Tag: world war i

Wilfred Owen: “The Greatest Glory Will Be Theirs Who Fought”

Photographers Unknown, The Greatest Glory Will Be Theirs Who Fought

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday’s Mail: the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
“For,” said the paper, “when this war is done
The men’s first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead,–
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought.
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity.”
Nation?–The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
(This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They’re happy now, poor things.

Wilfred Owen, “Smile, Smile, Smile”, Poems, 1920, Chatto and Windus, London

Born on the eighteenth of March in 1893 at the Oswestry villa Plas Wilmot, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was an English soldier and one of the leading poets during the First World War. His poetry, in contrast to the patriotic verses of earlier war poets such as Rupert Brooke, focused on the horrors of war, its tenches, the traumatic sufferings, and the deaths. 

The eldest of four children to Thomas Owen and Susan Shaw, Wilfred Owen was born at the comfortable home of his grandfather Edward Shaw. After Shaw’s death and the sale of his home in early 1897, Thomas Owen relocated the family several times due to his employment as a railway stationmaster before settling in Shrewsbury in 1907. Wilfred Owen received his initial education at the Birkenhead Institute and then, for his last two years, at Shrewsbury’s Wyle Cop School. 

Raised as an evangelical Anglican of the Church of England, Owen was a devout believer in his youth, in part due to his strong relationship with his mother. He discovered poetry in 1904 and was early influenced by the Bible and the English Romantic poets, particularly the works of William Wordsworth and John Keats. In 1911, Owen passed his matriculation exam at the Wyle Cop School; however, he did not achieve the first-class honors necessary for a scholarship to a university. 

In return for free lodging, Wilfred Owen became a lay assistant to the Vicar of the village of Dunsden from September of 1911 to February of 1913. This support enabled him to attend classes in botany at the University of Reading and, with later endorsement from the head of its English Department, receive free lessons in Old English. In 1913, Owen obtained the position of a private English and French tutor at the Berlitz School of Languages in Bordeaux, France; his experience at the school led to private tutorage for a local French family. Through this family, Owen met the French satirical poet and essayist Laurent Tailhade with whom he would maintain frequent correspondence. 

At the outset of war between France and Germany in August of 1914, Owen considered his options and made the decision to enlist in the British war effort. He felt that military life afforded him the opportunity to leave the confines of study and develop a sense of honor and bravery, in essence it was a reconciliation of his impulse to art and action. After recovering from diphtheria, Owen returned to England in the autumn of 1915 and enlisted in the Artist’s Rifles, an officers’ training camp. On the twenty-ninth of December in 1916, Second Lieutenant Owen of the 2nd Manchester Regiment and his men left London aboard ship for France and the Western Front, . 

Beginning in January of 1917, Wilfred Owen spent almost four months with his regiment in various sections of the front line. On the second of May, Owen returned home with a diagnosis of shell shock that made him unfit to lead troops. By June, Owen was being treated at Craiglockhart Hospital located just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. It was during period that he emerged as a true poet with a burst of creative energy that lasted several months. Owen edited “Hydra”, the hospital journal, and wrote such poems as “The Sentry”, “The Show”, and “Dulce et Decorum Est”. 

After one month at the hospital, Owen met his fellow patient, the well-published poet Siegfried Sassoon who had been serving with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers in France. Owen regularly began showing his poetry to Sassoon who introduced him to other writers and poets in Edinburgh’s artistic circles including Sassoon’s close friend, poet and fellow Fusilier Robert Graves. Convinced that the war ought to be ended, Owen had by this time found his creative stimulus in a compassionate identification with both the wounded and the soldiers still in combat..

Discharged and judged fit for light regimental duties, Wilfred Owen spent the winter in North Yorkshire and was later posted in March of 1918 to the Northern Command Depot in Ripon where he composed a number of poems including “Futility” and “Strange Meeting”. In spite of a strong desire to remain in England to protest the continuation of the war, Owen returned to his comrades in the French trenches at the end of August. On the first of October in 1918, he led units of the 2nd Manchester Regiment to storm enemy strong points near the village of Joncourt in northern France. Owen was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and leadership in these battles.

On the fourth of November while leading his men on a crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal, Wilfred Owen was shot and killed. His body was buried in a corner of the Communal Cemetery of Ors, between two of his men, W. E. Privates Duckworth and H. Topping. One week later, the Armistice became official and World War I was ended. The War Department telegram announcing Owen’s death reached his parents in Shrewsbury on Armistice Day as the town’s bells were ringing. After the war’s end, Siegfried Sassoon had waited in vain for word from Owen, only to be told of his death several months later.

Having personally experienced the horrors of war, Wilfred Owen was keenly  aware of the fragile balance between the days spent mending fears and the remembered war experiences that occurred during sleep. His own dreams seemed to undo whatever progress was made each day, a fact he believed that was shared by many of his fellow soldiers. For Owen, his writing depended on the honesty of describing his own war experiences. He felt his duty as a writer was to educate the public to the true nature of combat and its endless, unforgiving ramifications.

Notes:  Wilfred Owen only published five poems before his death; these appeared in critically acclaimed literary journals during the first half of 1918. Although he had started preparing his first poetry collection for publication, he was killed in battle before he finished the work. “Poems” was published posthumously, with an introduction by Sassoon, in December of 1920. 

The Poetry Foundation has an extensive biography on Wilfred Owen which includes  twelve poems and related articles. This article can be found at: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen

On the Warfare History Network site, writer and historian Philip Burton Morris has an interesting article entitled “WWI Author: The Writings of Wilfred Owen” which discusses Owen’s life and poetry during the war years. The article is located at: https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-writings-of-wilfred-owen/ 

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfred Owen’s Last Portrait, August 1918”, 1931 Reprint, The English Faculty Library, Oxford University, The Wilfred Own Literary Estate

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Manchester Regiment Officers, Wilfred Owen (Center), circa 1915-1918, Detail, Gelatin Silver Print, Warfare History Network

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfred Owen”, 1915-1918, Vintage Photo, English Faculty Library, Oxford University, Wilfred Owen Literary Estate

Calendar: March 10

Year: Day to Day Men: March 10

Tiny Bubbles

The tenth of March in the year 1831 marks the creation of the French Foreign Legion, a corps of the French Army that consists of infantry, cavalry, engineers and airborne troops. Unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Army, its training currently focuses on traditional military skills as well as its strong esprit de corps.

Created by King Louis Philippe of France, the French Foreign Legion allowed foreign nationals into the French Army from the foreign regiments of the Kingdom of France. These recruits included soldiers from the disbanded German and Swiss foreign regiments of the Bourbon monarchy that was overthrown in 1830 during the reign of Louis XVI. Philippe’s Royal Ordinance specified that recruited foreigners could only serve outside France.

During the nineteenth-century, the French Foreign Legion was primarily used to protect and expand the French colonial empire. Initially stationed in Algeria with detachments from the French port city of Toulon, the Legion took part in the pacification and development of that colony. It was later deployed in a number of conflicts, including the Crimean War in 1854, the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and the Second Madagascar expedition of 1895. The Foreign Legion fought in many critical battles on the Western Front in World War I and took part in the Norwegian, Syrian and North African campaigns of World War II. 

By the middle of the 1960s, the Foreign Legion was no longer stationed in French Algeria after the country’s independence in July of 1962. President Charles de Gaulle originally considered totally disbanding the Legion; however after considering its performance over the years, he chose instead to downsize the Legion from forty thousand to eight thousand men that would be relocated to France’s metropolitan regions. Legion units continued to be assigned overseas but no longer to North Africa. 

Besides ongoing global rapid deployments, the Foreign Legion stationed forces on various continents while operating different function units. From 1965 to 1967, the Legion operated several companies, which included the 5th Heavy Weight Transport Company. Ongoing operations and rapid deployments in the following years included, among others, peacekeeping operations around the Mediterranean during the Global War on Terror; peacekeeping along with the United Nations Multinational Force during the Lebanese Civil War; and the 1990 Gulf War where a Legion force made up of twenty-seven different nationalities was attached to the French 6th Light Armored Division. After the ceasefire, the Legion conducted a joint mine clearing operation with the Royal Australian Navy divers.

As of 2021, French Foreign Legion members are composed from one hundred-forty countries. In the past, new recruits enlisted under a pseudonym in order to allow recruits who wanted to restart their lives to enlist without prejudice. As of September of 2010, new recruits have the option of enlisting under their real name or a declared name that, after a year, may be changed to their real name. After serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship. He must be serving under his real name, have no issues with the authorities, and must have served with honor and fidelity. Women, who had been barred from service previously, were admitted after 2000.