If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
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.

This is the final stanza of Wilfred Owen's poem, Dulce et decorum est. I was first introduced to it as a callow 12 year-old in Mr Dobson's English class in the summer of 1975. At that time I would have been unimpressed with the fact that the second World War had finished just 30 years previously. Now, over 36 years later, I can appreciate that the poet's words and sentiments meant so much more to the man, close to retirement, who recited them.

The memorial at Tyne Cot cemetery, pictured at the top, is one of the most evocative of the Great War. I recalled it when I saw pictures of La Maison Forestière at Ors, where Wilfred Owen wrote his last letter to his mother before being killed in the closing days of the war. The house has been transformed into a white memorial to Owen and his colleagues.