English: The Unknown Soldier / Activity 2.1 – Carousel Resources
Contents
Poetry




Anthem for doomed youth, Wilfred Owen (p.2)
Dulce et decorum est, Wilfred Owen (p.3)
Disabled, Wilfred Owen (pp.4-5)
Perhaps, Vera Brittain (p.6)
News article

The Daily Telegraph, June 5 1915 (p.7)
Play

Extracts from Journey’s End, R C Sherriff (pp.8-12)
ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH
By Wilfred Owen (September - October, 1917)
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid 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 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.
Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.,
1986)
Dulce et decorum est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring 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.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Source: Poems (Viking Press, 1921)
Disabled
By Wilfred Owen
He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.
*****
About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light-blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim,—
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls' waists are, or how warm their subtle hands,
All of them touch him like some queer disease.
*****
There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He's lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.
*****
One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he'd drunk a peg,
He thought he'd better join. He wonders why.
Someone had said he'd look a god in kilts.
That's why; and maybe, too, to please his Meg,
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts,
He asked to join. He didn't have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie: aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of, all their guilt,
And Austria's, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.
*****
Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.
*****
Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
Tonight he noticed how the women's eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don't they come
And put him into bed? Why don't they come?
Source: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/248358
PERHAPS
By Vera Brittain
Written in 1919, this poem is dedicated to Vera Brittain's fiancé Roland Aubrey Leighton (1895-1915),
killed at age 20 by a sniper. Vera Brittain (1893-1970) was 21 at the time of Leighton's death and had
accepted his marriage proposal barely four months earlier.
Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel once more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of You.
Perhaps the golden meadows at my feet
Will make the sunny hours of spring seem gay,
And I shall find the white May-blossoms sweet,
Though You have passed away.
Perhaps the summer woods will shimmer bright,
And crimson roses once again be fair,
And autumn harvest fields a rich delight,
Although You are not there.
Perhaps some day I shall not shrink in pain
To see the passing of the dying year,
And listen to Christmas songs again,
Although You cannot hear.'
But though kind Time may many joys renew,
There is one greatest joy I shall not know
Again, because my heart for loss of You
Was broken, long ago.
Source: First World War Poetry Digital Archive, accessed October 30, 2015,
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/collections/item/1744.
News article from: The Daily Telegraph June 5 1915
Last Letter Home
Cavalry Officer’s Trials
We have received from the parents of an officer in a crack cavalry regiment who was recently killed
by an explosive shell at Ypres, a letter which was found in his uniform and addressed to his “dear
people.” The letter was written in a trench a few hours before he was killed. We give the following
extracts:
In the last letter I wrote you I expressed the hope that we should be sent back to our horses: but the
same day we got orders to take over some trenches from the shattered and exhausted infantry. The
officer was to go up the night before, and learn his way about to show his squadron to their places
on the next night. The job was assigned to me.
Three of us from the regiment packed up and trudged off. Our way led through a blazing town which
was being shelled. Rather wonderful and erie — absolutely deserted, except for small parties of
sappers* clearing a way through the ruins for the ammunition and ration cards, and a starving dog or
two, not really starving, as in the square and the few streets the limbers have to use there are a
number of scorched and blackened carcases of horses killed by shells. In one place six lie as they fell,
and a few splinters remain as tokens of the wagons they pulled.
*Sappers were engineers such as bridge builders
Extracts from Journey’s End
Journey’s End by R C Sherriff. Penguin. 2000 edition (first published 1929)
Extract 1
Act 1
HARDY: Well, yes – in a way. But you never know. Sometimes nothing happens for hours on end;
then – all of a sudden – ‘over she comes!’ – rifle grenades – Minnies – and those horrid little things
like pineapples – you know.
OSBORNE: I know.
HARDY: Swish – swish – swish – swish – BANG!
OSBORNE: All right – all right – I know.
HARDY: They simple blew us to bits yesterday. Minnies – enormous ones; about twenty. Three bang
in the trench. I really am glad you’ve come; I’m not simply being polite.
OSBORNE: Do much damage?
HARDY: Awful. A dugout got blown up and came down in the men’s tea. They were frightfully
annoyed.
Extract 2
RALEIGH: Are we here for six days?
OSBORNE: Yes. Seems a long time, doesn’t it.
RALEIGH [laughing shortly]: It does rather. I can’t imagine – the end of six days here –
OSBORNE: Anyhow, we’ve done twelve hours already. It’s fine when you are relieved and go down
the line to billets, and have a good hot bath, and sit and read under the trees.
RALEIGH: Good lord, I feel I haven’t seen a tree for ages – not a real tree, with leaves and branches –
and yet I’ve only been here twelve hours.
OSBORNE: How did you feel – in the front line?
RALEIGH: Oh, all right. It seemed so frightfully quiet and uncanny – everybody creeping about and
talking in low voices. I suppose you’ve got to talk quietly when you’re so near the German front line
– only about seventy yards, isn’t it?
OSBORNE: Yes. About the breadth of a rugger field.
RALEIGH: It’s funny to think of it like that.
OSBORNE: I always measure distances like that out here. Keeps them in proportion.
Extract 3
Well, Osborne. Everything ready?
OSBORNE: Yes, I think we’re all ready, sir. I make it just a quarter to.
COLONEL: That’s right.
OSBORNE: The men are going to stand by at three minutes to.
COLONEL: The smoke bombs drop exactly on the hour. You’ll give the word to go when the smoke’s
thick enough?
OSBORNE: That’s right, sir.
STANHOPE [at the servant’s dugout]: Mason!
MASON: Coming, sir!
STANHOPE: Were the men having their rum, Uncle?
OSBORNE: Yes. Just as we left. It gives it a quarter of an hour to soak in.
COLONEL: That’s right. Are they cheerful?
OSBORNE: Yes. Quite.
Extract 4
MASON: Good luck, sir.
OSBORNE: Thanks, Mason.
MASON: Good luck, Mr Raleigh.
RALEIGH: Thanks.
[OSBORNE and RALEIGH go up together into the pale evening sun. MASON tidies the papers on the
table; picks up the two coffee mugs, and goes away. There is silence in the trenches above the
deserted dugout. Then, suddenly, there comes the dull ‘crush’ of bursting smoke bombs, followed in
a second by the vicious rattle of machine-guns. The red and green glow of German alarm rockets
comes faintly through the dugout door. Then comes the thin whistle and crash of falling shells; first
one by itself, then two, almost together. Quicker and quicker they come, till the noise mingles
together in confused turmoil. Yet the noise is demeaned by the earth walls of the tiny dugout, and
comes quite softly till the whine of one shell rises above the others to a shriek and a crash. A dark
funnel of earth leaps up beyond the parapet of the trench outside; earth falls and rattles down the
steps, and a black cloud of smoke rises slowly out of sight. Gradually the noise dies away – there is a
longer pause between the crash of each bursting shell. The machine guns stop – rattle again and
stop – rattle for the last time – and stop. Voices are calling in the trench outside; STANHOPE’S voice
is heard:]
Extract 5
Act 2
STANHOPE: Hullo! I thought you were asleep.
HIBBERT: I just wanted a word with you, Stanhope.
STANHOPE: Fire away.
HIBBERT: This neuralgia of mine. I’m awfully sorry. I’m afraid I can’t stick it any longer –
STANHOPE: I know, it’s rotten isn’t it? I’ve got it like hell –
HIBBERT [taken aback]: You have?
STANHOPE: Had it for weeks.
HIBBERT: Well, I’m sorry, Stanhope. It’s no good. I’ve tried damned hard; but I must go down –
STANHOPE: Go down – where?
HIBBERT: Why, go sick – go down the line. I must go into hospital and have some kind of treatment.
[There is silence for a moment. STANHOPE is looking at HIBBERT – till HIBBERT turns away and walks
towards his dugout.]
I’ll go right along now, I think –
STANHOPE [quietly]: You’re going to stay here.
HIBBERT: I’m going to see the doctor. He’ll send me to hospital when he understands –
STANHOPE: I’ve seen the doctor. I saw him this morning. He won’t send you to hospital, Hibbert;
he’ll send you back here. He promised me he would. [There is silence.] So you can save yourself a
walk.