The Old Lie: Dulce et Decorum est
A Poet's Death: Wilfred Owens, 4th November 1918
Nov 4, 2008 Mark Alexander Bain
Monday the 4th November 1918 dawned a typical late autumn day - very wet and misty; however, there were many young men that would not live to see the evening, and included amongst them was the blossoming poet Wilfred Owens.
The Orders for the Day
The orders for Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owens and the other men the 2nd Manchester Regiment on the 4th November 1918 where quite simple: cross the Sambre-Oise canal just above the town of Ors, 10 miles from Le Quesnoy, and remove any German resistance.
However, all the bridges had been destroyed by the retreating German army, and and earlier bombardment intended to dislodge the enemy had failed to do so; this meant that the Manchesters would have to find some way of crossing the open canal - right under the German Guns.
The Attempt to Cross the Sambre-Oise Canal
The Manchesters reached the canal with no resistance - the German infantry had disappeared leaving only machine gun posts, but it was from these that they came under heavy fire; however, the soldiers of the 2nd Manchester Regiment did manage to keep German gunners pinned down while Royal Engineers assembled a pontoon bridge of duckboards and cork floats - which was then destroyed by shell fire.
At this point Second Lieutenant James Kirk took a Lewis Gun and one of the cork floats; paddling out into the middle of the canal. Even though wounded he kept firing until the engineers had managed to float the pontoon across the canal - allowing two platoons to rush to the far bank. Almost immediately the pontoon was hit again, tearing it apart.
Now the Manchesters started using individual duckboards as rafts to try to get to their stranded comrades.
The Death of Wilfred Owens
All this time Owens was encouraging his men. He was seen walking up and down, patting men on their shoulders as they laboured with the makeshift rafts.
Nobody remembered seeing Owens die - the last things that he was heard to say was that continual encouragement to his men - "You're doing well, my boy" to one young man, "Well done" to another couple. A few people thought that he had climbed on to one of the rafts, but no one was certain. All that is known is that he was found dead of his wounds on the canal bank.
Soon afterwards the order to withdraw was given.
Armistice Day, 11th November 1918
One week later on the 11th November 1918, as the bells pealed out the news of the Armistice, his parents heard a knock on their front door - it was a telegraph from London, informing them of Wilfred's death.
Wilfred Owen is buried in the military extension to the civilian cemetery in Ors.
An Extract from DULCE ET DECORUM EST
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.
Written by Wilfred Owen between October 1917 and March 1918
Sources
Nicholas Best, The Greatest Day in History: How the Great War Really Ended
Peter Hart, 1918: A Very British Victory
Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book 0f 1918: Year of Victory
Hugh Cecil and Peter H Liddle, At the Eleventh Hour
Second Lieutenant Wilfred Owens
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