How reliable and useful are the poem "a Terre" by Wilfred Owen and the painting "Harvest Of Battle" by CRW Nevinson for an historian studying battle conditions in World War 1?

        In the painting the artist – CRW Nevinson can not explain the injuries that are happening at that moment in time, the painting was painted a year after the war and of course the artist could not get a clear image of no mans land it was virtually impossible without being shot or injured in some way. The painting does not explain to you the disease trench foot, which was an infection of the feet caused by cold, wet and unsanitary conditions. In the trenches men stood for hours on end in water logged trenches without being able to remove wet socks or boots. The feet would gradually go numb and the skin would turn red or blue. The poem also does not tell you about trench life and what it was like. Men in trenches suffered form lice. They are a pale fawn color and they leave blotchy red bite marks all over the body. They created a stale smell.

Various methods were used to remove the lice. The most effected being, with a lighted candle try to burn the lice without burning your clothes. As well as causing frenzied itching, the lice carried a disease – pyrrexhia or trench fever. Although the disease did not kill, it stopped soldiers from fighting and accounted for about 15% of all cases of sickness in the British army.

        The painting was produced a year after the war. However, the artist could not get a clear image of no mans land without being injured or stopped. He could not have walked out onto no mans land and draw what his was seeing before his very eyes that’s why I think that this source is partly reliable. Although the poet was not an eyewitness to the war, he had a good clear image in his mind of what a injured soldier may be thinking. It is important to know when exactly the sources were produced other wise you have no idea if it was during the war or maybe even two years after, and the source would not contain the facts needed for a historian.

        The poem is a more reliable source. This is because Wilfred Owen is a poet and can get to the feelings and emotions that the soldiers are feeling and thinking his poem shows us this. The soldier wants to grow old and bald he does no longer care the children make fun of him he has proved himself as a strong soldier. Even though the soldier feels he has taken the cowards way out of war by being injured. The poem gives more information of how the soldiers may have felt in the trenches, how they felt about war. The poem gives facts of one soldier’s injuries. The painting is just simply a picture although it shows us that the armies had barbed wire to protect their trenches and shows what no mans land may have looked like, it does not go into enough detail about the disease trench foot. It does not show soldiers with lice on there clothes. All it shows it death and pain.