Not a glorification of war, ANZAC Day is a time to remember the many young men and women who gave their lives for a cause they considered worthy. No Australian was conscripted into either World War, they were volunteers. Should we erase such heroism from our history books? I think not.

When we speak of the War Poets we are generally referring to men and women who experienced the horror of WW1 and wrote about it. People like Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Siegfried Sassoon, Vera Brittain and A.B. Paterson. (Yes, the bloke who wrote “The Man From Snowy River.”)

Wilfred Owen said of his war poetry: It “is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might, majesty, dominion, or power, except War. . . My subject is War, and the pity of War.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” is one of Owen’s most celebrated works. Written in 1917, the title is a line from the Odes of the Roman poet Horace. It means “Sweet and proper it is to die for your country.” We’ll see what Owen has to say about this in his description of a deadly gas attack which occurred some time after 1915 when the Germans first released clouds of poisonous chlorine at Ypres.

In 1918 Owen wrote “Strange Meeting.”  It’s possible he had a premonition of his own death in writing this for he was killed on November 4 of the same year, a week before the end of the war. His mother was informed of his death a week later, on what became Armistice Day. Not much to celebrate for her.

If you haven’t heard it, may I suggest you get hold of a recording of Benjamin Britten’s  oratorio, The War Requiem, and listen to it. Have a box of tissues with you. Britten’s extraordinary music is combined with Owen’s extraordinary poetry as a sort of libretto—long after the poet had died, for The War Requiem was completed in 1962. 

Siegfried Sassoon was born into a wealthy family so didn’t have the worry of supporting himself financially. He wrote poetry, publishing his first collection in 1906. He enlisted at the outbreak of war and was awarded a Military Cross for bravery on the Western Front. Wounded, he was returned to England in 1917. When he wrote to his commanding officer protesting the continuation of the war, his complaint was dismissed as neurasthenia or shell shock. Fearing he was abandoning his men, he rejoined his regiment in 1917, returning to France in 1918. He was accidentally shot by his own sergeant, but survived the war to write several volumes about his wartime experiences.

Vera Mary Brittain studied at Oxford, but when WW1 broke out, she found her studies increasingly irrelevant. She left them to work as a nurse. When stationed close to the front at Etaples, she nursed German prisoners of war. Her Internationalist and Pacifist views were no doubt informed by this period. Brittain’s  fiance, brother and two close friends were killed in the Great War and she had difficulty adjusting to life as a survivor, at its end. 

I read you a poem by the wonderful Mr Thomas Hardy in an earlier podcast. He thought of himself as a poet rather than as a novelist, was nominated 25 times for the Nobel prize in Literature but never actually received it. He was probably too old to go to WW1 as he died in 1927, but I’m going to read “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy.

American poet, e e cummings—Edward Estlin Cummings— wrote approximately 2,900 poems in his lifetime. During WW1 he was an ambulance driver and spent time in an internment camp which became the inspiration for his novel, The Enormous Room.

I’ll read you  “my sweet old etcetera” by e e cummings.

Born in 1892 in Walkerville, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, Leon Gellert became a student teacher then later taught at the University of Adelaide’s Teacher Training College. Enlisting with the Australian Imperial Forces, he landed at Ari Burnu Beach, Gallipoli, on April 25, 1915. He was repatriated in June 1916  deemed medically unfit as a result of war wounds. 

ANZAC Cove by Leon Gellert.

LEST WE FORGET