Dulce et Decorum Est

The irony in the poem Dulce it Decorum Est is that it is not sweet and fitting to die for
one’s country when you have actually experienced war. Owen is describing how psychologically
and physically exhausting W.W.I was for the soldiers that had to endure such a cruel ordeal and
not how patriotic and honorable it was .
In the first stanza Owen describes how the soldiers are trudging back to camp from battle.
We see the soldiers, fatigued and wounded, returning to base camp:
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 are 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.
The way Owen describes the trudge back to camp allows the reader to open their minds to the
eve...