"Dulce Et Decorum Est pro patria mori"

The truth about war varies greatly depending on who you ask, the people cheering and waving flags or the soldier vomiting out his lungs burned out by mustard gas in a hospital till he chokes to death. Nothing has changed in a hundred years, since the great war, except the ability of the state to cover up the horror with greater ease, and some of us who used to wave flags now listen to the words of the dead, our flag now blood drenched in lies.-Citizen

Wilfred Owen
(1893–1918)
Before WWI Wilfred Owen was a English teacher in France but after hearing his nations call he enlisted. He served as a Company Commander in the British Army's Manchester Regiment of the Artists' Rifles. During his service he was awarded the Military Cross and was injured on more then one occasion. His poetry however did not fit the moral of the day. He joined the military not to speak of brave deeds and heroic acts but to describe the TRUE face of war, DEATH. Although many go as far as to call him an pacifist, I disagree. He was not against Britain entering the WAR, he was just against the onslaught of future senseless wars. He felt that if he could publish the truth about war then HOPEFULLY people would be less likely to start one. His poems like Strange Meeting or Dulce Et Decorum Est showed war from its much more pitiful side.
"I came out in order to help these boys--directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a leader can. I have done the first."
Wilfred Owen
Just a few of his poems were published during the war. The few that were published were due to his friends and fellow poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves who he met while being treated for shell shock. He returned to the front soon after and continued to lead his troops until November 4, 1918. While the Victory Bells rang in England his parents received a post. Wilfred Owen had been killed by machine gun fire just one week before the armistice was signed (November 4, 1918). While leading his troops across the Sambre Canal.
We hear the heroic stories because they made it back. Wilfred Owen on the other hand is a voice of the ones that didn't. His life reminds us that War cannot be taken lightly. The cost can very well be our future poets, teachers, neighbors , friends, family, this list is eternal.

"Dulce Et Decorum Est pro patria mori!" latin- "It is a sweet and honorable thing to die for ones country"

It begins with a description of war-weary soldiers marching "through sludge," "blood-shod" and "drunk with fatigue". As gas shells begin to fall, the soldiers scramble to put their gas masks on. In the rush, one man clumsily drops his mask, and the narrator sees the man "yelling out and stumbling / and flound'ring like a man in fire or lime". The image of the man "guttering, choking, drowning" permeates his thoughts and dreams, forcing him to live this grotesque nightmare over and over again.

The poem
http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Dulce.html

Disturbing Iraq medical unit video
Baghdad ER- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-348783717621633926&q=Iraq+hospital+duration%3Along