The Vimy Pilgrimage Award is an educational program that takes twenty Canadian youth to Europe for one week to learn about Canada’s efforts and the First World War. I was fortunate enough to be chosen to go this year and I was truly moved and honored to go with such a wonderful group of people. To learn more about the award and my experience, go check out my other articles.
Before going on the pilgrimage, all the participants had to research a Canadian soldier who died in the First World War, write his biography and tribute to him. Then, during the experience, we got to visit each of our soldiers’ graves and read these two articles, afterward, we got to make a rubbing of the headstone. My soldier, Sergeant Hugh Cairns, VC, from Saskatchewan, was the last recipient of the Victoria Cross Award. This award is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a soldier of the British Empire. (I also wrote about this award for my application essay, this is also where I learned about Hugh’s story.) To read the biography that I wrote, click here and click here to read my tribute.
Also, in February 2018, I started reading some First World War poetry, and I came across Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est; it became my favorite poem right away. Originally, I wanted to research Wilfred Owen for my project, but he was British. However, our head chaperone did suggest that I could also research him alongside my Canadian soldier, and maybe I would get the chance to visit his grave. So, since I am so passionate about his work, I said yes, and for my tribute, I decided to analyze Dulce et Decorum Est. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to visit him, but we were in the area. Stay tuned for my analysis of the poem.
Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on 18 March 1893, in Oswestry, on the Welsh border of Shropshire, the first of four children. Because of this, he grew very protective, caring and loving of his younger siblings. He grew a very close relationship with his mother. After graduating from Shrewsbury Technical School in 1911, he tried to win a scholarship for London University. In order to see if he had any talent or liking for the religious area, he became an unpaid lay assistant to Reverend Herbert Wigen, in Dunsden, Oxfordshire, he had two years to decide whether or not he wanted to become a clergyman. Part of his responsibilities as the assistant was to take care of the poor and hungry, it was here when he grew more aware of social and economic issues, as well as the inadequate response of the Church of England to the needs of the suffering. In his spare time, he read avidly and began to write poetry.
Here is Wilfred Owen and Arthur Newbould, I tried researching Arthur, but nothing solid surfaced.
He had to return home in 1913 because of a respiratory infection he got, which was because of the damp unheated room he had to live in. Owen was thinking about leading a career in the arts, but his father encouraged him to find a job with a steady income. After eight months of illness, Owen went to teach for one year in Bordeaux at the Berlitz School of Languages, then he spent the second year in France with a Catholic family, tutoring their two boys. He came back in September of 1915, one year after England and Germany had gone to war. At first, he was wary of enlisting, but, by December 1916, he had left for France.
At first, he felt heroic being in France, but quickly he realized the horrors of war. By January 6, 1917, his letters would say: “The awful state of the roads, and the enormous weight carried was too much for scores of men.” He had marched two and a half miles through two feet of water, or a “mean depth of two feet”. January 9, he was housed in hut where only 70 yards away a howitzer would fire every minute night and day. On January 12, the march that inspired “Dulce et Decorum Est” occurred. Three miles over a shelled road, three more over flooded trenches which caused many of them to leave their waders and almost all to lose their shoes. But, they still had to trudge on through machine gun fire and despite being shelled by heavy explosives. They were almost unconscious from fatigue when a gas attack started. They all fumbled to put on their masks in the nick of time, but one soldier wasn’t quick enough. “The Sentry” is based on when one of Owen’s men was blown from the ladder of a trench and blinded. He went and attended an Infantry School in February. But by March 19, he was hospitalized because of a concussion he had gotten six days earlier, when he fell into a 15-foot deep shell hole, searching in the dark for a soldier overcome with fatigue.
Here are a few snippets of letters to his mother after going back to the front:
“I kept alive on brandy, the fear of death, and the glorious prospect of the cathedral town just below us, glittering with the morning.”
“For twelve days I did not wash my face, nor take off my boots, nor sleep a deep sleep. For twelve days we lay in holes where at any moment a shell might put us out.”
One of these nights, he was blown by a shell into a hole smaller than him, where he hid for the next several days: with the body of a friend in a similar hole only six feet away. Because of these experiences, Owen was sent to many hospitals. He complained of headaches, which he thought were the result of his concussion earlier. But, after examination, he was diagnosed with shell shock; he was sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital.
This is where Owen wrote most of his poetry. During Owen’s stay, his doctor arranged for him to play in a community orchestra, to renew his interests in biology and archaeology, to participate in a debating society, to give lectures at Tynecastle School, and to do historical research at the Edinburgh Advocates Library. Then, Siegfried Sassoon arrived. When Sassoon came, it took Owen two weeks to build up the courage to go knock on his door and identify himself as a poet. He was also speaking with a stammer, like many other residents, but in less than six months, he was more than articulate with his friend, he was lecturing around the community. Sassoon encouraged strongly him to continue writing his poetry.
Here are Owen’s and Sassoon’s photos beside each other.
He returned to the battlefield in September 1918. In every letter he wrote to Sassoon, he kept scolding the later for having urged him to go back, saying that further exposure to war would give him more material for poems. (By now, Owen had published five poems with the help of his friend.)
He was killed November 4, 1918, a week before the armistice. His death is regarded by many as a horrible loss to literature.
The last portrait of Wilfred Owen.
Note: I tried to find photos of him before he enlisted, but it was extremely difficult and my sources weren’t reliable, so I decided to not put them.