July 2, 2025 • 44 mins
Wilfred Owen is considered one of the most important English-language poets of World War I. His work also part of a shift in how many British poets were writing about war.
Research:
- Bonellie, Janet. “A Portrait of Robert Ross.” Canada’s History. 6/12/2019. https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/arts-culture-society/a-portrait-of-robert-ross
- British Broadcasting Corporation. “Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale.” 2007.
- Cannon, Jean. “Censorship in Surprising Places: Uncovering the Letters of Wilfred Owen.” Not Even Past. Ransom Center. 4/21/2014. https://notevenpast.org/censorship/
- Crossman, AM. “THE HYDRA, Captain AJ Brock and the Treatment of Shell-shocked in Edinburgh.” J R Coll Physicians Edinb 2003; 33:119–123.
- Earlam, R. “Shell-shock: A history of the changing attitude to war neurosis.” BMJ (Clinical research ed.) vol. 316,7145 (1998): 1683A. doi:10.1136/bmj.316.7145.1683a
- Hibberd, Dominic. “Wilfred Owen.” Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 2002.
- Imperial War Museums. “British Field Service Postcard, First World War.” https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205131476
- Jones, Edgar. “Shell Shocked.” American Psychological Association. Vol. 43, No. 6. June 2012. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/shell-shocked
- Jones, Nigel. "Anthem for groomed youth: Wilfred Owen's troubling obsession." Spectator, vol. 336, no. 9880, 6 Jan. 2018, p. 12. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A524739265/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=62e62ece. Accessed 11 June 2025.
- Lee, Stuart. “The Last Days of Wilfred Owen.” Oxford News Blog. 10/23/2018. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/last-days-wilfred-owen
- Onion, Amanda. “Poet Wilfred Owen killed in action.” History.com. 1/30/2025. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/november-4/poet-wilfred-owen-killed-in-action
- Poetry Foundation. “Wilfred Owen.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/wilfred-owen
- Stallworthy, Jon. "Owen, Wilfred Edward Salter (1893–1918), poet." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 01, 2017. Oxford University Press. Date of access 11 Jun. 2025, https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37828
- Van Mierlo, Wim. “Wilfred Owen 100 years on: poet gave voice to a generation of doomed youth.” The Conversation. 11/4/2018. https://theconversation.com/wilfred-owen-100-years-on-poet-gave-voice-to-a-generation-of-doomed-youth-106014
- Webb, Thomas E F. “'Dottyville'--Craiglockhart War Hospital and shell-shock treatment in the First World War.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine vol. 99,7 (2006): 342-6. doi:10.1177/014107680609900716
- "Wilfred Owen." Poetry Criticism, edited by Michelle Lee, vol. 102, Gale, 2010. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CYPYNF967921623/LitRC?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=cb1d6e7f. Accessed 27 May 2025.
- "Wilfred Owen." World War I Reference Library, edited by Sara Pendergast, et al., vol. 2: Biographies, UXL, 2002, pp. 111-117. Gale In Context: U.S. History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3411700047/GPS?u=mlin_n_melpub&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=c3bea6b3. Accessed 27 May 2025.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Before we start today's episode, We're
going to Morocco.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, in November.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In November, Yes, November fourth through fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
There are still some spots available. I think they are
all spots for people traveling as a pair, whether that
is a couple or friends, or some other option that
involves two people siblings, right, parent and child. Right, all right,
(00:45):
you're adventurous. Yeah, you could share with a stranger, and
our friends that defined destinations would work that out for you. Yes, yes,
I know. They were getting in touch with some of
the folks that were booked as individuals to see if
they might be open to that. Some of our prior
trips we've had some more flexibility in terms of being
(01:06):
able to add rooms of different types, but this time
the hotel spaces are more predetermined and fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, it's a little more it's a little less flexible,
a little more limited. Yeah, but also yeah, perhaps the
most fun ever.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah. We're also both incredibly excited about it. We're gonna
be staying in nice hotels and also one night of
desert glamping. The desert glamping accommodations also incredibly nice breakfast
is included every day. Also lots of dinners and a
number of lunches included, and we will have professional guides
(01:43):
the whole time showing us the sites, telling us all
about what we're seeing and experiencing. And this also has
some fun activities that are very unlike activities we have
done on our previous trips, including number one, a sunset
camel ride, a wine tasting, and there's a tilemaking in
(02:04):
craft's workshop and a Moroccan cooking class. My spouse is
extremely excited about that one. He loves to cook and
already knows some Moroccan dishes and is very excited to
learn more. So if this sounds fun to you, it
sure does sound fun to me. You can go to
Defined Destinations dot com and if you click on the
(02:27):
tour's button in the menu, it's the one called a
Taste of Morocco and again that is from November fourth
through fifteenth, twenty twenty five. More information at Defined Destinations
dot com. And now we'll get to today's episode. It's
been a while since we have talked about a poet
(02:50):
on the show, especially a poet whose work is in
the public domain so we can read as much of
it as we want as part of the episode. And
I really do love to talk about poets. This one
is Wilfred Owen and is considered to be one of
the most important English language poets of World War One.
His work was also seen as part of a shift
(03:12):
and how a lot of British poets were writing about war. Also,
his life almost seems like it was intentionally written to
be as tear jerking as possible. Like if you were
writing a movie about a World War One soldier poet
and you wanted it to be really sad, that would
(03:33):
be Wilfrid Owen. So Wilfrid Edward Salter Owen was born
on March eighteenth, eighteen ninety three in Oswestree, Shropshire, in
western England. This is on the border with Wales, and
before the fifteen thirties it was part of England at
some points and Wales at others. Various street names and
other place names there reflect both English and Welsh influences,
(03:56):
and a lot of families in the area, including Wilfred
Owen's family have both English and Welsh ancestry. Wilfrid was
the oldest of four siblings. The others were Harold, Colin
and Mary. Their father, Thomas known as Tom, was a
railroad station master and had previously been a seaman. Their mother,
(04:17):
Harriet Susan Shaw Owen, went by Susan and was devoutly religious.
When Wilfrid was born, they were living at Plas Wilmot,
which is a villa that belonged to Susan's father, Edward Shaw.
The oldest part of the villa had been built around
eighteen twenty nine, and it had been added on to
over the years, including a stable, a coach house, a
(04:40):
wash house, a servant's cottage and a kitchen, and the
grounds also had a garden and a pond.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
The Shaws had been financially comfortable, or at least they
had seemed to be financially comfortable, but when Wilfrid was four,
Edward died and the family learned that he had actually
been and in serious debt. They had to auction off
Plus Wilmot, along with all of its furniture and effects
to pay off those debts, and then the family moved
(05:09):
to Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Wilfrid surely noticed the change in his family's circumstances, but
since he was only four, he probably did not fully
understand all of it. But his mother really struggled with it,
especially since some of her family had already thought that
her marriage to Wilfrid's father had been a step down.
(05:33):
She had very high ambitions for Wilfrid from the time
that he was born, and this loss of income and
status probably played a part in how really insistent she
was that he makes something of himself. Wilfrid was a thoughtful,
sensitive boy, and he was interested in literature and poetry
(05:54):
from an early age. He liked other subjects as well,
including botany, geology and art archaeology. He and his cousins
Vera and Leslie Gunston started their own three person Astronomical,
Geological and Botanical Society in nineteen hundred. Wilfrid started attending
a boys school called the Birkenhead Institute, where he developed
(06:16):
a reputation for being a very serious student. When the
family moved to Shrewsbury which some people also say Shrewsbury,
he transferred to Shrewsbury Technical School and he graduated from
there in nineteen eleven. Boy did I try to figure
out if there is a pronunciation people like best? And
I found many of each of them in recorded examples.
(06:41):
Wilfrid wanted to continue his education and he passed the
matriculation exam at London University. He did not do well
enough to earn a scholarship, though, and his family didn't
have the money to pay for it. Without one, he
took correspondence classes while trying to find work to support himself.
He thought that he might become a poet or an artist,
(07:02):
but his mother was really adamant that whatever he did
to distinguish himself needed to come along with a steady income.
As we said, Wilfrid's mother was devoutly religious and he
was very very close to her. This may have been
one of the reasons why he started thinking about pursuing
some kind of religious vocation. He started working as a
(07:23):
lay assistant for the Vicar of Dunstan, which is west
of London. Outside of reading.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
This was an unpaid position and Owen was working in
exchange for room and board, and that work included attending
all of the church services, of which there were many,
and working with the people of the parish. He also
took some botany classes at University College Reading, and he
was fond of the romantic poets like John Keats and
Percy Shelley, and his first poems were largely derivative of
(07:51):
their work.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
By nineteen thirteen, it had become clear to Owen that
a life in the Anglican Church was not for him.
He was passionate about poetry in a way that he
wasn't about religion, but he had also become disillusioned with
the church. One reason was that he thought the church
was not meeting its obligations to the poor. He was
(08:14):
working with people who were sick and living in poverty
and just desperately needed help. While the vicar had a
pretty comfortable life in the vicarage, Owen also developed some
kind of respiratory condition, possibly related to living and working
in damp, moldy spaces.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
He left his position with the vicar, and after he
recovered from his respiratory illness, Owen went to France For
about a year. He taught English at Berlitz School in Bordeaux.
Then he started working for the Lege family tutoring their daughter,
Nanette and helping Madame Lege practice her English ahead of
a planned trip to Canada. Owen was also essentially Ninette's playmate,
(08:55):
since she didn't really have anyone else to play with.
Owen lived with the and shared most of their meals,
but he was not otherwise paid.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
World War One started not long after Owen met the
la Jais, but the area where they were staying was
kind of remote. It was close to the border with Spain.
News traveled slowly there, and while they did see newspaper
reports about things like the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
and Sophie, Duchess of Hollenberg, a lot of this reporting
(09:28):
was more like propaganda than a really accurate account of
what was going on, so it wasn't immediately clear to
them just how things were escalating in other parts of Europe.
In August of nineteen fourteen, the Lages introduced Owen to
a friend of theirs, poet, essayist and translator, Laurent Taliad.
(09:49):
This was probably the first time Owen had met a
published poet in person. Taiad gave lectures in the nearby
town of Bagnel de Bijour, which Owen attended. One of
the subjects that naturally came up was the war. Taliad
had written at least two pacifist essays, but during one
of these lectures, he framed French soldiers as fighting to
(10:12):
defend the treasure of the French language, as well as
the reason and intellect of French poets and philosophers like
Voltaire and Montesquieu. He also described listening to the work
of French poets in the French language as an act
of patriotism. Owen would later share a similar sentiment and
(10:33):
a letter to his mother saying quote, do you know
what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense
that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and
the rest of them wrote. The Liges knew about Owen's
aspirations as a poet, and they invited Taliade to stay
with them at the villa. He was there off and
on for several weeks. Owen wrote to his mother that
(10:56):
Taliad received him like a lover, and some of his
descriptions of the poet also have this tone that could
be read as erotic. We don't have the full content
of these letters, though, parts of them were heavily redacted,
probably by Wilfrid's brother Harold, who censored many of Wilfrid's
letters before they could be published or placed in archives.
(11:19):
It is clear that Taliad had an influence on Owen
beyond their shared sentiments about the war and language and poetry.
Taliad introduced Owen to the work of French poets and writers,
including Gustave Flaubert. Taliad's own work was influenced by poets
like Malarmee and Baudlaire, and Owen tried to translate some
(11:40):
of that work into English.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
In September of nineteen fourteen, as Madame Leje was preparing
to leave for Canada, Owen and the legs went to Bordeaux.
This is when Owen started to realize just how serious
the situation with the war was. As German forces had advanced,
the French government had retreated from Paris, and Bordeaux was
(12:03):
temporarily acting as the capital. The university where Owen had
planned to take some courses, had been closed and it
was taken over by the war ministry. The Berlitz School,
where he had planned to resume teaching, had closed as well.
Madame Lejee left for Canada in October and that put
an end to Owen's job with the family, and at
(12:23):
that point he went to stay with other friends. Owen
kept working on his poetry and trying to support himself
through tutoring. He became increasingly conflicted about the war and
whether he should go back home and enlist, although at
the same time he was concerned about whether the trip
across the Channel would be more dangerous than just staying
(12:44):
in France. He also had a series of illnesses, including
one that might have been measles. Owen returned to the
UK in May of nineteen fifteen, not to join the military,
but to represent a perfumer that he had been working
looking for at a trade fair being held in London.
He returned to France the following month. A lot of
(13:07):
people had expected World War One to be over pretty quickly,
and he didn't want to go through the drudgery of
training only for the war to be over by the
time he was done. He finally decided that if the
Dardanelle Strait was still held by the Ottoman Empire in
September of nineteen fifteen, he would return home and enlist.
We talked about this strait and its strategic importance in
(13:29):
our episode on the Gallipoli Campaign, which was the Allied
effort to take control of the strait and occupy the
Ottoman capital of Constantinople. That episode came out on November thirtieth,
twenty fifteen. The Dardenell Strait was not opened by that September.
The Gallipoli Campaign was a failure for the Allies and
(13:49):
it ended in a series of nighttime evacuations that started
in December of nineteen fifteen. By that point, Wilfred Owen
had gone back to England and joined the army, and
we will get to that after a sponsor break. At
(14:12):
the very beginning of World War One, the UK had
been somewhat divided on the question of whether to become
actively involved in the war. Opinions shifted through July and
early August of nineteen fourteen, with Britain declaring war on
Germany on August fourth of that year. After Germany's declarations
of war against Russia and France, Britain called for volunteers
(14:36):
to increase the size of its military, and initially that
response had been really enthusiastic, but a year later there
was no end to the war in sight, and enlistment
numbers had really plummeted. Britain would eventually have to conscript
soldiers to make up for immense losses due to illnesses, injuries,
(14:57):
and death, but in the meantime, men who had not
enlisted were facing enormous pressure to do so and criticism
for having not done it already. This was really everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was in newspapers and recruitment posters and other government propaganda,
and conversations with friends and family, and even sometimes just
comments from random passers by.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
If Wilfred Owen had returned to England and tried to
enlist shortly after the start of the war, he probably
would have been rejected. He was just a little over
five feet five inches tall, and in September of nineteen fourteen,
authorities had raised the minimum height limit to five foot
six to help deal with the surge of prospective recruits.
(15:42):
The hype minimum had later been lowered again, and it
was five foot two by the time he arrived at
the London headquarters of the Artist's Rifles on October twentieth,
nineteen fifteen. Were a physical and he was sworn in
the next day.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The Artists' Rifles had been founded by art student Edward
Starling in eighteen fifty nine. As that name suggests, it
was originally a volunteer regiment for artists. By this point
it had evolved into an officer training regiment. When Owen
had been in London for that trade fair, he had
seen an announcement saying that gentlemen returning from abroad could
(16:21):
earn a commission through the Artist's Rifles, subject to their
age and their fitness. After finishing his officer training, Owen
was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, and
not long after that he was deployed to France. His
initial letters home sound optimistic and almost cheerful about being there,
although not so much about the enlisted men he was
(16:44):
supposed to be leading. As we mentioned earlier, he was
a sensitive person. He was thoughtful and bookish, and while
his family hadn't had the money to send him to university,
he still had more education than most British men his age.
He described his men with terms like hard headed, loudish
and ugly, but he was also confident that he could
(17:07):
trust them in combat, and he seems to have earned
their respect in part by being a very good shot.
Owen wrote numerous letters to his mother and to other people,
but especially to his mother while he was in the army,
and they had worked out some codes ahead of time
so that he could get around the censors who were
(17:28):
reviewing all the mail. For example, in letters that he
wrote himself, he would use the word mistletoe, and then
specific letters from the following words would spell out his location.
They also agreed on a use for pre printed British
Army Field Service postcards. These had spaces for the soldier's
(17:49):
name and the date of the last letter that soldier
had received from the person they were writing to. Those
were the only things allowed to be written on the card.
Everything else was communicated through crossing out the lines that
were not applicable, so these cards were pretty optimistic in
their framing. The first line was I am quite well
(18:11):
and while the next section was about being hospitalized, The
options for how the soldier was doing in the hospital
were either and am going on quite well or and
hoped to be discharged soon. Owen and his mother had
agreed that if he was being sent to the front,
he would send her one of these postcards, and he
would have the line I am being sent down to
(18:33):
the base struck out twice.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The tone of Owen's letters changed very quickly once he
got into the trenches and as his unit held advanced
posts ahead of British lines. At one point he wrote
to his mother quote, I have suffered seventh hell. I
have not been at the front, I have been in
front of it. He wrote about the makeshift facilities, the cold,
(18:57):
the wet, and the mud which got into his sleeping bag,
and in the words of a letter from January of
nineteen seventeen, that holy of holies my pajamas.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
On January twelfth of nineteen seventeen, Owen's men were hit
with a gas attack, which he later memorialized in one
of his best known poems, Dulce et decorum Essed. Even
before the gruesomeness of the gas, this poem describes the
soldiers in the trenches as quote bent double like old
(19:27):
beggars under sacks, knock kneed, coughing like hags. When the
gas hits and somebody can't get his gas mask on
in time, he's described as drowning as under a green sea.
You will return to this poem later in March of
nineteen seventeen, Owen was injured during the Battle of the
sum He fell through a shell hole into a cellar
(19:51):
and he got a concussion and he was trapped in
that space for three days. Then in April, while his
men were trying to hold a railroad line, he i
had a horrific experience in which he was blown off
an embankment by a shell and he landed among the
dismembered remains of another officer who had been his friend.
Owen had to spend days sheltering there under a piece
(20:13):
of corrugated iron. After this, Owen started showing signs of
shell shock. This term was likely coined in nineteen fifteen
by Charles Myers of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Some
people today describe shell shock as post traumatic stress disorder,
and while shell shock and PTSD are both responses to
(20:35):
trauma only, some of the symptoms overlap. These include nightmares, flashbacks,
and intrusive thoughts. A lot of the other symptoms of
shell shock seemed really physical, like being not able to
stop shaking or being unable to speak or move, or
see or hear, as well as confusion and delirium. Initially,
(20:59):
many soldiers experiencing shell shock were accused of cowardice or malingering.
Some were court martialed and even executed for cowardice or desertion.
Even as more doctors became convinced that shell shock was
a real condition that required treatment, there were still people
who insisted that shell shock soldiers were just cowards. One
(21:21):
theory about shell shock's cause was that it was connected
to prolonged exposure to the incessant sounds of German shells.
So by December of nineteen sixteen, the British Army had
set up four specialized treatment centers well away from the
sounds of battle. By nineteen seventeen, these had been completely overwhelmed,
and by the end of the war about eighty thousand
(21:44):
British soldiers had been diagnosed with shell shock. Owen was
admitted to a series of hospitals starting in May of
nineteen seventeen, ultimately winding up at Craig Lockhart Hydropathic in Edinburgh,
which had become Craig Lockhart Warhi Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Doctor A. J.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Brock was one of four medical officers there, and he
was treating his patients through what he called occupational therapy
or ergo therapy or work cure. Brock wrote quote, if
the essential thing for the patient to do is to
help himself, the essential thing for the doctor to do, Indeed,
the only thing he can profitably do is to help
(22:26):
him to help himself. Patients were expected to engage with
the world around them through activity and useful work. Brock
arranged for the patients to do things like teach or
work on nearby farms during their convalescence. One of Owen's
jobs was editing the hospital magazine, The Hydra. The magazine
(22:46):
itself was also a form of treatment. When patients found
themselves without anything to do, they were encouraged to write something,
including writing about their war experiences. This also had the
effect of allowing Page patients to process what had happened
to them through writing. While many other hospitals treating shell
shock or advising patients not to think about it and
(23:08):
to focus on pleasant things instead, while Owen was it
Craig Lockhart. Another patient arrived, and that was poet and
writer Siegfried Sassoon. Sessong did not have shell shock. He
had been declared mentally unfit to serve after writing a
statement a pretty strong statement against the war, which was
(23:28):
dated June fifteenth, nineteen seventeen. That statement began quote, I
am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance
of military authority, because I believe that the war is
being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to
end it. Sessoun wrote that he believed that the war
had started as one of defense and liberation, but had
(23:51):
become one of aggression and conquest. This statement really caused
a furor, including being read before for the House of
Commons and printed in the London Times, and of course
Sassoon being sent to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Owen had written some similar sentiments to his mother in
a letter that April, in which he expressed bitterness quote
towards those in England who might relieve us and will not,
and he also admired Sassoon greatly. Sassoon was about seven
years older than Owen, and he was already a published poet.
During his military service, Sassoon's writing had become grittier and
(24:30):
more realistic, and had pushed back on the idea of
military service as heroic and romanticized. While at craig Lockhart,
Owen and Sassoon worked on poems together. There are handwritten
drafts surviving today in which you can see Owen's original
words along with Sassoon's edits and suggestions, which often made
Owen's language more direct and forceful.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
One of the poems that evolved through Sassoon's feedback is
another of Owen's most well known, and that's Anthem for
Doomed Youth, which was published posthumously in nineteen twenty. What
passing bells for those who die as cattle? Only the
monstrous anger of the guns, Only the stuttering rifles, rapid
(25:14):
rattle can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now
for them, No prayers, nor bells, nor any voice of mourning,
save the choirs, the shrill, demented choirs, of wailing shells
and bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles
may be held to speed them all? Not in the
(25:35):
hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the
holy glimmers of goodbyes, the pallor of girls, brows shall
be their pall, their flowers, the tenderness of patient minds,
and each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. Tracy
mentioned at the top of the show that Owen's work
also was part of a shift in how British poets
(25:58):
were writing about war. You can compare Anthem for Doomed
Youth to Rupert Brooks The Soldier, which is a lot
more patriotic and romanticized. Brooke had joined the Navy at
the start of the war, and he died of sepsis
on April twenty third, nineteen fifteen, while on the way
to the Dardanell Street in preparation for the Gallipoli Campaign.
(26:19):
The Soldier was published posthumously, and it reads, if I
should die, think only this of me, that there's some
corner of a foreign field that is forever England, there
shall be in that rich earth of richer dust concealed,
a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, gave once
her flowers, to love her ways to Rome, a body
(26:42):
of England's breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blessed
by sons of home. And think this heart all evils
shed away a pulse in the eternal mind no less
gives somewhere back the thoughts by England, given her sights
and sounds, dreams, happy as her day, and laughter learned
of friends and gentleness in Hearts at Peace under in
(27:05):
English Heaven. It is also very pro England in a
way that Wilfrid Owen's poems really were not. Wilfrid Owen
did recover during his time at Craig Lockhart, and we'll
talk about his return to the front after another sponsor break.
(27:31):
By October of nineteen seventeen, Wilfrid Owen had recovered enough
to be approved to return to light duty. He remained
in England, and while he was on leave in London,
he met journalist and art gallery owner Robert Baldwin Ross,
known as Robbie Ross, was as openly gay as it
was possible to be in Britain in the early twentieth century,
(27:54):
at which point homosexuality was both a crime and very
heavily stigmatized. According to some reports, Ross was the first
man Oscar Wilde ever had a sexual experience with, and
wild was, of course, sinced two years of hard labor
for gross indecency for homosexual conduct in eighteen ninety five.
(28:15):
Ross became one of Owen's mentors and later his literary executor,
and also introduced him to other poets and writers, including
Arnold Bennett and H. G.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Wells. During his time at Craig Lockhart and the months
that followed, Owen felt that he had been reborn as
a poet. On New Year's Eve of nineteen seventeen, he
wrote a letter to his mother that said, in part quote,
I am started. The tugs have left me. I feel
the great swelling of the open sea taking my galleon.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
In early nineteen eighteen, Owen drafted a poem called Shadwell's Stare.
This is a real set of stairs on the bank
of the River Thames which lead down into the water.
This isn't a part of London's East End that Owen
is known to have visited, and it also had a
reputation as a cruising area for men who were seeking
out other men, which is one interpretation for the poem,
(29:09):
which goes this way, I am the ghost of shadwell Stair,
along the wharves, by the waterhouse, and through the cavernous slaughterhouse.
I am the shadow that walks there. Yet I have
flesh both firm and cool, and eyes tumultuous as the
gems of moons and lamps in the full times, when
dusk sails wavering down the pool shuddering. The purple street
(29:34):
arc burns, where I watch always from the banks, dolorously
the shipping clanks, and after me a strange tide turns.
I walk till the stars of London wayne and dawn
creeps up the Shadwell stair. But when the crowing sirens blare,
I with another ghost am Lane. In July of nineteen eighteen,
(29:56):
Wilfred Owen was declared fit for general service. Of course,
a lot of people in his life did not want
him to go back into combat. Some actually tried to
find alternative assignments for him in England. Siegfried Sassoon, who
had already returned to combat and then been sent back
to England to recover from a head injury, even threatened
(30:16):
to stab Owen in the leg to keep him from
going back to the front.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
After Owen's experience with shell shock, his family especially worried
about his mental state, but he dismissed this in a
letter to his mother, which also spelled out his reasons
for wanting to go back to the front quote, my
nerves are in perfect order. I came out again in
order to help these boys directly by leading them as
well as an officer can indirectly by watching their sufferings,
(30:45):
that I may speak of them as well as a
pleader can. Owen was back at the front with his
old battalion. By September of nineteen eighteen. He had already
described himself as reborn as a poet, and he also
appeared changed as a soldier. He seemed to have numbed
himself to the horrors of war, which is another thing
(31:07):
he wrote about in his poetry. He had become intensely
efficient and adept at command. He was later awarded the
Military Cross for actions that took place on October first
and second, nineteen eighteen. His citation for conspicuous gallantry and
devotion to duty red quote on the company commander becoming
(31:29):
a casualty. He assumed command and showed fine leadership and
resisted a heavy counter attack. He personally manipulated a captured
enemy MG from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses
on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly. On November fourth,
(31:51):
nineteen eighteen, Owen's company was trying to place a temporary
bridge across the Saber Canal on the Western Front when
they came under heavy fire from German machine gunners. Owen
was killed at the age of twenty five. One week later,
almost to the hour, Germany and the Allies signed an
armistice that stopped the fighting. Owen's mother received word of
(32:15):
his death on Armistice Day as church bells were ringing
to mark the end of the war.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
The sargoned back to Owen's best known poem, dulceaet de
koram est, which he probably drafted at Craig Lockhart. It
ends quote, if you could hear at every jolt the
blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer,
bitter as the cut of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.
(32:43):
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie
dulce et decoram s propatria moriy. That line in Latin,
which Owen was framing as a lie, means it is
sweet and proper to die for one's country.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Owen was buried at Or's Cemetery in France. His mother
had lines from his poem the end inscribed in his tombstone.
Shall life renew these bodies of a truce all death,
will he annul all tears of suage? In that poem,
the last line ends with a question mark, but that's
not part of the tombstone inscription, making it read like
(33:26):
an answer rather than another question, or like a reassurance
rather than doubt.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Only five of Owen's poems were published during his lifetime,
three in the Nation and two anonymously in The Hydra
at Craig Lockhart, but he had started pulling things together
to publish a collection of his work before his return
to the front. After Owen's death, Sigfried Sassoon worked with
Edith Sitwell to publish this collection of twenty three poems
(33:55):
that came out in nineteen twenty. Edith's brother, ausbert's Well
was friends with Owen and with sassin and she had
also published some of Owen's poems in her annual anthology
called Weels in nineteen nineteen. A preface which Owen had
drafted partially in verse began quote, this book is not
about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak
(34:19):
of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor
anything about glory, honor, dominion, or power except war. Above all,
this book is not concerned with poetry. The subject of
it is war and the pity of war. The poetry
is in the pity. Another part of that preface read quote,
(34:40):
all the poet can do today is to warn. That
is why the true poets must be truthful. In his
introduction to this collection, se Soon described Owen this way quote.
He was a man of absolute integrity of mind. He
never wrote his poems, as many war poets did, make
the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others. He
(35:04):
did not pity himself. In the last year of his life,
he attained a clear vision of what he needed to say,
and these poems survive him as his true and splendid testament.
Since Owen's first collection came out after the war was over,
its immediate crisis had passed, so this book came out
as people were grieving and reckoning with the deaths of
(35:26):
more than eight hundred eighty thousand British military personnel and
more than sixteen thousand British civilians. Owen's poems spoke to
this loss and grief and to the humanity of the
soldiers in the trenches, so it really struck a chord
with the reading public. Critics were not always as impressed
with it, though for example, William Butler Yeates largely dismissed it,
(35:49):
saying quote passive suffering is not a theme for poetry
that sounds about right for Yates, and when he edited
the Oxford Book of Modern Verse in nineteen thirty six,
he did not include any of Owen's work. Another collection
of Owen's work was published in nineteen thirty one, edited
by Edmund Blunden and containing nineteen additional poems. Benjamin Britton
(36:11):
also set several of Owens's war poems to music in
his War Requiem, which also incorporated Latin liturgical texts, and
this was first performed in nineteen sixty two. The Collected
Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by C. Day Lewis, was
published in nineteen sixty three and contained about eighty poems
(36:32):
and fragments. War Requiem and this new edition of Owen's
poems both came out as the anti Vietnam War movement
was evolving in the nineteen sixties, and Owen's work really
resonated with that movement, which became part of his legacy
as a war poet. That legacy was closely guarded by
(36:52):
Owen's family, especially his mother who died in nineteen forty two,
and his brother Harold, who died in nineteen seventy one.
When Harold reprinted Wilfrid's military cross citation, he changed the
part about inflicting considerable losses to the enemy, instead saying
he had captured them. It was as though Harold did
(37:13):
not want to publicize that his brother had killed other
people in battle. Harold pushed back against allegations that Wilfred
had been accused of cowardice by a commanding officer. That's
something that is not reflected at all in his military file.
It's a little unclear where this idea first came from,
but it was included in the first edition of poet
(37:34):
Robert graves memoir Goodbye to All. That something that Harold
tried to get him to change. Harold also made a
concerted effort to dismiss the idea that Wilfred had relationships
with other men. That was also something that Robert Graves
included in later editions of his memoir, which described Wilfred
(37:55):
as quote an idealistic homosexual. During will Ford's lifetime, people
just noticed that his social and literary circle included a
lot of men who were either believed or known to
be involved with other men, and Wilfrid was also never
known to have had a romantic relationship with a woman.
(38:16):
There are also lots of references to boys and lads
throughout his work, and beyond works like Shadwell Stare that
we read earlier, a number of these poems can be
read as having homoerotic undertones. This may have been part
of why Harold blacked out part of Wilfrid's letters with
India Inc. Before they could be published, and he actually
(38:38):
cut out some portions with scissors, noting these passages as
illegible in the printed text. Their mother also destroyed some
of Wilfrid's correspondents completely, including some of his letters from
Siegfried Sassoon, some of which were reportedly very passionate. So
Soon married a woman in nineteen thirty one and is
(38:58):
known to have also a number of relationships with men.
We know that a lot of people, regardless of their gender,
found Owen attractive, and a number of his letters described
basically being flirted with, but we just don't know with
certainty whether he had a romantic or physical relationship with
anybody during his lifetime and his biography of Wilfred, Harold
(39:21):
Owen described his brother as having quote escheed any complications
involving sex of any sort because such complications would quote
risk the lessening of his intellectual powers. We can't really
take that statement as face value, though, because it's very
clear that Harold Owen was taking steps to put forth
(39:43):
a particular image of his brother. The Ransom Center at
the University of Texas at Austin acquired some of Owen's letters,
and a twenty fourteen blog post by them describes efforts
to use software to try to read through those marked
out passages. If anything has come of that effort, it
does not seem to have been published. That is Wilfred Owen,
(40:05):
who I just I want to hug.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I know my instinct is, oh, that poor sweet kid. Yeah.
It also, I'll talk about it in behind the scenes.
I won't get that it now.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah. I have listener mail from Sarah Sarah. I wrote
to say, hey, ladies, longtime fan, here, first time emailing.
Nice to finally meet you. I've been listening since close
to the beginning, and I think I have the sym IHDPHD.
First Off, thank you for your recent commentary about protecting research,
(40:39):
the sciences, are civil servants, etc. The list goes on
and on. I know people have already written about this,
but to reiterate it means a lot to speak out
so we're not alone as our country changes. Last week,
I was thrilled with your very comprehensive National Park episodes.
Much like everyone says when the email, I never had
a reason to write in, but I kid you not.
My husband's family is hosting a once every five years
(41:02):
reunion in Shenandoah this weekend. I guess that's not saying
much as it's the most popular VIBE visitors, but I
was delighted. My personal commentary to add to this note
is that being Marylanders, we've spent a lot of time
in Shenandoah, so I wanted to speak specifically to the
efforts of PATC, Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and park rangers
(41:24):
who maintain the park and its historic properties for reasonable prices.
Anyone can book an overnight stay at one of the
homesteader's original houses, which my husband and I have done
many times. There are other options too, that were built
by the PATC for the purposes of working within the park,
but for obvious reasons, the historical ones are my personal favorites.
(41:46):
It's a special way to thoroughly immerse yourself in the area.
I should say too, it's not lost on me that
these were people's homes, and I consider them rather sacred.
Each home has binders of their family histories you can
read while you're there, and I enjoy trying to find
related historic structures nearby. You can still see some gravestones
(42:06):
and ruins of former houses, churches, etc. That have been
almost lost. I'll specifically call out the Corbin and the
Jones families, whose last living property owners were allowed to
live at each home until they passed. Anyway, I wanted
to share a tidbit to humanize it even further. Honor
the families who lost property, and thank the folks who
(42:26):
keep the history alive. You too, included In spite of
the area's complex past, it's a place to enjoy nature
and remember. Thank you for reading this very long email.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Pet Tax is attached.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
This is our daughter Poppy, a poodle in honor of
Holly Hope. You're both off to some fun summer activities
in your various locales and thanks again for everything. You
do to help us learn and grow all my best, Sarah,
Thank you so much, Sarah. There are a lot of
local and regional hiking clubs and mountain clubs that do
(43:00):
so much work to build and maintain trails, usually on
a volunteer basis, work that I'd like was not even
fully aware happened by anyone other than park rangers until
relatively recently in my life. If that is something that
you were interested in, if you like hiking and you
(43:21):
like the outdoors, and you maybe have never really thought
about that, you can check out in your area and
see if there are organizations that are doing things like
trail magnance and trail cleanup. Some of it is stuff
like picking up trash, but some of us also making
sure the trails are well maintained and stay graded the
way that they need to be to let water run
(43:42):
off and not pool and flood and things like that.
So also, what an adorable What an adorable dog?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Poppy?
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yes, Poppy is kind of a light chocolate or kind
of cafe ole kind of for a dog and has
one paw on a red ball which is super super cute.
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast. We're at History Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show
(44:14):
on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to
listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Before we start today's episode, We're
going to Morocco.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, in November.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
In November, Yes, November fourth through fifteenth, twenty twenty five.
There are still some spots available. I think they are
all spots for people traveling as a pair, whether that
is a couple or friends, or some other option that
involves two people siblings, right, parent and child. Right, all right,
(00:45):
you're adventurous. Yeah, you could share with a stranger, and
our friends that defined destinations would work that out for you. Yes, yes,
I know. They were getting in touch with some of
the folks that were booked as individuals to see if
they might be open to that. Some of our prior
trips we've had some more flexibility in terms of being
(01:06):
able to add rooms of different types, but this time
the hotel spaces are more predetermined and fixed.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, it's a little more it's a little less flexible,
a little more limited. Yeah, but also yeah, perhaps the
most fun ever.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah. We're also both incredibly excited about it. We're gonna
be staying in nice hotels and also one night of
desert glamping. The desert glamping accommodations also incredibly nice breakfast
is included every day. Also lots of dinners and a
number of lunches included, and we will have professional guides
(01:43):
the whole time showing us the sites, telling us all
about what we're seeing and experiencing. And this also has
some fun activities that are very unlike activities we have
done on our previous trips, including number one, a sunset
camel ride, a wine tasting, and there's a tilemaking in
(02:04):
craft's workshop and a Moroccan cooking class. My spouse is
extremely excited about that one. He loves to cook and
already knows some Moroccan dishes and is very excited to
learn more. So if this sounds fun to you, it
sure does sound fun to me. You can go to
Defined Destinations dot com and if you click on the
(02:27):
tour's button in the menu, it's the one called a
Taste of Morocco and again that is from November fourth
through fifteenth, twenty twenty five. More information at Defined Destinations
dot com. And now we'll get to today's episode. It's
been a while since we have talked about a poet
(02:50):
on the show, especially a poet whose work is in
the public domain so we can read as much of
it as we want as part of the episode. And
I really do love to talk about poets. This one
is Wilfred Owen and is considered to be one of
the most important English language poets of World War One.
His work was also seen as part of a shift
(03:12):
and how a lot of British poets were writing about war. Also,
his life almost seems like it was intentionally written to
be as tear jerking as possible. Like if you were
writing a movie about a World War One soldier poet
and you wanted it to be really sad, that would
(03:33):
be Wilfrid Owen. So Wilfrid Edward Salter Owen was born
on March eighteenth, eighteen ninety three in Oswestree, Shropshire, in
western England. This is on the border with Wales, and
before the fifteen thirties it was part of England at
some points and Wales at others. Various street names and
other place names there reflect both English and Welsh influences,
(03:56):
and a lot of families in the area, including Wilfred
Owen's family have both English and Welsh ancestry. Wilfrid was
the oldest of four siblings. The others were Harold, Colin
and Mary. Their father, Thomas known as Tom, was a
railroad station master and had previously been a seaman. Their mother,
(04:17):
Harriet Susan Shaw Owen, went by Susan and was devoutly religious.
When Wilfrid was born, they were living at Plas Wilmot,
which is a villa that belonged to Susan's father, Edward Shaw.
The oldest part of the villa had been built around
eighteen twenty nine, and it had been added on to
over the years, including a stable, a coach house, a
(04:40):
wash house, a servant's cottage and a kitchen, and the
grounds also had a garden and a pond.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
The Shaws had been financially comfortable, or at least they
had seemed to be financially comfortable, but when Wilfrid was four,
Edward died and the family learned that he had actually
been and in serious debt. They had to auction off
Plus Wilmot, along with all of its furniture and effects
to pay off those debts, and then the family moved
(05:09):
to Birkenhead, across the River Mersey from Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
Wilfrid surely noticed the change in his family's circumstances, but
since he was only four, he probably did not fully
understand all of it. But his mother really struggled with it,
especially since some of her family had already thought that
her marriage to Wilfrid's father had been a step down.
(05:33):
She had very high ambitions for Wilfrid from the time
that he was born, and this loss of income and
status probably played a part in how really insistent she
was that he makes something of himself. Wilfrid was a thoughtful,
sensitive boy, and he was interested in literature and poetry
(05:54):
from an early age. He liked other subjects as well,
including botany, geology and art archaeology. He and his cousins
Vera and Leslie Gunston started their own three person Astronomical,
Geological and Botanical Society in nineteen hundred. Wilfrid started attending
a boys school called the Birkenhead Institute, where he developed
(06:16):
a reputation for being a very serious student. When the
family moved to Shrewsbury which some people also say Shrewsbury,
he transferred to Shrewsbury Technical School and he graduated from
there in nineteen eleven. Boy did I try to figure
out if there is a pronunciation people like best? And
I found many of each of them in recorded examples.
(06:41):
Wilfrid wanted to continue his education and he passed the
matriculation exam at London University. He did not do well
enough to earn a scholarship, though, and his family didn't
have the money to pay for it. Without one, he
took correspondence classes while trying to find work to support himself.
He thought that he might become a poet or an artist,
(07:02):
but his mother was really adamant that whatever he did
to distinguish himself needed to come along with a steady income.
As we said, Wilfrid's mother was devoutly religious and he
was very very close to her. This may have been
one of the reasons why he started thinking about pursuing
some kind of religious vocation. He started working as a
(07:23):
lay assistant for the Vicar of Dunstan, which is west
of London. Outside of reading.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
This was an unpaid position and Owen was working in
exchange for room and board, and that work included attending
all of the church services, of which there were many,
and working with the people of the parish. He also
took some botany classes at University College Reading, and he
was fond of the romantic poets like John Keats and
Percy Shelley, and his first poems were largely derivative of
(07:51):
their work.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
By nineteen thirteen, it had become clear to Owen that
a life in the Anglican Church was not for him.
He was passionate about poetry in a way that he
wasn't about religion, but he had also become disillusioned with
the church. One reason was that he thought the church
was not meeting its obligations to the poor. He was
(08:14):
working with people who were sick and living in poverty
and just desperately needed help. While the vicar had a
pretty comfortable life in the vicarage, Owen also developed some
kind of respiratory condition, possibly related to living and working
in damp, moldy spaces.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
He left his position with the vicar, and after he
recovered from his respiratory illness, Owen went to France For
about a year. He taught English at Berlitz School in Bordeaux.
Then he started working for the Lege family tutoring their daughter,
Nanette and helping Madame Lege practice her English ahead of
a planned trip to Canada. Owen was also essentially Ninette's playmate,
(08:55):
since she didn't really have anyone else to play with.
Owen lived with the and shared most of their meals,
but he was not otherwise paid.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
World War One started not long after Owen met the
la Jais, but the area where they were staying was
kind of remote. It was close to the border with Spain.
News traveled slowly there, and while they did see newspaper
reports about things like the assassinations of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
and Sophie, Duchess of Hollenberg, a lot of this reporting
(09:28):
was more like propaganda than a really accurate account of
what was going on, so it wasn't immediately clear to
them just how things were escalating in other parts of Europe.
In August of nineteen fourteen, the Lages introduced Owen to
a friend of theirs, poet, essayist and translator, Laurent Taliad.
(09:49):
This was probably the first time Owen had met a
published poet in person. Taiad gave lectures in the nearby
town of Bagnel de Bijour, which Owen attended. One of
the subjects that naturally came up was the war. Taliad
had written at least two pacifist essays, but during one
of these lectures, he framed French soldiers as fighting to
(10:12):
defend the treasure of the French language, as well as
the reason and intellect of French poets and philosophers like
Voltaire and Montesquieu. He also described listening to the work
of French poets in the French language as an act
of patriotism. Owen would later share a similar sentiment and
(10:33):
a letter to his mother saying quote, do you know
what would hold me together on a battlefield? The sense
that I was perpetuating the language in which Keats and
the rest of them wrote. The Liges knew about Owen's
aspirations as a poet, and they invited Taliade to stay
with them at the villa. He was there off and
on for several weeks. Owen wrote to his mother that
(10:56):
Taliad received him like a lover, and some of his
descriptions of the poet also have this tone that could
be read as erotic. We don't have the full content
of these letters, though, parts of them were heavily redacted,
probably by Wilfrid's brother Harold, who censored many of Wilfrid's
letters before they could be published or placed in archives.
(11:19):
It is clear that Taliad had an influence on Owen
beyond their shared sentiments about the war and language and poetry.
Taliad introduced Owen to the work of French poets and writers,
including Gustave Flaubert. Taliad's own work was influenced by poets
like Malarmee and Baudlaire, and Owen tried to translate some
(11:40):
of that work into English.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
In September of nineteen fourteen, as Madame Leje was preparing
to leave for Canada, Owen and the legs went to Bordeaux.
This is when Owen started to realize just how serious
the situation with the war was. As German forces had advanced,
the French government had retreated from Paris, and Bordeaux was
(12:03):
temporarily acting as the capital. The university where Owen had
planned to take some courses, had been closed and it
was taken over by the war ministry. The Berlitz School,
where he had planned to resume teaching, had closed as well.
Madame Lejee left for Canada in October and that put
an end to Owen's job with the family, and at
(12:23):
that point he went to stay with other friends. Owen
kept working on his poetry and trying to support himself
through tutoring. He became increasingly conflicted about the war and
whether he should go back home and enlist, although at
the same time he was concerned about whether the trip
across the Channel would be more dangerous than just staying
(12:44):
in France. He also had a series of illnesses, including
one that might have been measles. Owen returned to the
UK in May of nineteen fifteen, not to join the military,
but to represent a perfumer that he had been working
looking for at a trade fair being held in London.
He returned to France the following month. A lot of
(13:07):
people had expected World War One to be over pretty quickly,
and he didn't want to go through the drudgery of
training only for the war to be over by the
time he was done. He finally decided that if the
Dardanelle Strait was still held by the Ottoman Empire in
September of nineteen fifteen, he would return home and enlist.
We talked about this strait and its strategic importance in
(13:29):
our episode on the Gallipoli Campaign, which was the Allied
effort to take control of the strait and occupy the
Ottoman capital of Constantinople. That episode came out on November thirtieth,
twenty fifteen. The Dardenell Strait was not opened by that September.
The Gallipoli Campaign was a failure for the Allies and
(13:49):
it ended in a series of nighttime evacuations that started
in December of nineteen fifteen. By that point, Wilfred Owen
had gone back to England and joined the army, and
we will get to that after a sponsor break. At
(14:12):
the very beginning of World War One, the UK had
been somewhat divided on the question of whether to become
actively involved in the war. Opinions shifted through July and
early August of nineteen fourteen, with Britain declaring war on
Germany on August fourth of that year. After Germany's declarations
of war against Russia and France, Britain called for volunteers
(14:36):
to increase the size of its military, and initially that
response had been really enthusiastic, but a year later there
was no end to the war in sight, and enlistment
numbers had really plummeted. Britain would eventually have to conscript
soldiers to make up for immense losses due to illnesses, injuries,
(14:57):
and death, but in the meantime, men who had not
enlisted were facing enormous pressure to do so and criticism
for having not done it already. This was really everywhere.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
It was in newspapers and recruitment posters and other government propaganda,
and conversations with friends and family, and even sometimes just
comments from random passers by.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
If Wilfred Owen had returned to England and tried to
enlist shortly after the start of the war, he probably
would have been rejected. He was just a little over
five feet five inches tall, and in September of nineteen fourteen,
authorities had raised the minimum height limit to five foot
six to help deal with the surge of prospective recruits.
(15:42):
The hype minimum had later been lowered again, and it
was five foot two by the time he arrived at
the London headquarters of the Artist's Rifles on October twentieth,
nineteen fifteen. Were a physical and he was sworn in
the next day.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
The Artists' Rifles had been founded by art student Edward
Starling in eighteen fifty nine. As that name suggests, it
was originally a volunteer regiment for artists. By this point
it had evolved into an officer training regiment. When Owen
had been in London for that trade fair, he had
seen an announcement saying that gentlemen returning from abroad could
(16:21):
earn a commission through the Artist's Rifles, subject to their
age and their fitness. After finishing his officer training, Owen
was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment, and
not long after that he was deployed to France. His
initial letters home sound optimistic and almost cheerful about being there,
although not so much about the enlisted men he was
(16:44):
supposed to be leading. As we mentioned earlier, he was
a sensitive person. He was thoughtful and bookish, and while
his family hadn't had the money to send him to university,
he still had more education than most British men his age.
He described his men with terms like hard headed, loudish
and ugly, but he was also confident that he could
(17:07):
trust them in combat, and he seems to have earned
their respect in part by being a very good shot.
Owen wrote numerous letters to his mother and to other people,
but especially to his mother while he was in the army,
and they had worked out some codes ahead of time
so that he could get around the censors who were
(17:28):
reviewing all the mail. For example, in letters that he
wrote himself, he would use the word mistletoe, and then
specific letters from the following words would spell out his location.
They also agreed on a use for pre printed British
Army Field Service postcards. These had spaces for the soldier's
(17:49):
name and the date of the last letter that soldier
had received from the person they were writing to. Those
were the only things allowed to be written on the card.
Everything else was communicated through crossing out the lines that
were not applicable, so these cards were pretty optimistic in
their framing. The first line was I am quite well
(18:11):
and while the next section was about being hospitalized, The
options for how the soldier was doing in the hospital
were either and am going on quite well or and
hoped to be discharged soon. Owen and his mother had
agreed that if he was being sent to the front,
he would send her one of these postcards, and he
would have the line I am being sent down to
(18:33):
the base struck out twice.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
The tone of Owen's letters changed very quickly once he
got into the trenches and as his unit held advanced
posts ahead of British lines. At one point he wrote
to his mother quote, I have suffered seventh hell. I
have not been at the front, I have been in
front of it. He wrote about the makeshift facilities, the cold,
(18:57):
the wet, and the mud which got into his sleeping bag,
and in the words of a letter from January of
nineteen seventeen, that holy of holies my pajamas.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
On January twelfth of nineteen seventeen, Owen's men were hit
with a gas attack, which he later memorialized in one
of his best known poems, Dulce et decorum Essed. Even
before the gruesomeness of the gas, this poem describes the
soldiers in the trenches as quote bent double like old
(19:27):
beggars under sacks, knock kneed, coughing like hags. When the
gas hits and somebody can't get his gas mask on
in time, he's described as drowning as under a green sea.
You will return to this poem later in March of
nineteen seventeen, Owen was injured during the Battle of the
sum He fell through a shell hole into a cellar
(19:51):
and he got a concussion and he was trapped in
that space for three days. Then in April, while his
men were trying to hold a railroad line, he i
had a horrific experience in which he was blown off
an embankment by a shell and he landed among the
dismembered remains of another officer who had been his friend.
Owen had to spend days sheltering there under a piece
(20:13):
of corrugated iron. After this, Owen started showing signs of
shell shock. This term was likely coined in nineteen fifteen
by Charles Myers of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Some
people today describe shell shock as post traumatic stress disorder,
and while shell shock and PTSD are both responses to
(20:35):
trauma only, some of the symptoms overlap. These include nightmares, flashbacks,
and intrusive thoughts. A lot of the other symptoms of
shell shock seemed really physical, like being not able to
stop shaking or being unable to speak or move, or
see or hear, as well as confusion and delirium. Initially,
(20:59):
many soldiers experiencing shell shock were accused of cowardice or malingering.
Some were court martialed and even executed for cowardice or desertion.
Even as more doctors became convinced that shell shock was
a real condition that required treatment, there were still people
who insisted that shell shock soldiers were just cowards. One
(21:21):
theory about shell shock's cause was that it was connected
to prolonged exposure to the incessant sounds of German shells.
So by December of nineteen sixteen, the British Army had
set up four specialized treatment centers well away from the
sounds of battle. By nineteen seventeen, these had been completely overwhelmed,
and by the end of the war about eighty thousand
(21:44):
British soldiers had been diagnosed with shell shock. Owen was
admitted to a series of hospitals starting in May of
nineteen seventeen, ultimately winding up at Craig Lockhart Hydropathic in Edinburgh,
which had become Craig Lockhart Warhi Hospital for Neurasthenic Officers.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Doctor A. J.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Brock was one of four medical officers there, and he
was treating his patients through what he called occupational therapy
or ergo therapy or work cure. Brock wrote quote, if
the essential thing for the patient to do is to
help himself, the essential thing for the doctor to do, Indeed,
the only thing he can profitably do is to help
(22:26):
him to help himself. Patients were expected to engage with
the world around them through activity and useful work. Brock
arranged for the patients to do things like teach or
work on nearby farms during their convalescence. One of Owen's
jobs was editing the hospital magazine, The Hydra. The magazine
(22:46):
itself was also a form of treatment. When patients found
themselves without anything to do, they were encouraged to write something,
including writing about their war experiences. This also had the
effect of allowing Page patients to process what had happened
to them through writing. While many other hospitals treating shell
shock or advising patients not to think about it and
(23:08):
to focus on pleasant things instead, while Owen was it
Craig Lockhart. Another patient arrived, and that was poet and
writer Siegfried Sassoon. Sessong did not have shell shock. He
had been declared mentally unfit to serve after writing a
statement a pretty strong statement against the war, which was
(23:28):
dated June fifteenth, nineteen seventeen. That statement began quote, I
am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance
of military authority, because I believe that the war is
being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to
end it. Sessoun wrote that he believed that the war
had started as one of defense and liberation, but had
(23:51):
become one of aggression and conquest. This statement really caused
a furor, including being read before for the House of
Commons and printed in the London Times, and of course
Sassoon being sent to the hospital.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
Owen had written some similar sentiments to his mother in
a letter that April, in which he expressed bitterness quote
towards those in England who might relieve us and will not,
and he also admired Sassoon greatly. Sassoon was about seven
years older than Owen, and he was already a published poet.
During his military service, Sassoon's writing had become grittier and
(24:30):
more realistic, and had pushed back on the idea of
military service as heroic and romanticized. While at craig Lockhart,
Owen and Sassoon worked on poems together. There are handwritten
drafts surviving today in which you can see Owen's original
words along with Sassoon's edits and suggestions, which often made
Owen's language more direct and forceful.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
One of the poems that evolved through Sassoon's feedback is
another of Owen's most well known, and that's Anthem for
Doomed Youth, which was published posthumously in nineteen twenty. What
passing bells for those who die as cattle? Only the
monstrous anger of the guns, Only the stuttering rifles, rapid
(25:14):
rattle can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now
for them, No prayers, nor bells, nor any voice of mourning,
save the choirs, the shrill, demented choirs, of wailing shells
and bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candles
may be held to speed them all? Not in the
(25:35):
hands of boys, but in their eyes shall shine the
holy glimmers of goodbyes, the pallor of girls, brows shall
be their pall, their flowers, the tenderness of patient minds,
and each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. Tracy
mentioned at the top of the show that Owen's work
also was part of a shift in how British poets
(25:58):
were writing about war. You can compare Anthem for Doomed
Youth to Rupert Brooks The Soldier, which is a lot
more patriotic and romanticized. Brooke had joined the Navy at
the start of the war, and he died of sepsis
on April twenty third, nineteen fifteen, while on the way
to the Dardanell Street in preparation for the Gallipoli Campaign.
(26:19):
The Soldier was published posthumously, and it reads, if I
should die, think only this of me, that there's some
corner of a foreign field that is forever England, there
shall be in that rich earth of richer dust concealed,
a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, gave once
her flowers, to love her ways to Rome, a body
(26:42):
of England's breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blessed
by sons of home. And think this heart all evils
shed away a pulse in the eternal mind no less
gives somewhere back the thoughts by England, given her sights
and sounds, dreams, happy as her day, and laughter learned
of friends and gentleness in Hearts at Peace under in
(27:05):
English Heaven. It is also very pro England in a
way that Wilfrid Owen's poems really were not. Wilfrid Owen
did recover during his time at Craig Lockhart, and we'll
talk about his return to the front after another sponsor break.
(27:31):
By October of nineteen seventeen, Wilfrid Owen had recovered enough
to be approved to return to light duty. He remained
in England, and while he was on leave in London,
he met journalist and art gallery owner Robert Baldwin Ross,
known as Robbie Ross, was as openly gay as it
was possible to be in Britain in the early twentieth century,
(27:54):
at which point homosexuality was both a crime and very
heavily stigmatized. According to some reports, Ross was the first
man Oscar Wilde ever had a sexual experience with, and
wild was, of course, sinced two years of hard labor
for gross indecency for homosexual conduct in eighteen ninety five.
(28:15):
Ross became one of Owen's mentors and later his literary executor,
and also introduced him to other poets and writers, including
Arnold Bennett and H. G.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Wells. During his time at Craig Lockhart and the months
that followed, Owen felt that he had been reborn as
a poet. On New Year's Eve of nineteen seventeen, he
wrote a letter to his mother that said, in part quote,
I am started. The tugs have left me. I feel
the great swelling of the open sea taking my galleon.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
In early nineteen eighteen, Owen drafted a poem called Shadwell's Stare.
This is a real set of stairs on the bank
of the River Thames which lead down into the water.
This isn't a part of London's East End that Owen
is known to have visited, and it also had a
reputation as a cruising area for men who were seeking
out other men, which is one interpretation for the poem,
(29:09):
which goes this way, I am the ghost of shadwell Stair,
along the wharves, by the waterhouse, and through the cavernous slaughterhouse.
I am the shadow that walks there. Yet I have
flesh both firm and cool, and eyes tumultuous as the
gems of moons and lamps in the full times, when
dusk sails wavering down the pool shuddering. The purple street
(29:34):
arc burns, where I watch always from the banks, dolorously
the shipping clanks, and after me a strange tide turns.
I walk till the stars of London wayne and dawn
creeps up the Shadwell stair. But when the crowing sirens blare,
I with another ghost am Lane. In July of nineteen eighteen,
(29:56):
Wilfred Owen was declared fit for general service. Of course,
a lot of people in his life did not want
him to go back into combat. Some actually tried to
find alternative assignments for him in England. Siegfried Sassoon, who
had already returned to combat and then been sent back
to England to recover from a head injury, even threatened
(30:16):
to stab Owen in the leg to keep him from
going back to the front.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
After Owen's experience with shell shock, his family especially worried
about his mental state, but he dismissed this in a
letter to his mother, which also spelled out his reasons
for wanting to go back to the front quote, my
nerves are in perfect order. I came out again in
order to help these boys directly by leading them as
well as an officer can indirectly by watching their sufferings,
(30:45):
that I may speak of them as well as a
pleader can. Owen was back at the front with his
old battalion. By September of nineteen eighteen. He had already
described himself as reborn as a poet, and he also
appeared changed as a soldier. He seemed to have numbed
himself to the horrors of war, which is another thing
(31:07):
he wrote about in his poetry. He had become intensely
efficient and adept at command. He was later awarded the
Military Cross for actions that took place on October first
and second, nineteen eighteen. His citation for conspicuous gallantry and
devotion to duty red quote on the company commander becoming
(31:29):
a casualty. He assumed command and showed fine leadership and
resisted a heavy counter attack. He personally manipulated a captured
enemy MG from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses
on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly. On November fourth,
(31:51):
nineteen eighteen, Owen's company was trying to place a temporary
bridge across the Saber Canal on the Western Front when
they came under heavy fire from German machine gunners. Owen
was killed at the age of twenty five. One week later,
almost to the hour, Germany and the Allies signed an
armistice that stopped the fighting. Owen's mother received word of
(32:15):
his death on Armistice Day as church bells were ringing
to mark the end of the war.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
The sargoned back to Owen's best known poem, dulceaet de
koram est, which he probably drafted at Craig Lockhart. It
ends quote, if you could hear at every jolt the
blood come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer,
bitter as the cut of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues.
(32:43):
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory. The old lie
dulce et decoram s propatria moriy. That line in Latin,
which Owen was framing as a lie, means it is
sweet and proper to die for one's country.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Owen was buried at Or's Cemetery in France. His mother
had lines from his poem the end inscribed in his tombstone.
Shall life renew these bodies of a truce all death,
will he annul all tears of suage? In that poem,
the last line ends with a question mark, but that's
not part of the tombstone inscription, making it read like
(33:26):
an answer rather than another question, or like a reassurance
rather than doubt.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
Only five of Owen's poems were published during his lifetime,
three in the Nation and two anonymously in The Hydra
at Craig Lockhart, but he had started pulling things together
to publish a collection of his work before his return
to the front. After Owen's death, Sigfried Sassoon worked with
Edith Sitwell to publish this collection of twenty three poems
(33:55):
that came out in nineteen twenty. Edith's brother, ausbert's Well
was friends with Owen and with sassin and she had
also published some of Owen's poems in her annual anthology
called Weels in nineteen nineteen. A preface which Owen had
drafted partially in verse began quote, this book is not
about heroes. English poetry is not yet fit to speak
(34:19):
of them. Nor is it about deeds or lands, nor
anything about glory, honor, dominion, or power except war. Above all,
this book is not concerned with poetry. The subject of
it is war and the pity of war. The poetry
is in the pity. Another part of that preface read quote,
(34:40):
all the poet can do today is to warn. That
is why the true poets must be truthful. In his
introduction to this collection, se Soon described Owen this way quote.
He was a man of absolute integrity of mind. He
never wrote his poems, as many war poets did, make
the effect of a personal gesture. He pitied others. He
(35:04):
did not pity himself. In the last year of his life,
he attained a clear vision of what he needed to say,
and these poems survive him as his true and splendid testament.
Since Owen's first collection came out after the war was over,
its immediate crisis had passed, so this book came out
as people were grieving and reckoning with the deaths of
(35:26):
more than eight hundred eighty thousand British military personnel and
more than sixteen thousand British civilians. Owen's poems spoke to
this loss and grief and to the humanity of the
soldiers in the trenches, so it really struck a chord
with the reading public. Critics were not always as impressed
with it, though for example, William Butler Yeates largely dismissed it,
(35:49):
saying quote passive suffering is not a theme for poetry
that sounds about right for Yates, and when he edited
the Oxford Book of Modern Verse in nineteen thirty six,
he did not include any of Owen's work. Another collection
of Owen's work was published in nineteen thirty one, edited
by Edmund Blunden and containing nineteen additional poems. Benjamin Britton
(36:11):
also set several of Owens's war poems to music in
his War Requiem, which also incorporated Latin liturgical texts, and
this was first performed in nineteen sixty two. The Collected
Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by C. Day Lewis, was
published in nineteen sixty three and contained about eighty poems
(36:32):
and fragments. War Requiem and this new edition of Owen's
poems both came out as the anti Vietnam War movement
was evolving in the nineteen sixties, and Owen's work really
resonated with that movement, which became part of his legacy
as a war poet. That legacy was closely guarded by
(36:52):
Owen's family, especially his mother who died in nineteen forty two,
and his brother Harold, who died in nineteen seventy one.
When Harold reprinted Wilfrid's military cross citation, he changed the
part about inflicting considerable losses to the enemy, instead saying
he had captured them. It was as though Harold did
(37:13):
not want to publicize that his brother had killed other
people in battle. Harold pushed back against allegations that Wilfred
had been accused of cowardice by a commanding officer. That's
something that is not reflected at all in his military file.
It's a little unclear where this idea first came from,
but it was included in the first edition of poet
(37:34):
Robert graves memoir Goodbye to All. That something that Harold
tried to get him to change. Harold also made a
concerted effort to dismiss the idea that Wilfred had relationships
with other men. That was also something that Robert Graves
included in later editions of his memoir, which described Wilfred
(37:55):
as quote an idealistic homosexual. During will Ford's lifetime, people
just noticed that his social and literary circle included a
lot of men who were either believed or known to
be involved with other men, and Wilfrid was also never
known to have had a romantic relationship with a woman.
(38:16):
There are also lots of references to boys and lads
throughout his work, and beyond works like Shadwell Stare that
we read earlier, a number of these poems can be
read as having homoerotic undertones. This may have been part
of why Harold blacked out part of Wilfrid's letters with
India Inc. Before they could be published, and he actually
(38:38):
cut out some portions with scissors, noting these passages as
illegible in the printed text. Their mother also destroyed some
of Wilfrid's correspondents completely, including some of his letters from
Siegfried Sassoon, some of which were reportedly very passionate. So
Soon married a woman in nineteen thirty one and is
(38:58):
known to have also a number of relationships with men.
We know that a lot of people, regardless of their gender,
found Owen attractive, and a number of his letters described
basically being flirted with, but we just don't know with
certainty whether he had a romantic or physical relationship with
anybody during his lifetime and his biography of Wilfred, Harold
(39:21):
Owen described his brother as having quote escheed any complications
involving sex of any sort because such complications would quote
risk the lessening of his intellectual powers. We can't really
take that statement as face value, though, because it's very
clear that Harold Owen was taking steps to put forth
(39:43):
a particular image of his brother. The Ransom Center at
the University of Texas at Austin acquired some of Owen's letters,
and a twenty fourteen blog post by them describes efforts
to use software to try to read through those marked
out passages. If anything has come of that effort, it
does not seem to have been published. That is Wilfred Owen,
(40:05):
who I just I want to hug.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I know my instinct is, oh, that poor sweet kid. Yeah.
It also, I'll talk about it in behind the scenes.
I won't get that it now.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Yeah. I have listener mail from Sarah Sarah. I wrote
to say, hey, ladies, longtime fan, here, first time emailing.
Nice to finally meet you. I've been listening since close
to the beginning, and I think I have the sym IHDPHD.
First Off, thank you for your recent commentary about protecting research,
(40:39):
the sciences, are civil servants, etc. The list goes on
and on. I know people have already written about this,
but to reiterate it means a lot to speak out
so we're not alone as our country changes. Last week,
I was thrilled with your very comprehensive National Park episodes.
Much like everyone says when the email, I never had
a reason to write in, but I kid you not.
My husband's family is hosting a once every five years
(41:02):
reunion in Shenandoah this weekend. I guess that's not saying
much as it's the most popular VIBE visitors, but I
was delighted. My personal commentary to add to this note
is that being Marylanders, we've spent a lot of time
in Shenandoah, so I wanted to speak specifically to the
efforts of PATC, Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and park rangers
(41:24):
who maintain the park and its historic properties for reasonable prices.
Anyone can book an overnight stay at one of the
homesteader's original houses, which my husband and I have done
many times. There are other options too, that were built
by the PATC for the purposes of working within the park,
but for obvious reasons, the historical ones are my personal favorites.
(41:46):
It's a special way to thoroughly immerse yourself in the area.
I should say too, it's not lost on me that
these were people's homes, and I consider them rather sacred.
Each home has binders of their family histories you can
read while you're there, and I enjoy trying to find
related historic structures nearby. You can still see some gravestones
(42:06):
and ruins of former houses, churches, etc. That have been
almost lost. I'll specifically call out the Corbin and the
Jones families, whose last living property owners were allowed to
live at each home until they passed. Anyway, I wanted
to share a tidbit to humanize it even further. Honor
the families who lost property, and thank the folks who
(42:26):
keep the history alive. You too, included In spite of
the area's complex past, it's a place to enjoy nature
and remember. Thank you for reading this very long email.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Pet Tax is attached.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
This is our daughter Poppy, a poodle in honor of
Holly Hope. You're both off to some fun summer activities
in your various locales and thanks again for everything. You
do to help us learn and grow all my best, Sarah,
Thank you so much, Sarah. There are a lot of
local and regional hiking clubs and mountain clubs that do
(43:00):
so much work to build and maintain trails, usually on
a volunteer basis, work that I'd like was not even
fully aware happened by anyone other than park rangers until
relatively recently in my life. If that is something that
you were interested in, if you like hiking and you
(43:21):
like the outdoors, and you maybe have never really thought
about that, you can check out in your area and
see if there are organizations that are doing things like
trail magnance and trail cleanup. Some of it is stuff
like picking up trash, but some of us also making
sure the trails are well maintained and stay graded the
way that they need to be to let water run
(43:42):
off and not pool and flood and things like that.
So also, what an adorable What an adorable dog?
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Poppy?
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yes, Poppy is kind of a light chocolate or kind
of cafe ole kind of for a dog and has
one paw on a red ball which is super super cute.
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other podcast. We're at History Podcasts at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show
(44:14):
on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you like to
listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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Tracy Wilson
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