WORLD WAR I POETRY “At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them.” (Binyon15-16) “For the Fallen”

Popularity Jon McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” became the inspiration for the British Legion’s annual poppy campaign Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” one of best known poems in English- choice of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for inclusion in The Big Book of Little Poems

“The War that was Great” Vernon Scannell First major war for British troops for a hundred years On such a huge and mechanized scale that very few communities or even families were untouched Conscription- introduced in Britain for the first time in 1916, but even before that tens of thousands had enlisted Professional soldiers vastly outnumbered by volunteers and conscripts

Changing times… Officer class received education founded on the classics and informed by the idealism of Victorian and Edwardian culture Universal education meant private soldiers were literate and that influenced the average soldier The war came at a great time of great social, political and cultural change Birth of movements in the arts (modernism) Industrial and political unrest throughout Europe

During the war the term “soldier-poet” was “almost as familiar as a ration card” (Edmund Blunden) In the television series Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) Lord Flasheart complains, “I’m sick of this damn war- the blood, the noise, the endless poetry.”

It also closely parallels Vietnam as it represents an overwhelming feeling of futility, in that so many lives were wasted for such little gain. Unlike the Second World War, which more easily falls into the 'just war' definition World War I appears as a conflict with aims that were quickly lost. The First World War runs through the British modern- day psyche like no other conflict. On Remembrance Day Sunday thoughts (of those who have not fought) turn to the fields in Flanders It has been described as Britain's 'Vietnam' The true horror of War touched everyone and everything in the country, breaking through the class barrier and irreversibly altering the social structure of the nation. Significance of WW1

Themes of WW1 Poetry Patriotism Heroism War and Nature Visions and Dreams

Robert Brooke’s Brooke's entire reputation as a war poet rests on only 5 "war sonnets.“ Brooke's war experience consisted of one day of limited military action with the Hood Battalion during the evacuation of Antwerp. Consequently, his "war sonnets" swell with naive sentiments of the most general kind on the themes of maturity, purpose and romantic death – the kind of sentiments held by many (but not all) young Englishmen at the outbreak of the war. Died of blood poisoning from a mosquito bite while in route to Gallipoli with the Navy

Brooke’s Influence Brooke's poetry gives us a glimpse of a golden era in England just before the First World War. It was a golden time only for the upper classes… They enjoyed the fruits of Britain's imperial dominance: public school education, guaranteed employment (if they desired it) and access to the rich and powerful members of society. The gap between rich and poor was wide during this period, and unrest was beginning to grow among the lower classes. The war gave a huge shock to the system and, despite the terrible human cost, led eventually to a more equal society, The poorer classes were largely the ones dying in the trenches as a result of orders issued by untrained, aristocratic generals living miles behind the lines.

The Soldier If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England. There shall be In 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 less Gives 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. Rupert Brooke

Wilfred Owen Wilfred Owen was 21 when the war broke out. Although he had failed to win a scholarship to university, he was very intelligent and cultured. Owen was not horrified or elated by the outbreak of war, although during 1914, he became more aware of the human sacrifice involved and was filled with confusion.

He led his platoon into the Battle of the Somme. He wrote to his mother every week and described what he had been through: "Those fifty hours were the agony of my happy life... I nearly broke down and let myself drown in the water that was now rising slowly above my knees. In the Platoon on my left, the sentries over the dug-out were blown to nothing". He was eventually diagnosed as having neurasthenia (shell shock) and was sent back to England, then to Craiglockhart War hospital near Edinburgh.

His poems recreated the miserable conditions and constant stress with which the soldiers lived – the mud, rats, barbed wire, lice, fleas, corpses, blood and constant shelling. He also gave graphic descriptions of the effects of poison gas. Owen's most famous poems were written from this time until he left the hospital. Owen wrote for an entire generation of young men killed or horribly wounded in a four year war. In one poem “Disabled,” he wrote about the thousands of young men who dreamed of glory and triumph and joined the army with all the others in the factory, or on their street, or at a football match, where recruiting drives were often made.

Owen is the most famous of all the war poets as he succeeded in portraying the reality of the war – the boredom, the helplessness, the horror and above all, the futility of it - without losing his artistic poise, or allowing bitterness to creep into his work. Wilfred Owen returned to the front in 1918 and was awarded the military cross for bravery for capturing a German machine gun. He never received it as he was killed early on the morning of 4th November 1918, seven days before the armistice. Dulce Et Decorum Est

Siegfried Sassoon Born in England, in 1886 Educated at Marlborough and Cambridge where he studied both law and history before leaving without taking a degree. Between November 1915 and April 1917 he served as a second lieutenant in both the First and Second Battalions R.W.F. On November 1, 1915 Sassoon suffered his first personal loss of the War. His younger brother Hamo was buried at sea after being mortally wounded at Gallipoli. Sassoon subsequently commemorated this with a poem entitled To My Brother.

These losses upset Sassoon and he became determined to "get his revenge" on the Germans. About a month later, he was involved in a raid on Kiel Trench. His actions in getting his dead and wounded men back to the British trenches earned him a Military Cross, which he received the day before the start of the Battle of the Somme, in July 1916.

It was at Craiglockhart that Sassoon met the Wilfred Owen. Sassoon himself wrote a good deal of poetry whilst at Craiglockhart After four months at Craiglockhart, Sassoon was again passed fit for General Service abroad. He had spent many hours talking to his psychiatrist, Dr. W.H.R. Rivers and eventually realised that his protest had achieved nothing, except to keep him away from his men

The Animals of WWI Click on the Dog!