect on strategy. The descriptions of poison gas victims are not for the faint of heart: imagine being blind and feeling your lungs being on fire even as they fill up with fluid and drown you.

In this poem Owen describes the aftermath of such an attack. It, also, is not for the faint of heart.

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 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 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 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.

If you’re unfamiliar with the final line, it’s from an ode by the Roman poet Horace. It translates roughly to, “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”.