There would be no relief for front line troops for weeks on end. A near miss from an artillery shell could collapse a trench or cause dugouts to collapse burying alive those inside. The nearness of death, the fear of it and smell of it, the horrific sights of shattered bodies, the screams of friends cut in half and the constant shelling combined to send many men insane either at the time or later in life. Considering all these conditions, I think the worst thing about being in the trenches was the diseases which spread like wildfire throughout the trenches, due to the unhygienic conditions. There was also no way of preventing these diseases from spreading, as the medic’s in the trenches barely had any medicine to treat all of soldiers who caught diseases.
Why does this have to happen to me? I tremble and weep. He makes one last charge at me with red eyes and everything is beginning to spin again. His words are mumbling into a swirl of confusion. The shots hammering out behind the forest’s green wall.
U.S army men were slaughtered and there faces were left pale. 3 shots each was their christmas present, what did they do to deserve this? Now vililians started to come, mourning for their protectors, who will save them now? for the sound of the hun shots were getting closer. The civilians dragged the huge soldiers across the sand, they won't, should'nt get shot any more by the monsters; At the market the delicate, fabric dresses made with silk, torn and shreded apart by bullets when the clash began, they were unaware... Coridors of blood led to garages of silk and and food now filled with dread; rain washed the walls and made crimson red pools.
This exhibited the physical pain that the soldiers were going through. Even though they had lost their boots, they still struggled on in order to survive; although their feet were caked with hard, dried up blood. Cud is previously swallowed food by cattle that is regurgitated and swallowed a second time. Owen made the phrase, "bitter as the cud" to illustrate how the man that was dying from the gas attack was indeed dying a slow and painful death by the regurgitation of his own blood. The use of the graphic animal imagery in this poem brings out all the soldier's painful sufferings.
I started to cry from the pain, and blacked out. Breaking my neck definitely changed my perception of life. We were already losing, and I was close to dehydration myself. My coaches, Kerri and Jerry, were yelling at my defenders to pick it up. I repeated it at the top of my lungs when I had to make sprawling save for the upper corner of the goal.
The Civil War was a very hard time for America, there was no winner during this time. When going through rough times like the civil war it is hard to keep going, most just wanted to give up. Inner strength is a very widely used theme throughout many works about the Civil War era. It took everything the members of both armies had to push through the pain of leaving their families and not knowing if they would return. It takes a lot of strength to leave loved ones not knowing if you will ever see them again.
In the first stanza Owen describes the soldiers as they try to move away from their “shift” on the front line. The description of the soldiers as they painfully move is one of pain and suffering. They are “bent double, like old beggars under sacks” which means they can hardly move and their backs are all bent. “Knocked-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge” this part is the worst for the soldiers’ conditions and health. They are coughing from a previous gas attack and they have to try and get through a path of mud.
In the first stanza, Owen presents the idea that the personal struggles faced every moment on the front line are extremely underestimated, immeasurably terrifying and “obscene”. It seems more realistic when the story is told from a first person narrative; it allows us, the readers, to imagine what it would feel like if “we” were in the trenches and fighting on the front line. That understanding makes us realise the cruel situation that was, for them, an everyday occurrence from which they had no escape. The determination of the soldiers that they “limped on” even when they were “asleep”, “had lost their boots”, were “lame”, “blind”, “drunk with fatigue” and “deaf” to their “distant rest” makes it almost seem as if they were unbreakable; their defiance against anything thrown in their path was god-like and shows an unwavering sense of honour, as they “marched” and “cursed through”, for the fate of all those left at home. The distant rest could represent the end of the war, so far out of their sight, or the release of an untimely death.
If I had only known what basic training was going to involve, I would have preferred to wash and scrub my way through college. Soon after reporting to my basic training location in Fort Benning, Georgia, reality set in and I realized that this particular job would end up ranking number one on my list of worst jobs. The verbal abuse from the drill sergeants at basic training made it the most horrific experience of my life. made it the most horrific experience of my life In fact, not a day went by without being verbally ridiculed and belittled with vulgarity. After, we finished the tedious in processing tasks; we all packed into a big metal cattle truck and headed "down-range" (Any forward-deployed area of operations) to our barracks.
Does true courage always require putting something that is very important to us at risk? Sounds of shooting, shouts and cries of agony shutter the air. Land flies into the sky and comes down like rain. Blood and oil stain the ground. A recruit lies half-bleeding on enemy’s territory not able to move a muscle.