Hi my name is Kevin Hicks welcome to my YouTube channel the History Squad.
Now today's video I’m going to recite a poem by the world war one poet
Wilfred Owen as requested by one of my subscribers his handle is someone else.
It's funny isn't it, uh World War One poetry. I was given a book Up the Line to Death when
I was a kid at school. Read this poetry some of it meant something but I’m not an academic,
I’m not a university man, so poetry to me it's uh 'the boy stood on the burning deck' kind of thing.
However as I got more and more into World War One and the poetry, it reminded me of some of
my times as a soldier. When you saw something horrific or you were involved in an incident
violence that kind of thing how afterwards when you're coming down to earth you want to
express how you feel but our words were no good, we were just common soldiers. But
we have this particular poet this Wilfred Owen who was a young man,
never destined to be a soldier, he's plunged into World War One, and there's one or two things that
I find moving. This Wilfred Owen is a young man he was born in 1893 in Oswestry in Shropshire
his family weren't that well off they couldn't afford to send their children to university
and I do know that he spent 15 months as a lay assistant to a vicar down in Dunstan
near Reading in a parish down there, but that gave him um his ability to care for people
because he was doing a lot of that social welfare kind of stuff. And when he joins the army first
as a cadet for the artist rifles and ends with the Manchester regiment, he's put into action in 1917
at the battle of Beaumont Hamel, and it's a shock. Can you imagine that, yeah, you go from
your training and bang your first day on duty with the regiment you're actually in a battle.
Well it resulted in him getting uh what I think it's called neurasthenia, shell shock
and he ended up in a hospital just outside of Edinburgh where he met Siegfried Sassoon
famous war poet from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers.
This was to change him, but instead of me going straight into one of his poems,
I want to read you just a passage from a letter to his mother because he obviously got on very
well with his mother because most of his letters uh that survived the war were to his mother and
this passage is when he's in Etaples. Now Etaples is the training ground, the bull ring. When you
come back off leave you go through the regime of being I suppose re-educated for the trenches
and what he says here, he says "but chiefly I thought of the very strange look on the faces
in that camp, incomprehensible look, which a man will never see in England. Though war
should be in England nor can it be seen in any battle but only in Etaples," only in that camp
"It was not despair or terror, it was more terrible than terror, it was a blindfold
look and without expression, like a dead rabbit's eyes it will never be painted and no actor will
ever seize it and to describe it I think I must go back with them." And he did go back with him
as he was crossing the San Quentin canal he was shot just one week before the end of the war
25 years of age. So the poem I’ve chosen is Dulce et Decorum Est.
Now please forgive me if I fail to pronounce words correctly don't forget I’m not an academic
this poem is about a surprise gas attack as these troops are leaving the front line and
the result of when one of his men he's wounded by gas. To me this sums it all up and also the lie,
but I’ll explain that at the end. Dulce et Decorum Est.
Bent double like old beggars under sacks knock kneed coughing like hags we curse through the
sludge, till on the haunting flares we turn our backs and towards our distant rest begin to
trudge. Men march asleep many had lost their boots but limped on blood shod or went lame or 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 helmet just in time
but someone still was yelling out and stumbling and floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty pains 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 dream you too could pace behind the wagon we flung him in
and watch with white eyes writhing in his face, his hanging face, like a devil sick of sin, if you
could hear at every jolt the blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, bitter as the cud,
a 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.
It is sweet and proper to die for one's country.
Well I hope you enjoyed that reading. It's a bit difficult for me as an old veteran here, I could
feel his words reaching through from the Great War, really getting a grip of my heart, you can
feel his pain and imagine what they went through and yet we still haven't learned have we you know
the old lie it is sweet and proper to die for one's country, wars are still happening but hey
if you enjoyed it, like share and subscribe and remember to turn on the notification
button so you know what's coming down the line but for now cheerio.