The First World War was a terrible loss of approximately 9 million young lives. With this loss comes sadness and the inability to simply understand why? Two young poets of the time, Rupert Brooks and Wilfred Owen became victims of this war, but before they died they used their pens to leave a lasting testament to what happened before. This article briefly describes how two talented writers came from different worlds to finally face the same fate.
On November 11, 1918, in Shrewsbury, England, the bells rang to celebrate the Armistice and the end of the First World War, happiness rained across the county until a knock was heard on the door and a telegram passed, the Smiles on Mr. and Mrs. Owen’s faces sank. as they read how their poet son Wilfred Owen had been killed in a battle on Sambre Canal. But Wilfred hadn’t even joined the military in April 1915 when Rupert Brooke, another famous war poet, was assassinated and his worlds of poetry and life couldn’t have been more different before the carnage of “The Great Folly. “Bring them both. in the world of unnecessary death and slaughter.
Rupert, who was born in Rugby, England, was a man of youthful appeal and charm, prompting Irish poet William Butler Yeats to describe him as “the most handsome man in England.” After winning a scholarship to Kings College in Cambridge, Rupert became an active member of many theater groups and writers’ clubs and soon became a man adored by many, some for his talent and others for his good looks. Virginia Wolfe once boasted of having gone naked. with Rupert and his partnership was generally in high demand. However, he was a man confused by his sexuality and he devoted himself to traveling parts of the United States and Canada writing travel dairies for the Westminster Gazette. On his way back to England via the long route, he settled on an island in Tahiti, where he fathered a daughter with a local woman with whom he was said to have found his most complete emotional relationship, but still his awe and lust made him did keep going. Back in England, he became romantically involved with several notable actresses of the time and when his writings became war poems, he caught the attention of Winston Churchill, who commissioned him into the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. At the age of 27, Rupert participated in the Royal Navy’s Antwerp expedition in October 1914, followed by a trip with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on February 28, 1915, but was bitten by a mosquito and infection resulting sepsis resulted in his death. on April 23, 1915. His body was buried in Skyros Greece at a location chosen by his friend and writer William Denis Browne, who later wrote about Brooke’s death.
It was in September of this same year, 1915, that Wilfred Owen, then a professor in continental Europe, visited the war-wounded in a local army hospital and was deeply affected by their stories and their condition. He was only 22 years old himself when he decided to enlist in the British Army and in a statement in September 1915 he said: “I went out to help these boys, directly directing them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by observing their sufferings so that I can talk about them as well as a lawyer can. Owen was sent home wounded in March 1917, but returned to the front line in August 1918, where he was assassinated shortly after. Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen entered the First World War for their Their own reasons, but their writings and poetry endure as testimony to their common fear of what was then thought of as modern warfare.
I cannot claim to be able to write something as emotionally charged as his individual works, and therefore I recommend that as a true ending to this piece, you click on the internet to read the next two poems.
Rupert Brooks – The Soldier.
Wilfred Owen – Sweet and Decorum est (the old lie).
Point of note:
At Westminster Abbey, Poets Corner, stands a slate monument commemorating 16 World War I poets including Rupert Brooks and Wilfred Owen, whose work is also inscribed as follows:
“My theme is war, and the pity of war, poetry is in pity.”