Dulce Et Decorum Est By Wilfred Owen

War is by no means a pleasant experience, it is an experience that will leave you scarred mentally and physically. In Wilfred Owen’s poem, “Dulce Et Decorum Est,” Wilfred tells a story of war, the bloody and dirty version, the version that will make men run from war not want to enlist and fight for their country. Wilfred explains that dying for one’s country was not as sweet as people say is it, war leaves people broken, lost, or dead. It is not worth the grand sacrifice of a person’s life to experience the harshness of war. War is a long journey, that the men mostly have to walk through. “Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,/.../Men marched asleep. many had lost their boots/But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind” (Lines 2,5,6). No matter the conditions of the weather or the path, or the conditions of the person’s health they have to keep going. The men crawl through mud with broken legs, climb rocks with concussions, and walk in the rain with a bullet in their arm, the men are exhausted and filthy, but they have to carry on. Stopping or even slowing can cause death and the man’s dream of dying for their country would come sooner rather than later.
Death is inevitable, but the way those soldiers die on the battlefield is not set in stone to happen. There are many different ways to die in combat; being shot, captured, tortured, set on fire, bombed, and stepping on a landmine are just a few examples. These ways of death are horrific and avoidable all a person has to do is not go into the military. There is nothing sweet about the way soldiers die for their country, it is gruesome and beastly, nothing prideful about