We were mostly taught about World War I through the war poetry. They wanted our class to all memorize Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est". I couldn't do it, got terrible marks in that class. But the Latin phrase itself sticks in your head.
Wilfred Owen did not live to see the end of that war.
It was at first astonishing to me that the same words are etched into the Arlington cemetery amphitheatre, but of course that's almost why Owen refers to them. At the time the building was constructed it would have been the thing to do - to portray death in war as a noble sacrifice.
Owen's point is that there's nothing noble about choking to death in a fog of gas, of so many dying so far from home, war is not noble or patriotic, it's horrible.
Wilfred Owen did not live to see the end of that war.
It was at first astonishing to me that the same words are etched into the Arlington cemetery amphitheatre, but of course that's almost why Owen refers to them. At the time the building was constructed it would have been the thing to do - to portray death in war as a noble sacrifice.
Owen's point is that there's nothing noble about choking to death in a fog of gas, of so many dying so far from home, war is not noble or patriotic, it's horrible.