Remembering the Battlefield Poets of World War I (video)

A video tribute to the soldiers who told us what combat really looked like.

If you want to know what war is like, listen to the soldiers. They'll tell you.

One hundred years ago, on April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I, which for three years had already been raging among the nations of Europe. People called it “the war to end all wars” — not so much a description as a desperate wish. The war killed some 17 million people, a number that would have been impossible to even imagine before the 20th century brought us tanks, grenades, poison gas, and airplanes with machine guns.

In years past, many people had imagined combat as an exciting adventure, a way to test one’s mettle and find glory. These romantic notions were lost in the mechanized trench warfare of the Western Front, as powerful new weapons mowed down a whole generation of young men.

World War I's brutal mass violence changed the way we, as a society, look at war. That's one of its most profound legacies — and at least in part, it's due to those young front-line soldiers who dealt with the world blowing up around them by the quiet, desperate act of writing poems about it.

Following in the tradition of earlier war poets, they attempted to express what they witnessed and felt in verse. The grief and loss they experienced can still be felt when we read their words today. As Wilfred Owen said in the preface to his poems: “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

Below, read the six poems highlighted in our video:

“In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.

“When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead” by Charles Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead Across your dreams in pale battalions go, Say not soft things as other men have said, That you’ll remember. For you need not so. Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know It is not curses heaped on each gashed head? Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow. Nor honour. It is easy to be dead. Say only this, ‘They are dead.’ Then add thereto, ‘Yet many a better one has died before.’ Then, scanning all the o’ercrowded mass, should you Perceive one face that you loved heretofore, It is a spook. None wears the face you knew. Great death has made all his forevermore.

“The Soldier” by Rupert Brooke

If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no less Gives somewhere back the thoughts of England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learned of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

“My Boy Jack” by Rudyard Kipling

"HAVE you news of my boy Jack? " Not this tide. "When d'you think that he'll come back?" Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has anyone else had word of him?" Not this tide. For what is sunk will hardly swim, Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?" None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he did not shame his kind--- Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen

“Dulce et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen.