A living hell – mud, stench, bodies and gunfire

Do you remember the rats; and the stench of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench - And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain? Do you ever stop and ask, "Is it all going to happen again?" Do you remember the hour of din before the attack - And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men? Do you remember the stretcher- cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads - those ashen-grey Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay? Seigfried Sassoon Aftermath

Bombardment Four days the earth was rent and torn By bursting steel, The houses fell about us; Three nights we dared not sleep, Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash Which meant our death. The fourth night every man, Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion, Slept, muttering and twitching, While the shells crashed overhead. The fifth day there came a hush; We left our holes And looked above the wreckage of the earth To where the white clouds moved in silent lines Across the untroubled blue. Richard Adlington

No Man's Land No Man's Land is an eerie sight At early dawn in the pale gray light. Never a house and never a hedge In No Man's Land from edge to edge, And never a living soul walks there To taste the fresh of the morning air; - Only some lumps of rotting clay, That were friends or foemen yesterday. James H. Knight-Adkin

Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit, He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows Each flash and spouting crash, - each instant lit When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders, "Could anything be worse than this?" - he wonders Seigfried Sassoon Remorse

Victims of gas attack

Dulce Et Decorum Est GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!- An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And floundering like a man in fire or lime. Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. Wilfred Owen

"Your Attention Please“ The Polar DEW has just warned that A nuclear rocket strike of At least one thousand megatons Has been launched by the enemy Directly at our major cities. This announcement will take Two and a quarter minutes to make, You therefore have a further Eight and a quarter minutes To comply with the shelter Requirements published in the Civil Defence Code – section Atomic Attack.

The Vietnam War

He Was A Mate So how's a bloke supposed to deal with this? I know they trained me well, I can't complain; But this is somethin' you don't learn about When they teach you how to play the soldier's game. They teach you how to shoot and how to kill, You even learn which enemy to hate; But nowhere in their training do you learn How to live with the loss of a real good mate. Lachlan Irvine (Australian Vietnam Forces)

WAR IMPACTS ON THE INNOCENT

"Back" They ask me where I've been, And what I've done and seen. But what can I reply Who know it wasn't I, But someone just like me, Who went across the sea And with my head and hands Killed men in foreign lands... Though I must bear the blame, Because he bore my name. Philip LarkinPhilip Larkin ( )

The Iraq War Look closely at the following images What ideas could poets focus on Evaluate what, if anything has changed from one war to the next Comment on whether war poetry from other wars is still relevant today?

WAR IMPACTS ON THE INNOCENT