The second stanza describes the gas attack and it is described in particular detail as to show the horror and severity of a disastrous and life endangering gas attack.
“Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
But fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;”
The soldiers are being alerted by an officer of a gas attack, suggesting that they react quickly and protect themselves. Owen uses the word ‘ecstasy’ to describe the panic and rapidity of their reaction to the sudden warning. But then the soldier puts the helmet on his head just in time and is relieved.
But one man didn’t have a helmet and was still yelling out and stumbling for someone to help him. He stumbles as he is panicking and doesn’t want to die. Owen says, “And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…” Owen uses the word floundering to suggest that he is jumping like a fish, desperately gasping for air. Owen is trying to show the suffering of a person if something goes wrong. Then he tells us that through his mask and the green gas (chlorine) as under a green sea of gas he saw this man drowning in it, or falling to his death:
“Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.”
In the two lines after the second stanza he is saying to us that he still has nightmares about the man, seeing him plunging or jumping towards him, pleading for help. Guttering is used to capture the sound that the throat makes, as though he was choking with blood in his throat. The ghastly death of the person seems to have had such an impact that it still affects him, suggesting to people back home that war would leave a scar on a surviving person and the deaths would still haunt them.
The final stanza is the author talking to the read saying that if they were there they would see what he saw and think what he thought about war. He was trying to deter people from going to war and experience what he experienced as war was not what they thought it was and so they should not go to see what it was like as it would definitely make them change their minds.
He describes how they would run behind the wagon that the dead body would be flung in and how his eyes were open and writhing in his face. Even the devil would feel sick if he saw his hanging face, even though he encourages war and suffering. Every time the wagon hit a bump blood came gargling from his mouth. This shows the horrific outcome of a death and suggests that if we were there we would see war for what it actually was.
He says that we would not tell children who were ardent for glory and didn’t want to miss out, with such enthusiasm the lie:
“Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.”
(“It is sweet and fitting to die for your country”)
Owen’s next poem is ‘The Send-Off’. This poem is completely different to ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ as it is all about the men being rounded up and going on trains to the desired location. Then it talks about the few who returned and how they would return.
The first line says that they went ‘down the close, darkening lanes’ rather than on the platform with members of family and friends cheering them on while sending them off to war. They were sent in the dark out of view of everybody as though they were ashamed of where they were sending them to. They sang on their way to the train to keep up the cheerful mood in the camp. The soldiers were trying to put on a brave face so that they would not worry each other and the people who were being sent off. But in their own minds they were nervous and scared, they knew that it was very likely that they were going to be killed.
“Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men’s are, dead.”
Flowers were stuck on their jackets. This arrangement of flowers was usually given on funerals, which reminded the wearers of the dead.
In the next stanza the “porters” (people who are too old to go) and tramps were sorry that they weren’t to go with them to war and so they stood staring with envy. Personification is used when it says, “a lamp winked to the guard”, this lamp’s flame would be flickering and so it might look as though it was winking.
Owen then talks about them as being “wrongs hushed up” as they went secretly. He says this to show that they were not thought of as heroes when they were being taken to war but as wrongs, people who could not do anything else with their lives. They are taken secretly because the people who are taking them are ashamed of them because they see them as wrongs. When Owen says, “they were not ours” it is as though he is glad that they were not with his camp and it is also as though he is not bothered that they are going to the Line, but only bothers to know that they are going.
They knew the significance of the flowers that the women gave to them and so they were not prepared to mock what the women meant. They weren’t going to laugh at the fact the women were worried about them because they realised that it was a commemoration of their memory.
The rhetorical question in the final stanza is trying to criticise the prospect of a ‘heroes’ welcome’ due to propaganda. He answers this himself indirectly by saying that there would be too few for celebrations of their return. He says that instead they would “creep” or try to walk unnoticed as they would feel guilty that they returned without the fellow soldiers who fought among them, when they would have come back marching proudly. He then suggest that the men who returned would be unfamiliar with ordinary life so they would go up what would seem to them as “half-known roads”.
Sassoon’s poem ‘The General’ is mainly focused on the criticism of leadership. It is about a General who gives a greeting to some soldiers who are on their way to the front line. “‘Good-morning; good morning!’” is the cheerful, upper class greeting of the General. Sassoon is annoyed and expresses it when he writes, because he is saying that the General didn’t have to go to the line and get injured or killed but the soldiers being addressed would. In this way he is sympathetic to the soldiers and he shows the bewilderment of the soldiers at the mood of the General in us, as it would be very strange of a person to smile in this situation. This way he gets the message across that the leaders didn’t care about the soldiers. The people back home probably would have thought that the General would be sympathetic towards them or he would reassure them, but Sassoon destroys this stereotype. Sassoon shows us that the General is only too glad that he isn’t going to follow his mindless plan and get himself killed.
“Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,”
In this line he uses the colloquial language to make as if we were one of the soldiers who heard news and when they would describe these soldiers’ misfortune at the front line.
“And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine”
They are cursing the leaders and his right-hand men for incompetence and stupidity. They now realise that it was all the fault of the General and his staff.
“‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack”
Sarcastically he includes this to make fun of the General. The way it is being is that the speech is usually what the upper class would say. The common names Harry and Jack are used to represent all the English soldiers involved. To suggest that Harry grunted to Jack is showing that he was particularly annoyed with the General. ‘Slogged’ is onomatopoeic and suggest that travelling to Arras was a struggle. It was also hard work as Sassoon uses “rifle and pack” to tell us this. The star, which follows this stanza, signifies the time that they went to fight at the front line.
“But he did for them both with his plan of attack”
“Did for” is colloquial language used to make it as if we were there hearing the story and the person tells us this to tell us that he killed them indirectly by his stupid, mindless plan. It was all his fault that they died, also suggesting lives were lost needlessly because of these people and their ridiculous plans.
“The General” is simply a poem where Sassoon expresses his anger at the incompetent leadership and the General is used in this way as an example of it.
“Twelve Months After” is about Sassoon reminiscing about the platoon, which he had the previous year. Sassoon probably talks about the platoon like this as they must have had a lasting impression and stood out from others. He talks about certain men in the poem having a different intention and different mood towards going to war.
The star or break in the poem, after the second stanza, signifies the passing of twelve months to the present. In this stanza Sassoon says, “They used to” twice to suggest that they are part of the past and then in the last line he says,
“That’s where they are today, knocked over to a man.”
In this line euphemism is used to say that they are dead. Rather than saying that the explosion of a shell destroyed them, it says they are knocked over to men.
The tone of the poem turns from a confident mood, where Sassoon is reminiscing in the first stanza, to a sombre mood in the second stanza when he tells us of their deaths. This change is showing how emotions change; from a confident state of mind, to a suicidal state after witnessing and facing death, to being killed.
The intention of Sassoon was to show that when people are going to war they are full of hopes and images about dying honourably and being heroes, and they sing any song, not actually knowing or caring about what they mean:
“‘Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!’
That’s what they used to sing along the roads last spring;”
The song is not true as old soldiers do actually die and don’t fade away in war. When they are at war they are most likely to be killed and are gone and forgotten.
When Sassoon uses colloquial speech he is remembering the time he was with them and is remembering what they are talking about when he was with them. The speech used would not be used by upper class people and so Sassoon is suggesting that people who went to war were those who were young and financially poor and didn’t have a hope in their life so they might as well join up, and when it says, “Jordan, who’s out to win a D.C.M. some night;” it suggest that he is a soldier who had always been in the army, and was waiting to go to war. He is showing that the upper class were the ones who were least likely to go off to war and in this way he must be criticising them.
“Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
Jordan, who’s out to win a D.C.M. some night;
And Hughes that’s keen on wiring; and Davies (’79),
Who always must be firing at the Boche front line.”
He is describing the different qualities of the different people to show the different personalities who went to war and there were people who had very different intentions compared to each other, and so this group stands out most so it is described in the poem.
He is also showing the propaganda promoting war as honourable and nothing to fear when he shows someone saying,
“‘The war’ll be over soon.’
‘What ’opes?’
‘No bloody fear!’”
The poem is also Sassoon conveying the fact that the needless loss of men with so many good and different qualities was unnecessary.