Another disease soldiers caught during World War 1 is dysentery. Dysentery is an infection of the intestines marked by severe diarrhoea, caused by poor water supply, water cleanliness and no proper toilets for the soldiers to use. Dirty drinking water caused a lot of problems during World War 1, mainly because it contains all sorts of illnesses and diseases, which once you have in your system, cause you to get ill. Cholera was cause by dirty water, causing sickness, diarrhoea and even death it if was left untreated for long enough. Trench mouth was also common during World War 1. This is where you get an infection of the mouth, caused by poor oral hygiene and lack of important vitamins, due to a poor diet, smoking, tooth or mouth infections and stress.
Another terrible problem was the rats. There were literally millions of rats running around the trenches. They fed on the dead remains of the soldiers and could grow to the size of a rat. These rats carried many diseases that killed many of the men there as well. Lice were another dilemma in the trenches.
Hurt locker … war is a trap, it`s a vicious circle. In which most likely alternative is death. All round the lining of horizon there was chaos , noises and the air was filled with most terrible odor of decompostind bodies. Everything was gray, grim and the only lively color was red. Splashed blood leaves marks on buildings, roads and clothes.
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.
It was still bleeding, blood dripping down her cheek. As a nurse, my first instinct was to help the poor women, but a punch in the back stopped me dead on track. I fell on to the hard, dirty stone floor, covered in animal feces, tumbling in pain. That was the moment I realized I have arrived in hell, the pain and the nightmare will haunt me forever. “ That was a paragraph from my book, “white coolies”.
In “the sentry” Wilfred Owen talks about the disgusting conditions of the trenches and the depressing weather and how the trenches would become flooded. “Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slimeKept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour” Owen also describes the pain, suffering and fear from his
Tiny droplets of blood splattered across the floor, the man’s eye looked as if it had been lacerated by a trained assailant. His face was mangled and after seeing what the lady had done, she screamed. An endless high tone screech which did nothing but contribute to the choir of wailing
The imagery which is used in this poem is also used to show the tone and theme. The imagery used can make one sick from the harsh description of this battlefield. Such as, in lines 21-23 “If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/
In the Sassoon’s poem “Aftermath,” he explains war as something that can never be forgotten. The distasteful thought haunts everyone to the point where war completely takes over the human mind. He documented the war environment as something that was unbearable to live at. Waking up next to a fellow member and seeing their body decay was worrisome. The rats crawling everywhere because the environment was not clean and unsanitary was frightening to see.
Such examples of powerful diction in the first stanza include, “hags” (2) which depict the soldiers as ugly, miserable creatures, “trudge” (4), which describes their marching as long, difficult and strenuous, and “blood-shod” (6), which gives the reader a visual image of the soldiers covered in blood. The fourth stanza also contains strong diction, such as with “smothering” (17) which carries a negative, fearful feeling, and is associated with being overwhelmed by something and not being able to escape. “Writhing” (19) which carries with it a negative, painful visual image of the soldier in the wagon, and “innocent” (21) is also important in that it describes the young men whom war targets to recruit, which contrasts with the reality of what war actually is. The diction used is a powerful tool used by Owen to reveal the ugly truth about war. Sensuous imagery is also used to develop the theme in the poem.