The year was 1917, just before the Third Battle of Ypres.

Germany, in
their bid to crush the British army, introduced yet another vicious and
potentially lethal weapon of attack: mustard gas, differentiated from
the other shells by their distinctive yellow markings. Although not the
effective killing machine that chlorine gas (first used in 1915) and
phosgene (invented by French chemists), mustard gas has stayed
within the public consciousness as the most horrific weapon of the
First World War. Once deployed mustard gas lingers for several days,
and anyone who came in contact with mustard gas developed blisters
and acute vomiting. It caused internal and external bleeding, and
lethally-injured took as long as five weeks to die.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backsAnd towards
our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their bootsBut
limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to
the hootsOf tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,Fitting the clumsy helmets just in
time;But someone still was yelling out and stumblingAnd flound'ring like a man in
fire or lime...Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,As under a green
sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,He plunges at me, guttering, choking,

drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could paceBehind the wagon that we flung
him in,And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,His hanging face, like a
devil's sick of sin;If you could hear, at every jolt, the bloodCome gargling from the
froth-corrupted lungs,Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cudOf vile, incurable sores
on innocent tongues,—My friend, you would not tell with such high zestTo
children ardent for some desperate glory,The old Lie: Dulce et decorum estPro
patria mori.

Summary
There was no draft in the First World War for British soldiers; it was an
entirely voluntary occupation, but the British needed soldiers to fight
in the war. Therefore, through a well-tuned propaganda machine of
posters and poems, the British war supporters pushed young and
easily influenced youths into signing up to fight for the glory of
England. Several poets, among them Rupert Brook, who wrote
the poem ‘The Soldier‘ (there is a corner of a foreign field/ that is
forever England) used to write poetry to encourage the youth to sign
up for the army, often without having any experience themselves! It
was a practice that Wilfred Owen personally despised, and in ‘Dulce et
Decorum Est,’ he calls out these false poets and journalists who glorify
war.

The poem takes place during a slow trudge to an unknown place,

which is interrupted by a gas attack. The soldiers hurry to put on their
masks, only one of their numbers is too slow and gets consumed by
the gas. The final stanza interlocks a personal address to war journalist
Jessie Pope with horrifying imagery of what happened to those who
ingested an excessive amount of mustard gas.

Analysis of Dulce et Decorum Est

Stanza One
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

British soldiers would trudge from trench to trench, seeping further
into France in pursuit of German soldiers. It was often a miserable, wet
walk, and it is on one of these voyages that the poem opens.
Immediately, it minimizes the war to a few paltry, exhausted soldiers;
although it rages in the background (’till on the haunting flares we
turned our backs / and towards our distant rest began to trudge’).
Owen uses heavy words to describe their movement – words like
‘trudge’, ‘limped’; the first stanza of the poem is a demonstration of
pure exhaustion and mind-numbing misery.

Stanza Two
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

The second stanza changes the pace rapidly. It opens with an
exclamation – ‘Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!’ – and suddenly the soldiers are
in ‘an ecstasy of fumbling’, groping for their helmets to prevent the
gas from taking them over. Again, Owen uses language economically
here: he uses words that express speed, hurry, and almost frantic
demand for their helmets. However, one soldier does not manage to
fit his helmet on in time. Owen sees him ‘flound’ring like a man in fire
or lime’ through the thick-glassed pane of his gas mask.

Stanza Three
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

For a brief two lines, Owen pulls back from the events happening
throughout the poems to revisit his own psyche. He writes, ‘In all my
dreams,/ before my helpless sight’, showing how these images live on
with the soldiers, how these men are tortured by the events of war
even after they have been removed from war. There is no evading or
escaping war.

Stanza Four
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

In the last paragraph, Owen condenses the poem to an almost
claustrophobic pace: ‘if in some smothering dreams you too could
pace’, and he goes into a very graphic, horrific description of the
suffering that victims of mustard gas endured: ‘froth-corrupted lungs’,’
incurable sores’, ‘the white eyes writhing in his face’. Although the
pace of the poem has slowed to a crawl, there is much happening in
the description of the torment of the mustard gas victim, allowing for
a contrast between the stillness of the background, and the animation
of the mustard gas victim. This contrast highlights the description,
making it far more grotesque.

Owen finishes the poem on a personal address to Jessie Pope: ‘My

friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for
some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria
mori.’ Jessie Pope was a journalist who published, among others,
books such as Jessie Pope’s War Poems and Simple Rhymes for
Stirring Times. The Latin phrase is from Horace, and means, ‘it is sweet
and right to die for your country’.

The earliest dated record of this poem is 8. October 1917. It was

written in the ballad form of poetry – a very flowing, romantic
poetical style, and by using it outside of convention,
Owen accentuates the disturbing cadence of the narrative. It is a
visceral poem, relying very strongly on the senses, and while it starts
out embedded in the horror and in the narrative, by the final stanza, it
has pulled back to give a fuller view of the events, thus fully showing
the horror of the mustard gas attack.
Historical Background
While at Craiglockhart, Owen became the editor of the hospital
magazine, The Hydra. Through it, he met the poet Siegfried
Sassoon (read Sassoon’s poetry here), who later became his editor,
and one of the most important impacts on his life and work. Owen
wrote a number of his poems in Craiglockhart, with Sassoon’s advice.

After his death in 1918, aged 25, Sassoon would compile Owen’s
poems, and publish them in a compilation in 1920.