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Tomorrow is Veterans Day in the United States, a day originally commemorating the armistice that brought an end to the fighting of World War I. On November 11, 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns along the Western Front finally fell silent. After more than four years of unimaginable destruction, the Great War had come to an end, though the suffering and consequences of that conflict would continue for generations.
Every year around Veterans Day, I like to feature poetry from World War I. This year, rather than choosing a single poem, I want to share three that, when read together, illustrate the transformation in how the war was understood and portrayed. Each represents a different perspective: the patriotic idealism of Rupert Brooke, the grief and solemn determination of John McCrae, and the bitter disillusionment of Wilfred Owen.
These poems are not simply reflections on war. They are a progression from the romantic belief that dying for one’s country is noble and beautiful to the terrible realization that there is nothing beautiful about a young man choking to death in the mud of a battlefield.
The Soldier — Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever 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 by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Reflection: The Romance of Sacrifice
Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier,” written in 1914, captures the patriotic idealism that characterized much of the early enthusiasm for the Great War. For Brooke, death in battle is not something to fear. It is an almost sacred act of devotion to one’s homeland. The soldier’s body becomes part of England itself, transforming even a foreign battlefield into a piece of home.
There is no blood, no mud, no shattered bodies, and no screaming wounded in Brooke’s poem. Instead, there are flowers, rivers, sunshine, laughter, and an eternal English heaven. Death is presented as peaceful, meaningful, and even beautiful.
Brooke was not entirely naive about war, but his poetry reflects a generation raised on ideals of patriotism, duty, honor, and sacrifice. For many young men in 1914, military service offered an opportunity to demonstrate courage and devotion to their country. The reality of mechanized warfare had not yet fully destroyed those romantic notions.
Brooke himself would never experience the horrors of the Western Front. He died of an infection in April 1915 while serving with the Royal Naval Division, before reaching the Gallipoli battlefield. He was only twenty-seven.
His poem remains one of the most famous expressions of patriotic sacrifice in English literature. Yet, when placed beside the poetry that followed, its beautiful imagery takes on an almost tragic innocence.
In Flanders Fields — John McCrae (1872–1918)
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.
Reflection: The Sorrow of Sacrifice
By the time Canadian physician and military officer John McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” in May 1915, the war had already begun to reveal its terrible cost. McCrae served as a medical officer during the Second Battle of Ypres, where he witnessed the suffering and death of countless soldiers. The death of his friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, is traditionally associated with the poem’s creation.
Unlike Brooke’s peaceful vision of a soldier becoming part of the homeland, McCrae places us in a cemetery. The crosses stand in rows, marking the graves of men who, only days before, had been alive, loved, and capable of enjoying the simplest pleasures of life.
The contrast is heartbreaking. Above the graves, poppies bloom and birds continue to sing, but their songs are nearly drowned out by the guns. Nature continues its cycle of life while humanity destroys itself.
Yet McCrae does not reject the war. Instead, the dead call upon the living to continue the struggle. They pass the torch to those who remain, insisting that their sacrifice must not be forgotten or rendered meaningless.
This is what makes “In Flanders Fields” such an important bridge between Brooke and Owen. McCrae recognizes the sorrow and terrible human cost of war, but he continues to believe in the cause for which the soldiers died.
There is grief here, but not yet repudiation. The dead are mourned, but their deaths are still understood as sacrifices that demand continued commitment.
McCrae died of pneumonia in January 1918, never living to see the armistice. His poem would help establish the red poppy as one of the most enduring symbols of remembrance for those killed in war.
Dulce et Decorum Est — Wilfred Owen (1893–1918)
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 our 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.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Reflection: The Destruction of an Illusion
If Brooke’s “The Soldier” represents the romantic ideal of dying for one’s country, Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” is its devastating repudiation.
There is no peaceful English heaven here. There are no gentle memories of home or beautiful visions of sacrifice. Instead, Owen presents exhausted soldiers stumbling through mud, their bodies broken by fatigue, their senses dulled by relentless bombardment. Then comes the gas attack.
Owen forces us to witness a soldier dying in agony, choking as poison gas destroys his lungs. The image is so horrifying that it haunts the speaker’s dreams. The soldier is not transformed into something noble or eternal. He suffers, and he dies.
The poem concludes with the Latin phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, taken from the Roman poet Horace. It translates as “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Owen calls it “The old Lie.”
Those three words fundamentally challenge the patriotic idealism expressed in Brooke’s poem. Where Brooke imagined a soldier’s death as beautiful and sacred, Owen demands that we confront what such a death actually looks like. Where Brooke offered consolation, Owen offers accusation.
Owen is not simply describing the horrors of war. He is condemning those who glorify it, particularly those who encourage young men to seek honor and glory in battle without understanding the suffering they are being asked to endure.
That distinction matters. Owen was himself a soldier, and his poetry demonstrates profound compassion for the men who fought beside him. His anger was directed not at their courage or sacrifice, but at the romantic mythology that made their suffering seem desirable.
Perhaps the cruelest irony is that Owen did not survive the war. He was killed in action on November 4, 1918, just one week before the armistice. He was twenty-five years old. His mother reportedly received the telegram announcing his death on November 11, as the church bells rang to celebrate the end of the fighting.
Three Poets, Three Perspectives, One War
Reading these three poems together reveals something that reading them individually cannot.
Brooke asks us to see the beauty in dying for one’s country. McCrae asks us to remember the dead and carry on their struggle. Owen asks us to look directly at the suffering of those who die and question the very language used to glorify their deaths.
They are not simply three poems written at different moments in the war. They represent three different ways of understanding sacrifice, patriotism, and the human cost of conflict.
There is a particularly powerful contrast between Brooke’s opening line, “If I should die, think only this of me,” and Owen’s concluding accusation, “The old Lie.” Brooke tells us what he hopes others will think of his death. Owen challenges what others have been taught to think about death in war.
And between them stands McCrae, surrounded by graves, mourning those who have fallen while still urging the living to continue the fight.
Of course, public attitudes toward the war were never uniform, and these perspectives overlapped throughout the conflict. Not everyone greeted the war enthusiastically in 1914, nor did everyone reject patriotic sacrifice by 1918. Nevertheless, the progression from Brooke to McCrae to Owen illustrates the growing tension between the ideals used to justify war and the terrible realities experienced by those who fought it.
There is another tragedy connecting these three men: none lived to see the peace that followed the armistice. Brooke died in 1915, McCrae in January 1918, and Owen just seven days before the fighting ended.
Tomorrow, on Veterans Day, we honor those who have served in the armed forces. We remember their courage, their sacrifices, and the burdens they carried, both during their service and long after returning home. But honoring veterans should never require us to romanticize war.
We can admire the courage of soldiers without celebrating the violence they endured. We can recognize sacrifice without pretending that suffering is glorious. We can honor those who served while still questioning the decisions that sent them into battle.
Perhaps that is the most important lesson these three poets leave us.
To remember the dead is not enough. We must also remember what killed them, what they suffered, and why peace is worth preserving.
On November 11, 1918, the guns finally fell silent. More than a century later, we would do well to listen to the voices of those who never heard that silence.
