Consider how the poets of Lamentations and Bohemians tell us about the way in which the army can be a brutal and demoralising

poem Bohemians, Ivor Gurney explains how these were the types of soldiers who would have made life uneasy for their superior officers. Gurney tells the reader how these “people would not clean their buttons/Nor polish buckles after latest fashions”. This conveys the idea that bohemians were the kind of people who were unfazed by the war and although it troubled them to be at war fighting, they lived life as they would if they were not there; “smoking without army cautions/Spending hours that sped like evil for wickedness”. These soldiers would have chosen to not become ‘model’ or what they would have considered to be ‘mindless’ soldiers.        Gurney has written this poem almost in free verse, though certain words at the end such as ‘cautions’ and ‘promotions’ give the poem a sort of rhyme scheme. This portrays the notion that the bohemians would not have followed the rules whilst fighting at war, and not abided by the regulations set. Coupled with this is the comparative lack of punctuation that continues throughout the poem, except from commas. This enjambment proceeds until the penultimate line, in which the first full stop occurs. This accentuates the last line, which is the most poignant line of the poem, “In Artois or Picardy they lie – free of useless fashions.” This line shows that now they have died, they are finally free from having to tolerate the decrees set by the governing officers of the First World War. This is an ironic final line as through death, they are freed from the bonds of army expectations and regulations about behaviour and uniform.        This poem is, to a certain extent, about the dehumanising effects of war “and wrenched/What little soul they had still further from shape,” and how the bohemians did not allow the war change their view on life or their attitudes towards existence change entirely.        The poem, Lamentations, by Siegfried Sassoon has quite the opposite effect on the reader and overall a different viewpoint on the effects caused by men at war. This poem explains how men at war were truly susceptible to the demoralising factors of fighting in this Great War. Sassoon writes about a man who has heard of his brother’s death and is found “in the guard-room at the Base.”. Words such as “howled”, “moaned”, “shouted” and “sobbed” tell the reader simply how distraught the war has made this man. These verbs conjure vivid images of the distress this man is going through, conveying to the reader how brutal and demoralising the army can be. The structure of this poem is very haphazard and Sassoon has several caesuras and an occasional use of enjambment. This random structure is a symbol of the confused emotions and desperation that the man in the poem, and indeed, many other soldiers felt during the First World War. The caesuras give the poem a very broken sound and it almost sounds like the sobbing of the man described in the poem. The final line of this poem is the most important and poignant, as in Bohemians, as it explains how the narrator feels of the situation and how he generalises this man’s situation telling the reader how often fighting soldiers are broken and become demoralised and become victims of the effects of being in the army. These poems are indeed juxtaposed with one another and when contrasted, we can see how the army has different effects on people even though their circumstances may be the same. No matter the situation though, fighting in army can ultimately take it’s toll on all men, as we see in Bohemians, the men are eventually effected by their time in the army when they are only able to find peace through death.