It Is Sweet and Honourable to Die for One's Country"

            Comment on the following statement: "it is sweet and honourable to die for one's country".
             Wilfred Owen wrote Dulce ET Decorum Est.
             The poem describes the reality of war. Its shows the pain and suffering the soldiers go through to fight for their country. Lord Tennyson was not in the Battle of Balaclava he read about it in the Times. He did not know what was happening in the battle he just used his imagination as to how he thinks war should be like. Wilfred Owen was in the First World War, he knew exactly how the men looked and felt about the war.
             Alfred, Lord Tennyson, wrote the Charge of the Light Brigade.
             He does not show the truth of war only the nobility of the War.
             In this essay the poems Dulce et Decorum Est and The Charge of the Light Brigade will be analysed and discussed whether it is sweet and honourable to die for your country.
             Dulce et Decorum Est is a reality poem that is giving the true meaning of war, they are not gallant soldiers riding in to battle on horses they are scared tired bruised and battered soldiers.
             "Bent double like old beggars under sacks". .
             This is not an image of heroic men, their backs are hunched. These men did not go into battle with elegant posture as Lord Tennyson says. They are men cheated into battle by false propaganda by such poems as "The Charge of the Light Brigade". Reality of war is dead corpses on the floor, bits of people on no man land scattered over the place. In the second line, Owen is describing the soldiers.
             .
             " Knock kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the mud".
             .
             This is portraying the bumps and bruises that the soldiers have had. They are being described as coughing like hags this is because the air is full of smoke and their lungs is full of smoke as an old woman that's been smoking for seventy years and the tar is covering her lungs. They curse as they walk through the sludge because they do not know what they are stepping in.