Wilfred Owen and Shropshire

When you think about famous, important people that originate from Shropshire, the name that is often at the top of most people's list is Wilfred Owen.  Raised in Oswestry, Shropshire, Owen was born on 18th March 1893, studied at the Wakeman School in Shrewsbury, and enlisted to fight in World War one.

Wilfred Owen in uniform

Owen was very keen to enlist; however, when he arrived in France, he saw that the media had been feeding the public lies about the greatness of war, and he resented the propaganda that had encouraged him, and so many other men and boys, to enlist.  During his time fighting, Owen wrote many poems that voiced his political feelings, his most famous poem arguably being the ironically titled 'Dulce Et Decorum Est', a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Horace, that translates as 'it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country'.


When you begin to research Wilfred Owen's life and work it is hard to know where to start, and therefore I have selected a few of what I consider to be important letters that Owen wrote while at the front line.  I consulted the The First World War Poetry Digital Archive and have referred to 'Wilfred Owen letters: number 501' and 'Wilfred Owen letters: f.673-1', both of which can be accessed via http://ww1lit.nsms.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/

Wilfred Owen's mother

We begin at the end, because it is important to mention the last letter that Owen ever wrote before he died, a week before Armistice Day in November of 1918.  Dated 31st October 1918, Owen writes to his mother, Susan, from what he calls 'The Smokey Cellar for the Forester's House'.  Importantly, Owen does not divulge in this letter the horrors of war, unlike in many of his letters to his brother, Colin, which shows that he took it upon himself to protect his mother from the reality that he was facing.  his mother supported him and his writing, and he heartbreakingly states that he is writing on the pad that he received from her in the post, and luckily the parcel was small enough to reach him before he left for the front line.

The mother-son relationship was strong, because his efforts to comfort her about his situation are impossible to ignore.  Instead of describing going over the top, or crossing no-man's-land, or the graphic descriptions of those injured, he talks about eating chocolate with a friend in the middle of the night, crouched in a cold, draughty hovel roofed with planks.  Owen has a talent to take a reader somewhere else, no matter how many words he uses; you can place yourself in the hovel with him and friend eating chocolate, while he used his handkerchief and woolly socks to stay warm, despite the cold.  He ends the letter by stating 'I hope you are as warm as I am'.

I will now move on to a letter that Owen sent to his brother, Colin, written on 14th May 1917, from the 13th Causality Clearing Station, Gaily, France.  The descriptions in this letter are so vivid, so engaging, and so profoundly horrific that they have inspired many modern novels about World War One, the most famous arguably being Pat Barker's historical trilogy Regeneration, the first published in May 1991 (the experiences in this letter are also used in Owen's own poem, 'The Show').  In this letter, Owen describes going over the top as being as exhilarating as falling over a precipice, which is an intriguing but terrifying account of the reality of combat, and the emotional impact it has on soldiers.  Clearly, Owen is not afraid to divulge the reality of war while communicating with his brother, unlike in his letters to his mother.  The psychological impacts of combat are heart-breaking, yet disturbing.

When he writes about the chant that was shouted when they went over the top, you can hear it echoing in your ears:

"Keep the line straight!

Not so fast on the left!

Steady on the left!

Not so fast!"

You can feel the rumble of the 'tornado of shells' that hits them while they walk.  You can see the destruction that surrounds them when he describes the ground lettered with bodies, although he 'felt no horror at all, and only exhilaration at having made it out of the barrage'.  This letter is important because it encompasses the physical and mental effects of the war, while giving a vivid insight into events so horrific that we today can barely imagine them.

Wilfred Owen and his legacy are vital to the history of Shropshire, and he must never be forgotten.

Sophie Rogers, undergraduate student at UCS