MEMORIES FROM THE TRENCHES
When the World War I broke out thousands of young men volunteered for military service. At the beginning of the war most of them saw the conflict as an adventure and they decided to fight during the war for noble ends. After the first enthusiastic phase of war this sense of pride and patriotism was replaced by disillusionment. Among the people sent to die, many were well-educated and so they could write about their life in the trenches during the war.
There were two kinds of writers: the War poets and the common soldiers. Both experienced the fighting and the difficulties of trench life but the common soldiers were not as well-educated as the War Poets. The War Poets wrote poems while the common soldiers wrote for example diaries, memories, postcards and telegrams. In addition it is also said that the War Poets wrote in order to be read by a large group of people while the common soldiers wanted only to communicate with their families.
The reaction to the war passed through four different phases: the patriotic enthusiasm that led many to enlist was the first stage of war; after the patriotic enthusiasm the second phase was characterized by anger due to the excess of blood and violence; the third stage was the stage of compassion while in the last phase of war appeared a more detached and unsentimental view of the writers.
PATRIOTIC ENTHUSIASM
Among the people who were led to enlist by the patriotic enthusiasm there was a famous war poet: Rupert Brooke. The poem “The Soldier” by Brooke is the most representative of the first attitude to war because it describes the war in a positive, enthusiastic way. In this poem the motherland is considered more important than the life of a soldier and this is explained very well in the first three lines: “If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England” or also at lines four and five : “In that rich heart a richer dust concealed; a dust whom England bore”; in addition it is also important at line twelve the personification of England through the use of “Her” referred to the motherland.
When the World War I broke out thousands of young men volunteered for military service. At the beginning of the war most of them saw the conflict as an adventure and they decided to fight during the war for noble ends. After the first enthusiastic phase of war this sense of pride and patriotism was replaced by disillusionment. Among the people sent to die, many were well-educated and so they could write about their life in the trenches during the war.
There were two kinds of writers: the War poets and the common soldiers. Both experienced the fighting and the difficulties of trench life but the common soldiers were not as well-educated as the War Poets. The War Poets wrote poems while the common soldiers wrote for example diaries, memories, postcards and telegrams. In addition it is also said that the War Poets wrote in order to be read by a large group of people while the common soldiers wanted only to communicate with their families.
The reaction to the war passed through four different phases: the patriotic enthusiasm that led many to enlist was the first stage of war; after the patriotic enthusiasm the second phase was characterized by anger due to the excess of blood and violence; the third stage was the stage of compassion while in the last phase of war appeared a more detached and unsentimental view of the writers.
PATRIOTIC ENTHUSIASM
Among the people who were led to enlist by the patriotic enthusiasm there was a famous war poet: Rupert Brooke. The poem “The Soldier” by Brooke is the most representative of the first attitude to war because it describes the war in a positive, enthusiastic way. In this poem the motherland is considered more important than the life of a soldier and this is explained very well in the first three lines: “If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England” or also at lines four and five : “In that rich heart a richer dust concealed; a dust whom England bore”; in addition it is also important at line twelve the personification of England through the use of “Her” referred to the motherland.
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.
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.
Some soldiers
described the passage between the first phase of patriotic enthusiasm and the
second phase of anger in their letters. In the following letter Brittany writes
that war and trench life was very different from what other people told her
when she was at home, they spoke about a great fatherland and great patriotism,
enthusiasm and pride but she found only violence and blood: “War is very
different from what I was told. I was told by teachers, family members,
"fight for Liberty, fight for justice, fight for your country." They
have no idea what they convinced me to do. They say it is proper and sweet to
die for your country, but I look around these trenches and see the sorrow and
pain in these soldiers eyes.”
Dear mom,
War is very different from what I was told. I was told by teachers, family members, "fight for Liberty, fight for justice, fight for your country." They have no idea what they convinced me to do. They say it is proper and sweet to die for your country, but I look around these trenches and see the sorrow and pain in these soldiers eyes. I see them feeling the way I do fooled, tricked into coming into this war. What is so sweet and proper about being forced into a deadly war when I have my whole life ahead of me? I see these soldiers fight day after day bravely doing what they were forced into doing and still they are all called cowards when they run for cover when things get out of hand. No one here should ever be called a coward for it is courage that attracted them to sign up for this foolish war. If anyone is cowardice it’s those back home telling, pressuring me and others to go into war, when they didn’t even give one thought about going to war themselves. But here I am anyway, no way of getting out without becoming an outcast in my own family.
Signed,
Brittany
ANGER
One of the main reactions to the reality of war was anger. In Sassoon, a war poet who considered the war as a political error, this theme is strongly felt. In his poems he doesn’t attack only the cruelty and the pain of war, but also who caused or encouraged it, for example the politicians at home, the general public, in particular the clergymen and the young girls who applauded and cheered the battles, and those military generals whose bad planning led to heavy casualties.
In “Suicide in the Trenches”, a poem by Sassoon, the poet describes the life of a young man who is taken from his peaceful civilian life to be thrown into the horror of war. The poem expresses the misery of young, innocent men unable to bear the difficulty of trench life with its dirt, cold, and shortage of food and drink which drives them to commit suicide as the only way to escape from that cruelty.
Dear mom,
War is very different from what I was told. I was told by teachers, family members, "fight for Liberty, fight for justice, fight for your country." They have no idea what they convinced me to do. They say it is proper and sweet to die for your country, but I look around these trenches and see the sorrow and pain in these soldiers eyes. I see them feeling the way I do fooled, tricked into coming into this war. What is so sweet and proper about being forced into a deadly war when I have my whole life ahead of me? I see these soldiers fight day after day bravely doing what they were forced into doing and still they are all called cowards when they run for cover when things get out of hand. No one here should ever be called a coward for it is courage that attracted them to sign up for this foolish war. If anyone is cowardice it’s those back home telling, pressuring me and others to go into war, when they didn’t even give one thought about going to war themselves. But here I am anyway, no way of getting out without becoming an outcast in my own family.
Signed,
Brittany
ANGER
One of the main reactions to the reality of war was anger. In Sassoon, a war poet who considered the war as a political error, this theme is strongly felt. In his poems he doesn’t attack only the cruelty and the pain of war, but also who caused or encouraged it, for example the politicians at home, the general public, in particular the clergymen and the young girls who applauded and cheered the battles, and those military generals whose bad planning led to heavy casualties.
In “Suicide in the Trenches”, a poem by Sassoon, the poet describes the life of a young man who is taken from his peaceful civilian life to be thrown into the horror of war. The poem expresses the misery of young, innocent men unable to bear the difficulty of trench life with its dirt, cold, and shortage of food and drink which drives them to commit suicide as the only way to escape from that cruelty.
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain,
No one spoke of him again.
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain,
No one spoke of him again.
PITY
Owen was another war poet who reacts to the cruelty of war. But if the dominant trait in Sassoon’s approach to war is anger, in Owen’s, it is the sympathy and pity for the young soldiers in their suffering. Through the language, he expresses images that make the audience share the experience as if the soldiers were actually living in trenches.
For example, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” he shows a group of soldiers trying to escape from a gas attack. One of them fails to wear the gas helmet in time, so he dies horribly. Owen describes the most terrible aspects of his death violent images. He wants to show young soldiers, who volunteered, the truth of the war which is so cruel and violent.
Owen was another war poet who reacts to the cruelty of war. But if the dominant trait in Sassoon’s approach to war is anger, in Owen’s, it is the sympathy and pity for the young soldiers in their suffering. Through the language, he expresses images that make the audience share the experience as if the soldiers were actually living in trenches.
For example, in “Dulce et Decorum Est” he shows a group of soldiers trying to escape from a gas attack. One of them fails to wear the gas helmet in time, so he dies horribly. Owen describes the most terrible aspects of his death violent images. He wants to show young soldiers, who volunteered, the truth of the war which is so cruel and violent.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 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.
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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines 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 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.
Also letters sent by soldiers to their families are about the disillusionment the soldier felt.
The following letter written by a soldier to his parents shows the poor living conditions in the trenches and the fear of death that dominates all the soldiers. In the first line the soldier says that the war is a lot different from what he had expected, so probably he enlisted voluntarily, but he soon realized that the war is violent and brings death. He also says that thanks to this experience he has a new perception of life at home, made of pleasures and tranquility.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I have been at the front for some time now and it is a lot different than what I had expected. It seems that the wind is always blowing to the east and the Germans take advantage of this, we are using our gas masks regularly. We have been attacked so often that taking cover from bombs, shooting, and gas has become second nature. I however, cannot say so much for the other soldiers. Pierre, our neighbour, was shot down in No Man’s Land, during a counterattack.
I can't bear to live in these trenches much longer. Everyone suffers from constant itching, there is really no point in trying to rid yourself of the lice, they are everywhere. The rats are enormous and I would not mind as much if they weren’t as numerous but it seems that some of them weigh more than a few of the new recruits. Nothing is dry, the rain is relentless, food is scarce as well as sleep. The shelling and simply being here is enough to keep you awake for hours on end.
Being here gives me a new perspective on the life back home. I took for granted the little pleasures I experienced daily. Family, friends, school, three meals a day, privacy, and quiet. Boots, dry socks, and clean clothes are luxuries now. When I enlisted I never envisioned the horror I would face here in the trenches. Pray that I will return home safely.
Love,
Jacques
DETACHMENT
Rosenberg vision of the war was unsentimental and less concerned with the pity of things. He presented realistic and shocking details, sometimes with a touch of irony or thought paradox and contrast.
We can see this in “Break of Day in the Trenches” indeed where the poet highlights the insignificance of war through the relationship between a soldier and a rat. The author uses a rat as a symbolic image. The rat in the trenches can very easily travels between the two opposing fronts, whereas the soldier does not possess such privilege. Rosenberg describes the rat, commonly considered a filthy organism attributed to the spread of diseases, as the only one that finds the war ‘amusing,’ and an element of irony arises when the rat is referred to as the only “cosmopolitan”, even though they are commonly considered the lowest form of life. They are not only surviving, but benefiting from the given situation. The rat, with the personified qualities Rosenberg attributes it, seems to indicate the uselessness of war for humans; soldiers are being slaughtered in the war, while the rat freely “crosses the sleeping green between”. Using the rat’s perspective, Rosenberg shows that in war the rat is superior, demonstrating that it has a higher chance of survival by discreetly moving through enemy lines and benefiting from the casualties.
The following letter written by a soldier to his parents shows the poor living conditions in the trenches and the fear of death that dominates all the soldiers. In the first line the soldier says that the war is a lot different from what he had expected, so probably he enlisted voluntarily, but he soon realized that the war is violent and brings death. He also says that thanks to this experience he has a new perception of life at home, made of pleasures and tranquility.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I have been at the front for some time now and it is a lot different than what I had expected. It seems that the wind is always blowing to the east and the Germans take advantage of this, we are using our gas masks regularly. We have been attacked so often that taking cover from bombs, shooting, and gas has become second nature. I however, cannot say so much for the other soldiers. Pierre, our neighbour, was shot down in No Man’s Land, during a counterattack.
I can't bear to live in these trenches much longer. Everyone suffers from constant itching, there is really no point in trying to rid yourself of the lice, they are everywhere. The rats are enormous and I would not mind as much if they weren’t as numerous but it seems that some of them weigh more than a few of the new recruits. Nothing is dry, the rain is relentless, food is scarce as well as sleep. The shelling and simply being here is enough to keep you awake for hours on end.
Being here gives me a new perspective on the life back home. I took for granted the little pleasures I experienced daily. Family, friends, school, three meals a day, privacy, and quiet. Boots, dry socks, and clean clothes are luxuries now. When I enlisted I never envisioned the horror I would face here in the trenches. Pray that I will return home safely.
Love,
Jacques
DETACHMENT
Rosenberg vision of the war was unsentimental and less concerned with the pity of things. He presented realistic and shocking details, sometimes with a touch of irony or thought paradox and contrast.
We can see this in “Break of Day in the Trenches” indeed where the poet highlights the insignificance of war through the relationship between a soldier and a rat. The author uses a rat as a symbolic image. The rat in the trenches can very easily travels between the two opposing fronts, whereas the soldier does not possess such privilege. Rosenberg describes the rat, commonly considered a filthy organism attributed to the spread of diseases, as the only one that finds the war ‘amusing,’ and an element of irony arises when the rat is referred to as the only “cosmopolitan”, even though they are commonly considered the lowest form of life. They are not only surviving, but benefiting from the given situation. The rat, with the personified qualities Rosenberg attributes it, seems to indicate the uselessness of war for humans; soldiers are being slaughtered in the war, while the rat freely “crosses the sleeping green between”. Using the rat’s perspective, Rosenberg shows that in war the rat is superior, demonstrating that it has a higher chance of survival by discreetly moving through enemy lines and benefiting from the casualties.
The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet’s poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver—what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man’s veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust
Also the following letter deals with the like young soldiers were told about war and with the long-lasting psychological effects of war.
To be a soldier,
Known as being a hero,
For fighting for his country’s honor or liberty,
That is wonderful on the battle fields,
And to be a soldier was the life,
That is not the soldier I know,
A soldier is who lays in bloody filth and corpses,
Fighting for his life and lost comrades,
A soldier fights laying next to pieces of men,
From a fallen shell from his so called enemy,
A soldier is not what they make it out to be,
He fights for a cause that most forget about,
But for those that can't forget,
Are those in the trenches,
That were told to kill with lies,
Lies that make a soldier hate those against them,
A soldier is not a man,
But a corpse that lays on fields of poppies,
And when his country declares the war is over,
A soldier is still at war till he dies,
For a soldier can never forget,
Never forget the killing and death,
For it is part of a soldier's life,
That is the soldier I know.
By Chad
Known as being a hero,
For fighting for his country’s honor or liberty,
That is wonderful on the battle fields,
And to be a soldier was the life,
That is not the soldier I know,
A soldier is who lays in bloody filth and corpses,
Fighting for his life and lost comrades,
A soldier fights laying next to pieces of men,
From a fallen shell from his so called enemy,
A soldier is not what they make it out to be,
He fights for a cause that most forget about,
But for those that can't forget,
Are those in the trenches,
That were told to kill with lies,
Lies that make a soldier hate those against them,
A soldier is not a man,
But a corpse that lays on fields of poppies,
And when his country declares the war is over,
A soldier is still at war till he dies,
For a soldier can never forget,
Never forget the killing and death,
For it is part of a soldier's life,
That is the soldier I know.
By Chad