Dulce et Decorum Est (Historical Context)

Historical Context

“Dulce et Decorum Est” is historically useful because it so poignantly shows both the changes in the way war was to be fought as well as the necessary metamorphosis war poetry would have to undergo in the face of such change. To understand this, it is vital to consider the two major differences the twentieth century brought on to the battle field — namely, technology and trenches.

It has been estimated by war historian Leon Woolf that somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000,000 men died fighting in World War I. This does not include the 21,000,000 soldiers wounded, and only accounts for a million of the 7,750,919 captured or missing in action. While such numbers are certainly staggering, none include the loss of civilian life during the war. It is under this dark umbrella that Wilfred Owen both fought, wrote, and died. The numbers alone would seem to support Owen’s caustic message in “Dulce et Decorum Est”; anyone witnessing such a tremendous loss of life would be hard put to continue feeding young children the romantic rhetoric of patriotism and heroism associated with warfare going into the twentieth century. But what caused such loss? Simply put, mankind became more efficient. The Great War was the first war in which technology was implemented in order to achieve military objectives. Men were equipped with machine guns, capable of spraying the enemy with bullets; the battlefields were bombarded with explosives and gas shells. And with this efficiency, this speed of death, came the demise of the romantic notion of the war hero. As Arthur E. Lane writes in his book An Adequate Response:

The war was a lesson in humility, not an exercise in cultural style: death came unseen and from a distance, and the inoffensive ex-clerk in an ill-fitting uniform who dutifully placed shell after shell in the breechlock of a gun which pointed only at the sky never knew if heroes or cowards or corpses awaited dismemberment in the distance. Men died asleep or playing cards, eating breakfast, writing letters, quarreling, picking lice from their clothes and hair. They died praying or cursing, weeping or dumb with horror, comforting each other or fighting for shelter.

Owen captures this in his poem, too. There are no heroes, only dog-tired men struggling for survival. None knew where the “tired, outstripped Five-Nines” were fired from, and most only have time to retreat beneath the relative safety of their gas masks before it is too late. Owen does not depict the men valiantly overcoming the effects of the gas to help their dying comrade. This is dirt-level survival. This is life on the battlefield. The cost is great and Owen reflects the sheer volume of death wrought by the war when he describes the way the men treated the dying soldier. There is no time for tears; last rites are muffled beneath panes of glass and clouds of gas. The soldiers merely fling him in a wagon. In the end, no one can claim heroism — not the unknown man shelling them, not the unfortunate soldier left to die, and certainly not the guilt-ridden witness whose only response is to follow behind the wagon as the rest of the troops retreat from danger.

Just as the way in which war was fought forced a change in poetic perception, so too did where it was fought. The use of trenches is yet another hallmark of World War I. Wet, cold, and muddy, there was no retreat for the men forced to endure these conditions. In The Truth of War, author Desmond Graham writes of this harsh reality: “Physically, despite the inaction, the soldier is still assaulted, by cold; and physically, just as mentally, he is not left alone but reminded of his defencelessness by the snow which reaches his face. In this state, dreams do remain, and the soldier succumbs to them.” While Graham is specifically relating to Owen’s poem “Exposure” — a detailed account of life in the trenches — the same realities are reflected in “Dulce et Decorum Est” The reader can clearly see the effects living and fighting in the trenches has had on the men in the first stanza. They are not under direct military attack, and yet are “bent double” and “coughing like hags.” Owen makes mention of “the sludge” in which they march, some without boots. Here, too, we see the devastating toll the exposure to the harsh climate has taken on the men before the gas attack even commences. Again, this is not a poem of heroism; it is a poem of fact.

Compare & Contrast

• November 11, 1918: The Armistice agreement is signed at 5:50 a.m.; at 11:00 a.m. all fighting ceases. World War I is over.

  September 1939: The German attack on Poland precipitates World War II. Over 6,000,000 Jews and millions of others will be persecuted and murdered under Nazi tyranny.

  May 8, 1945: Germany surrenders to Allied forces.

  August 6, 1945: The first atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan is dropped on Hiroshima.

  August 9, 1945: The second atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan is dropped on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrender September 2, 1945, bringing an end to World War II.

  June 1950: The North Korean army launches a surprise attack on the thirty-eighth parallel, marking the beginning of the Korean War.

  July 27, 1953: The Armistice signed in Panmunjon brings an end to the Korean War.

  March 8, 1965: The first American combat troops land in Da Nang, Vietnam, marking the “Americanization” of the war in Vietnam.

  1968: The number of American forces in Vietnam reaches over 500,000. Over 14,000 U.S. soldiers will be killed in 1968.

  March 28, 1973: The Last of the American troops and prisoners leave South Vietnam. The United States has lost over 45,000 men killed in action and a further 300,000 have been wounded.

  1982: The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial — “The Wall” — is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

  1990-2000: Wars continue to be waged, throughout the world and for a myriad of different reasons. From the Persian Gulf War to the warfare in Bosnia-Herzegovina, peoples of the world continue to fight each other.