Last week I used The Writer's Almanac for this post. The WA feature that day (4 November 2013) was about the poet C. K. Williams.
Well, in addition to the C. K. Williams spot, we also learned that on 4 November 1918, something else happened:
It was on this day in 1918 that British war poet Wilfred Owen (books by this author) was killed in World War I, at the age of 25. In the days before his death, Owen had been excited because he knew the war was almost over. The Germans were retreating and the French had joyfully welcomed the British troops. In his last letter to his mother, Owens wrote: "It is a great life. I am more oblivious than yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here." A few days later, he was trying to get his men across a canal in the early morning hours when they were attacked by enemy fire, and Owen was fatally wounded. The war ended the following week.
Still think war is a glorious endeavor? Here is a Wilfred Owens poem, offered without further comment, Dulce et Decorum Est (source here):
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.
But limped on, blood-shod. All
went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even
to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly
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 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,
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.
NOTES: Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting
to die for one’s country.”
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