Book Club: Dulce et Decorum Est

We clung together, starving, exhausted and desperate to escape this hell hole. There was a strange chill in the air, fear, and all around we could smell death. I had hoped this was going to be the best day I’d ever experienced in this horrific war, but I was wrong. We were heading to rest camp. After five long gruelling days, finally we could have a well-earned rest. As we trudged along, the sun beating down on our muddy, ragged and torn uniforms, we could hear the machine guns fire and shells explode behind us, but we didn’t look back. We were already traumatised and none of us wanted to see another death, to hear another shell, or be back in another trench. A few of the younger guys were shivering and shaking, but we all knew trying to comfort them would make no difference. Gas! Gas! Quick boys! I still hear the words ringing in my head today. I was scrabbling around for my gas mask, making sure to hold my breath. All of us were petrified. None of us had experienced a gas attack before. Frantically, I fiddled around with the straps on my mask desperate to take a breath. Success. As for John, he wasn’t so lucky. I could see him coughing as the yellow sea of fog closed in. Collapsing to the ground, he lay motionless, lifeless. In all my dreams before my helpless sight I see him coughing, falling, dying. Again and again, I see this harrowing image. If you could have seen what I have seen, if you could have experienced what I experienced. Tears filled my eyes as I walked behind the wagon with my lifeless friend inside. He was once a person, now just a body. I already knew the hole in my heart would never mend. I am haunted by the memory, a terrible loss felt by so many, what a horrendous waste. If you had seen my friend dying on that ghastly day, you would not tell anyone that the war was wonderful, glorious or fun. The war was none of those things. It was a massacre, a bloodbath, indiscriminate senseless suffering. You would never say the words Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori.