KS2 History: O is for Owen (Wilfred)

Wilfrid Owen enlisted in the British Army in 1915.

He returned to England in 1917 because of shellshock.

Owen started writing poetry about the war when he was in hospital.

His poems are now famous but they weren’t at the time.

2nd Lieutenant Wilfred Edward Salter Owen. Manchester Regiment. Twenty four years of age. Soldier and poet.

I came here to this hospital three months ago. They say I am suffering from shell shock. In this war men see such terrible things that sometimes our minds are damaged and that’s when they send us to places like this.

I’m not the only poet here. The famous poet Seigfred Sassoon is also a patient. He has been really inspirational to me! Sassoon says that soldier poets should write about what they know, they should write about the war. And that’s what I’m trying to do in this poem.

…. We’d been under enemy bombardment for eight days. We hadn’t slept for a week then we had to march eight miles back in the mud and freezing rain. I looked at the men. They were filthy, ill, exhausted. Some were so tired they couldn’t see properly. And some had even fallen asleep as they marched. . When they’d come to France just a few months before they’d been strong, young men and now they were old and broken. I want my readers to see those men.

‘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.’

Until they see men like that, people will never understand what war is.