The Realities of the Conflict

Some of the bloodiest battles of the First World War took place between 1915 and 1916. At the end of April 1915, the Germans used gas warfare for the first time and, during the Battle of Loos which began in September 1915, nearly 400 000 men perished. The attacks launched by the Germans against Verdun in February 1916 led to the death of nearly one million men, and this number was actually surpassed during the Battle of the Somme which started on 1st July 1916.

Amidst such carnage, it therefore seems completely logical that the sentiments expressed in the poems written at this time changed radically compared to those written at the beginning of the conflict. Instead of a quick war with a return home in time for Christmas 1914, soldiers now began to feel that peace would never be restored. Often, poems were written to express the realities of death, such as Robert Graves’s poem, “A Dead Boche”. Here the writer gives us a grim description of a corpse found lying on the battleground:

. . . he scowled and stunk

With clothes and face a sodden green,

Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,

Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.

The themes of the verses have now truly moved on from the earlier ones of the soldier’s immortal soul that transcends all living things. It now seems to be the reality of man’s mortality that interests many writers. One is perhaps reminded of Joseph Heller’s later stark portrayal of the human condition in his war novel, Catch 22: “Man is matter”.