War Poems

War is a time of violence, protest, death and pain for many people around the world. With this conflict, a lot of poetry is written because poetry is one of the most common ways for people to put across their feelings about situations. War is one of these situations for which many people have very strong feelings.

A common theme in war poetry is the transformation that war brings about in a person. Many poems reveal boys going into war and becoming young men after the experience. Another dominant theme in war poems is about the forgotten soldiers who lost their lives and weren’t remembered.

Many poems have been written about war and the feelings evoked by war. Even though a lot of war poetry was written before World War 1, the defining war poems were written during or about World War 1. Possibly the main reason for this was because of the sheer scale and importance of this war. Not saying that other wars in history weren’t important, its’ just that World War 1 was the first war on a world wide scale and the first war that caused protesting, not necessarily against the war on a world wide scale.

Many of the great war poems were written by men and women who actually served in, or were directly affected by war. These poets who have served in war are really able to give an emotional element to their poems because they have first hand experience of the mixed emotions brought up by war.

Wilfred Gibson was one such poet who experienced war. Gibson was born in Hexham in 1878. He had his first poem published in 1902 and he had several poems included in various volumes of Georgian Poetry.

Gibson joined the British Army and served as a private in the infantry on the Western Front. Unlike most other poets who were officers, Gibson wrote poetry from the point of view of the ordinary foot soldier.

After he returned from the First World War Gibson continued to write poetry. This example of his work, “back” is one of the poems Gibson wrote after his return from World War 1.

"Back"

They ask me where I've been,

And what I've done and seen.

But what can I reply

Who know it wasn't I,

But someone just like me,

Who went across the sea

And with my head and hands

Killed men in foreign lands...

Though I must bear the blame,

Because he bore my name.

This short and simple poem was written by Wilfred Gibson when he was reflecting on his experiences of being a returned war veteran from World War 1. People ask him about what happened but he doesn’t tell them, and he claims he never went to war. This poem reveals some of the feelings and emotions experienced by Gibson and other veterans of war in general.

At first it may seem as though this poem is just talking about a case of mistaken identity, however there is one line “with my head and hands, killed men in foreign lands” which reveals that it was actually the speaker who went to war but he is denying it. Another line “though I must bear the blame” reveals that it wasn’t all praises by the public when he returned home.

The poem seems to have a touch of anger in it. The speaker appears as though he is annoyed that people ask him about what he’s “done and seen”, and he just wants to move