War never changes. From the beginning of time, man has killed each other for personal grudges, foreign ideologies, or other external causes. However, one thing remains unanimous, and it is that people die. They do not die like in the propaganda spouted to the press, the deaths of a man in war are horrific; blood, guts, brains, and sheer horror. The reality is that war is cruel and demanding and not many people have the strength to survive it honestly. Death is like a friend to some soldiers, and it provides an escape from the muck and piss of combat. Combat reflects the evils that men commit against themselves. However, how is it possible for people to comprehend this, you may ask? Well, if someone is trying to kill you, you should defend yourself. But, when caught up in combat situations a bullet may not be a soldier's only escape. Because if soldiers don’t die and they have to face the repercussions of war that is just as bad to face death itself. Disease and mental disease wind up being a dominant destructive force among combat survivors. A piece that genuinely envelops this theme of combat, war, and death is the poem of Dulce et Decorum Est, written by Wilfred Owen. Owens, a former soldier of World War 1, helps to describe his time of war for future generations as actually being dark, spreading the false truth of attaining glory, and the infatuation of protecting his/her’s country.
Wilfred Owen grew up poor in England, later becoming an educated individual, who went on to become an English/French language teacher in France. When Owens enlisted, he was granted the title of second-lieutenant in the British military, for his professional background. Owens was hospitalized due to the stress inflicted from the disorder, shellshock. While Owens was hospitalized, he met a man named Siegfried Sassoon, an English poet who consistently wrote poems about his life in the trench warfare during the war. This new friend of Owens was vital as it influenced his love of poetry, and his drive to become a poet. This resulted in Owens skillfully describing his setting very vividly. Bombs are going off, blowing the soil up from the ground. Gas is being dropped on soldiers initiating chemical warfare. People are dying all around the writer. It may be hard for some people to comprehend, but in the truth war is dark. Death is the primary opponent in it, and people fight to meet their deaths in reality. Another negative factor is the diseases found commonly at the time of the poem such as trench foot, and shellshock now commonly known as PTSD. Lance Corporal Joseph Watts, a United States Marine Corp veteran describes his combat experiences during the Iraq War as being a “living hell plain and simple.” He also tells about how he “had terrible sleeping conditions and deprivation, while also being stationed in extreme climates, all the while the enemy is still attempting to kill you.” Watts lost the will to count the days to go home, instead of counting the days until he would die, as also feeling vulnerable. War disconnects even the strongest soldier from their most personal ties. Some soldiers describe feeling as though they have become so disconnected from even their family. This feeling of lost connection and the sight of horrors is often referred to as “the darkness” by many soldiers.
You see it in any war story, the valiant hero who charges off into battle, rifle in hand and wins the war single-handedly. Well, reality does not work like that. What would happen is the gunning down of a fool who wanted to be a hero. Veterans always talk about how war does not and should not coincide with the idea of glory. They are right. Should soldiers be courageous, valiant, brave? They entirely should hold this trait, but there is a significant difference between stupidity and bravery. It is not helpful that the British government of Owen’s time consistently shoved down the throat of young British enlistees that they could attain heroism or glory by fighting. Fighting for their families, towns, and comrades was considered attaining glory during this wartime. However, how do you attain glory when you are already dead. Fighting across Europe will not make you a legend, and it will not make you a hero it makes you a slave, a slave who chose to die to gain a title or being praised with a monument or a statue. No, it would have been more useful to fight for an idea, not to fight for personal gain. There’s no such thing as glory in war, says Samuel Fuller a veteran of World War 2 and director of the incredibly favorite war movie, “The Big Red One.” Fuller was an enlisted man in the United States Army in 1941 and saw combat “from North Africa to Sicily and from Omaha Beach to the Folkenau concentration camp, in what is now the Czech Republic, Fuller witnessed atrocities and absurdities beyond anything he could have anticipated.” The truth is Fuller, was more than acquainted with the fact that there is no glory in war as stated by New York Times journalist, A.O. Scott:
“The moral of the story — introduced as "fictional life based on factual death" — is that "the only glory in war is surviving." In both of these statements, the emphasis falls, almost despite itself, on life. And "The Big Red One," for all its uncompromising brutality, is visceral, angrily alive. Fuller was lucky to survive the war. It is our good fortune that this film, a tribute to his luck (and to those who did not share it), has come back to life.”
Scott makes the bold claim that there is no glory in war, and in fact, the most significant personal accomplishment in a war for any glory-seeking soldier should be to survive.
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” The stated line is originally from a piece titled Odes (III.2.13) by the Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus. In English, the line is translated as “It is sweet and proper to die for the fatherland,” it grew in prominence due to Wilfred Owen’s poem, Dulce et Decorum Est. It is found prominently in the last line of the piece in response to all of the atrocities seen during his combat experience. Owens titled this Latin line as being the “Old Lie.” Old because it came from the ancient Romans, and a lie because the British government of the time during World War 1 swindled many enlistees with the promise of personal and national glory. However, many people were and still are to this day very infatuated with protecting their country even when their country would not do the same for the populace. To this day, citizens of various nations especially the United States are very protective of their country. People wear clothes adorned with military emblems and patriotic symbols, overdoing it quite a bit. However, what is the reason for this infatuation? According, to history professor at Princeton University, James McPherson, he believes that “once soldiers are in the Army and are facing combat, there's another kind of motive that becomes added onto whatever ideological or patriotic motives brought them into the Army in the first place, and that is indicated by the second word in the title of my book (For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War), `Comrades.' There's a kind of bonding that takes place within military units, especially that when they face a common danger, that motivates soldiers to fight so–because they do not want to let their buddies down.” So it seems to be due to the enormous amount of patriotism in the country resulting in young boys walking to their death for love of a country that only sees them as a number in their armory, a simple statistic.
No matter what way war is interpreted, there seems to be a multitude of similarities from generation to generation to generation of conflicts. As discussed from the previously stated evidence from the Civil War to World War 1 to World War 2 to the War in Iraq, not one thing has changed. Countries continue to squabble over ridiculous things, and the soldiers who have to fight these wars continue to receive the short end of the stick or the worst odds. Wilfred Owen died on November 4, 1918, one week before the ending of Armistice Day. He was merely just another soldier who died and fought a war that was dark, spread the false hope of glory, and the extreme patriotism of protecting a country that did not care about protecting its soldiers for future enlistees of any time.