We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen

Human Wrongs Watch

By John Scales Avery*

John Scales Avery, author of this book: We Need Their Voices Today! has generously granted Human Wrongs Watch permission to publish it in a series of chapters. This is Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen. The others will follow successively.

Figure 16.1: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) (Wikipedia).

Expressing the horror of war

Wilfred Owen and his mentor, Siegfried Sassoon were two poets who eloquently described the horrors of World War I.

They met in a military hospital, after both had been wounded in the war. Owen had been writing poetry since the age of 11, but not about war.

When he became friends with Sassoon during their hospital stay, Owen was inspired by Sassoon’s example and realized that the horrors of trenches and gas warfare deserved to be described realistically in poetry.

Against the strong advice of Sassoon, Owen insisted on returning to active duty in France, where he wrote the eloquent and bitter war poems for which he is remembered.

Owen was killed in action exactly one week before the end of the war. His mother received the telegram informing her of his death on Armistice Day, as the church bells were ringing out in celebration.

Here are two of Owen’s poems:

Dulce et decorum Est

“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned out 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 gas-shells dropping softly 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.”

The parable of the old man and the young

“So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,

And took the fire with him, and a knife.

And as they sojourned both of them together,

Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,

Behold the preparations, fire and iron,

But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,

and builded parapets and trenches there,

And stretch\`ed forth the knife to slay his son.

When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,

Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,

Neither do anything to him. Behold,

A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;

Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

“But the old man would not so, but slew his son,

And half the seed of Europe, one by one.”

Wilfred Owen, eloquent opponent of war, tragic victim of war, we need your voice today!

Read Previous Chapters:

Introduction: We Need Their Voices Today! Compassion and Greed: Two Sides of Human Nature

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (1) Saint Francis of Assisi

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (2) Thomas Paine

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (3) Thomas Jefferson

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (4) Mary Wollstonecraft

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (5) William Godwin

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (7) The Marquis de Condorcet

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 8: Thomas Robert Malthus

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 9: Percy Bysshe Shelley

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 10: Robert Owen

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 11: John Stuart Mill

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 12: Henry David Thoreau

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 13: Count Leo Tolstoy

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 14: Mahatma Gandhi

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 15: Martin Luther King Jr

——-

*AUTHOR: John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London.

He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent books are Information Theory and Evolution and Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century (pdf).

2017 Human Wrongs Watch

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Posted on 06/08/2017 at 04:37 in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | RSS feed | Reply | Trackback URL

2 Comments to “We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen”

Heather Spears
06/08/2017 at 06:47

Dear John, Many many blessings I am followiing and reading your book. Is it published now? Amazed at your committment and energy much love Heather

On Sun, Aug 6, 2017 at 6:37 AM, HUMAN WRONGS WATCH wrote:

> Baher Kamal posted: “Human Wrongs Watch By John Scales Avery* John Scales > Avery, author of this book: We Need Their Voices > Today! has generously granted Human Wrongs Watch permission to publish it > in a series of chapters. This is Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen. The others will > f” >

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Heather Spears
06/08/2017 at 11:54

Dear John, Many many blessings I am followiing and reading your book. Is it published now? Amazed at your committment and energy much love Heather

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