November 11

Maybe Veteran's Day is best remembered by the poet and soldier, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918).

Strange Meeting

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."
"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something has been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now..."

1918
(The Poems of Wilfred Owen)

Wilfred Owen served with joined the British Army in 1915 and served as an officer on the Western Front. He was evacuated with "shell shock" in 1917, and during his hospitalization, he met Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon greatly influenced and strongly supported Owen's poetry and in 1918, five of Owen's poems were published.

In July 1918, Wilfred Owen returned to France, serving in the 2nd Manchesters. He was killed in action on November 4th while leading his company across the Sambre-Oise Canal in what was one of the Allies final victories in the war. Although his death occurred almost exactly one week to the hour before the Armistice would end the fighting on the Western Front, his mother did not learn of it until the Armistice Day itself.

In a draft preface to a collection of poems he expected to publish after the war, Owens noted that his book:

"was not about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War.
Above all I am not concerned with Poetry.
My subject is War, and the pity of War.
And the Poetry is in the pity.
Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They may be to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful."

This Remembrance/Armistice/Veterans Day, spend a few moments considering the Pity of War. And the heroes on all sides that serve.

(Image by Michele Catania via Flickr)