Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen’s poems
described the deplorable
conditions that soldiers had
to face on the battlefield,
like this American soldier
standing guard during a
German gas attack in
France. Reproduced by
permission of Hulton
Getty/Archive Photos, Inc.
bravery when he helped lead his company to safety during a
battle. On November 4, while leading a group of soldiers across
the Sambre Canal, Owen was killed in a hail of machinegun
fire. He died four months short of his twenty-sixth birthday—
and exactly one week before the armistice (peace treaty) of
November 11 brought World War I to an end. . A few months
before his death, Owen had written a preface for an edition of
his poetry that he hoped to have published. In 1985, an
excerpt from this preface—”My subject is War, and the pity of
War. The poetry is in the pity. . .”—was carved into a monument
that memorializes sixteen World War I poets in the Poets’
Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.
Siegfried Sassoon knew the quality of Owen’s verses
and arranged to have twenty-three of Owen’s poems published.
The collection, titled Poems, appeared in 1920; it was
edited by Edith Sitwell, a member of a prominent literary family
in England. Her brother, Osbert Sitwell, had been a friend
of Owen and Sassoon. In 1931, an expanded edition with
116 World War I: Biographies