The Endless Poetry

Discussing the War Poets

In the fourth episode of Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s seminal television series Blackadder Goes Forth, narcissist-in-chief Lord Flashheart makes an uncharacteristically insightful observation about the First World War. “Just because I can give multiple orgasms to the furniture just by sitting on it,” he says, “doesn’t mean I’m not sick of this damn war: the blood, the noise, the endless poetry.” As if to prove his point, a couple of episodes later in the pathos-drenched finale, Private Baldrick serves up some of his own trench-written rhymes, peaking with his recital of a poem called The German Guns, an unquestionable masterpiece:

According to Max Egremont in his book World War One (which I wrote about in my previous post), “poetry was there from the start of the war…[and] Germany is said to have produced more than a million war poems in 1914.” That is in stark contrast to World War Two, from which “very little great poetry emerged”.

In its compendium of poetry from the First World War, The Poetry Foundation (a truly brilliant independent resource for anyone interested in poetry) outlines how compositions from 1914 and 1915 “extoll the old virtues of honour, duty, heroism, and glory,” but poems written later in the war “approach these lofty abstractions with far greater skepticism and moral subtlety, through realism and bitter irony”.

The war poetry that has endured until today largely falls into the latter camp (although there are exceptions, see The Soldier by Rupert Brooke). Two of the greatest poets of the Great War, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, pulled no punches in their evocations of the Western Front.

Take a look at two of their most famous poems:

The General by Siegfried Sassoon

“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,

And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

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 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,

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.

Both are shocking in their own way. Owen’s masterpiece is visceral, nauseating, and caustic, putting the lie to any sense of the glory of war. It was initially dedicated to Jessie Pope, a popular pro-war poet of the time. Her jingoistic verse now looks preposterous. Who’s for the Game? (first published in the Daily Express in November 1915) was typical of her attempts to cajole men into action: “Who would much rather come back with a crutch / Than lie low and be out of the fun?” Understanding this context, at least for me, only makes Dulce et Decorum Est more impactful.

Sassoon’s The General, meanwhile, takes a different approach, but it’s equally unsettling. He packs a lot into just seven lines, and its upbeat rhythm is in stark contrast to its content, which acts as a scathing and angry condemnation of the British Army’s generals.

Sassoon and Owen both won the Military Cross. According to Egremont, the former “was a brave officer wanting to kill Germans,” and the latter “hated pacifists almost as much as Prussian militarists”. Peace at any price was not their aim, rather a desire to drive home the realities of a war that cost Owen his life. Their compositions are perhaps our best resource for understanding the true horrors endured by those involved.