Images of war

War photography can be a very intimate exposure to horrors that those on the front line of a battle experience. Though we are sitting comfortably in our sitting rooms at home, we can be transported through these images to the war zone, and it can open our eyes to the reality of what war is really like. War photography is as essential as ever. The moving tributes about Tim Hetherington, the photographer recently killed in Libya, consolidates the notion that it images are often the best way to communicate with the public, to show the truth about what is being experienced. Take for example his photo of a soldier during the Liberian war:

It is an image that resonates more powerfully than most words could do, and it is thanks to images like this that we can start to get some semblance of what is going on in countries far away.

Whilst photography had been around for many years prior to 1914, the Great War saw a great expansion in the number of those who put themselves in the line of fire to expose the true nature of the front lines of battle.

Colour photography in particular was a rarity in those days, and so it was with pleasure that I recently discovered a series of images from German photographer Hans Hildenbrand, that have, depicting life in the German army during the 1914-1918 war.

Hans Hildenbrand

 

Hans Hildenbrand



Hans Hildenbrand

Hildenbrand's photos are mostly from Alsace and Champagne in 1915 and 1916, and they offer a fascinating insight into the war from the other side of no man's land. But was war really just men in immaculate uniforms, on sunny days and in clean trenches, playing cards or standing orderly with rifles?

Is this really a true depiction of what war was like? Actually the photographers were constrained to the technology of their time: due to the film's lack of sensitivity, every shot would be posed for long periods of time, especially for colour photographs: this can give the photographs an “unnatural feel” says the Daily Telegraph. Well yes, if pictures are posed for long amounts of time then they are unnatural: they are posed. Presumably the way that the photographer wanted them to be posed too. No doubt his photos had to achieve his stylistic ideals too, and I’m sure they had to be sensitive to the German nation’s anxiety about the success of the war. As discussed in a previous blog, a photograph can be a powerful tool for propaganda.

Take the notorious instance during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Second World War, when the Americans raised a flag to show they had conquered the island. upset that he had missed such an iconic shot, a war photographer grabbed some replacement soldiers, and asked them to pull down the flag, then put it back up again slowly, to ensure he got his shot. Back in the USA the photo became such a hit that the men who had so courageously lifted the flag were brought home, and went around the country as heroes, as a useful government propaganda tool for recruitment and support for the American war effort. Except they took the wrong men. They took the second batch that had lifted up the flag during the safety of the battle aftermath, not the initial batch of soldiers who had risked death in order to lift it up during the battle itself.

Raising the American flag at Iwo Jima

So we must treat World War I photography with caution. Photographs can tell us so much, yet they can also lie, or tell us very little at all.

However, unlike during the Second World War, photographers of the Great War did actually have more or less a free rein with regard to what they captured. Notice the amount of destruction in the background which at the time was clearly viewed with objectivity. The most famous wartime French photograph was Jules Gervais-Courtellemont, who was unafraid to capture the war’s awful brutality:



Gervais-Courtellemont



 

Gervais-Courtellemont



Perhaps with the truth of total destruction and ghastliness of the war all around them, the French public was less sensitive than the Germans, who were a little further removed from the battle scene. Thus the Frenchman’s photographs present perhaps a more realistic version of war, particularly with regards to architectural damage, and dead bodies, than those of Hildenbrand.

It is important to recognize the vital work that war photographers do. And it is always a delight to find colour photographs of a time so long ago, in an event so monumental. But we must always make sure we know what we are looking at, what the background truly is of the image we are seeing, before we make a judgment about the event itself. Hildenbrand’s photographs today seem wholly disconnected to our knowledge of the horrors of the Great War. But they are important, and whether they may or may not be telling a wholly truthful story, they nevertheless give us an important insight into life on the front line, and of Germany’s sensitivity to too disturbing images.

A step too far...

Although a philistine when it comes to art, I do have an appreciation, if only surface knowledge, of architecture. The First World War was the first conflict to see attacks from the skies, and also where civilians were deliberately targeted in order to destroy the enemies’ economic activity and morale. The devastation caused to landscapes, both rural and city, by the Zeppelins and the high explosive bombs they emitted.

In London it was the East End that was targeted due to the shipbuilding and factories that resided there. Areas like Gravesend, Deptford, Walthamstow, and Leystone, which would become famous for weathering the Blitz twenty years later, suffered their first introduction to aerial warfare. Outside the capital cities like Hull, Liverpool and Manchester were targeted too. Paris too suffered enormous damage at the hands of the Zeppelins.

Paris in the wake of a Zeppelin attack

But the most damage done to the architectural landscape was by shells fired from long-range cannons, used in times of siege. Northern France suffered the worst, with whole towns being destroyed to a degree not seen before. Indeed many documentaries have been made about it, such was the extent of destruction.

Here is the introduction to a BBC documentary about it, and the footage is shocking:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jJ-gEyxek0

What fascinates me is the psychological effect that historical monuments have during times of war. Their survival or their destruction was often used as a political tool (commonly by those being shelled rather than those doing the shelling) to tell a particular story about either themselves or their enemy.

In France some of the most popular anti-German propaganda was that which decried the Germans as vandals, for the destruction of historic monuments. Despite the almost total destruction of many towns across the country, it was the desecration of culturally important monuments that was seen as an attack on the soul of France – they could recover from surface damage, but not from damage to things that went to the heart of what they stood for as a nation.

Reims is the most famous example of German destruction of an historic town. But it was the destruction of the cathedral at Reims in 1914 that garnered more anger than all the other damage done to the town. Because of its historical importance, being the coronation church of France, a site associated with the mystical origins of the French nation, the cathedral’s destruction could be pointed to as an example of German barbarity – a theme used more overtly during the Second World War.

Damage done to Reims Cathedral, 1914. Note how it is a postcard
- a popular form of propaganda during the war

In their march across Belgium during August 1914, the great University Library in Louvain – completed in 1725 – was burnt with all its contents, including medieval manuscripts. For the Allies this was used as propaganda, with the burning of the library symbolic of the uncivilized and uncultured German threat.

Louvain Library, after burning down

Arsène Alexandre, author of the propagandist catalogue of war damage “Les français détruits par l’Allemagne” (1918) wrote that the wartime bombing of art and architecture was not just illegal, but immoral.

“It is neither in the name of the Hague Convention, nor in the name of the Geneva Convention, that the scholars and artist of France and of all the civilized world have cried out in protest. The laws in the name of which they protest have no date, since they are not written in ephemeral words, these laws of beauty, goodness and justice, but rather in the hearts of men and in the conscience of nations.” (Alexandre, Les Monuments français détruits par l’Allemagne (Paris, 1918) pp. 31-2.

Perhaps the most famous attack on an historical monument was Germany’s bombing of the City of London, and St Paul’s Cathedral. Conversely, here it was the very survival of St Paul’s that became the propaganda. This time it spoke about the British spirit, more than about the enemy. It was as if St Paul’s spoke for Britain; that it would not be destroyed, it would rise above the ashes, and that in the face of German atrocities; Britain’s fighting spirit would remain. This of course was enormously helped by the famous photograph of the cathedral, standing above the clouds of destruction that had hit London one particular night. That photograph was one of the best propaganda tools the government could have, and is said to have inspired Londoners and the whole country.

St Paul's Cathedral during the Blitz in 1940. This photograph
was taken on top of the roof of the Daily Mail building, by
Herbert Mason

The assumption that it is morally wrong to destroy historic monuments, even in extreme situations, is one that still remains with us today. The sentiment behind the marches in London against government cuts and the rise in tuition fees, had broad support across the country. But the damage the protestors did aroused huge anger across the country, and the post-demonstration polling showed that support had dropped because of their actions. The anger was specifically against those who had defaced statues of Churchill, smashed the winds of the Courts of Justice, and clambered over the cenotaph. A Daily Mail taboo wrote that they “broke every taboo” – those unspoken laws that Alexandre spoke about.

Student protestor swinging from the Cenotaph

Graffiti sprayed on a statue of Churchill
whilst a protestor urinates on it

It seems clear that in times of violence, whether it be war or student protestors, the damage to architecture and historical monuments is perhaps the most retrograde step the aggressor can make. Of course the Germans may not have deliberately damaged libraries or cathedrals – in fact in both instances I mentioned they claimed both were accidents, and even suggested that the French or Belgians themselves were to blame. That in itself was a conscious recognition that some things are too important to be seen as fair game – whatever the situation. Hopefully future protestors in London will recognize that whatever goodwill they may initially enjoy from the public, attacks on monuments or buildings seen as representing British history and society, will only damage their cause, not help it.

A revolution for women?

During the Great War, the hardworking women of Britain toiled in the factories and fields of England, replacing the men who had been called up to fight. Through their diligence, they proved to the government that women could serve their country, and consequently women gained greater freedoms and independence, starting with the right to vote. So the usual story goes. We are presented with this Cinderella story in schools and newspapers, but was it actually true? Is it not usually the case that revolutions or moments of great change usher in more conservative periods afterwards?

In class last week we discussed how the concept of femininity during the war altered very little. In fact in reinforced all the uber-feminine stereotypes: lithe, blonde, beautiful women as caring nurses, and matronly ladies as mothers, feeding the nations soldiers. The role of wife and mother became glorified. Although the number of women in paid employment increased from 4.93 million to 6.19 million (De Groot), the vast majority of new workers were actually teenagers, expected to enter employment shortly.  In fact, there was a real fear of women’s roles changing. After the war, women who stayed in work were seen as taking men’s jobs. They were told to go home: "The idea that because the State called for women to help the nation, the State must continue to employ them is too absurd for sensible women to entertain." (The Daily Graphic)  Britain was, in many ways, actually more socially conservative than before the war, and more often than not the view of a woman’s role had not changed. An article in the Times on 2nd December 1918, summed up how little views of women had changed: "Girls [leave] school knowing all about William the Conqueror in 1066, but very little about the method of preparing a first-class steak and kidney pudding."

This really resonated with me due to some reports I had been reading about the recent Middle Eastern revolutions, about women being told to go home after helping with the protests. We in the west are so quick to be supportive of people trying to gain their own freedom, and rightly so. But the idea that these ‘rebels’ are all westernized, believe in human rights, the rule of law, and democracy: this is not necessarily true.

Take Egypt, one of the more sophisticated countries that has undergone a recent uprising. It was primarily a revolution of the unemployed but reasonably educated middle class, (and in a real sign of the times, a Google employee became a hero after creating a Facebook page that riled against the murder by the secret police, of a businessman who had protested).

Vanity Fair had sexy spread on the young Egyptians who had supposedly overnight transformed their nation:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/egypt-revolutionaries-201105#intro

Vanity Fair Caption:

PICTURE: Freedom Fighter
WAEL GHONIM, 30, ON THE ROOF OF HIS HOME, IN GIZA.
The uprising started off leaderless. But in the whirling days of winter, it swiftly anointed a figurehead: Google executive Wael Ghonim. Back in June, the father of two had created a defiant Facebook page, “We Are All Khaled Said” (see slide 4), after seeing images of an Alexandria businessman’s disfigured corpse—the result of a vicious assault by Egyptian authorities, part of a regime that for years had used blunt force to silence critics. Ghonim’s ammunition for his campaign against state-security abuses: a stream of photos, videos, news—and a summons to his nearly 400,000 Facebook followers to attend a Cairo protest on January 25, in what amounted to a pre-announced revolt. Two days later, Ghonim was arrested and held for 12 days, at times blindfolded, handcuffed, and interrogated. Upon his release, he was hailed as the online hero of the movement. He went on to warn autocrats and dictators in neighboring nations in a 60 Minutes interview: “You should freak out. You seriously should freak out.” Ghonim insists that a single tweet he posted in February best summed up the cause: “Revolution 2.0: No one was a hero because everyone was a hero.”

The women presented are young, hip, good-looking and educated:

Gigi Ibrahim, 24, on a rooftop overlooking tahrir square, in cairo.
A self-proclaimed citizen journalist, Ibrahim rejects the commonly held belief that participation and reporting should be at odds. “Citizen journalism is activism,” insists Ibrahim, who spent much of her adolescence in Anaheim, California, and studied political science at the American University in Cairo. She is in some ways typical of her generation—”Twitter is huge for me; I get most of my news on Twitter”—and yet is also an extraordinary exemplar of a new order of political operative and advocate. Through her tweets and Facebook posts, she has sought to evoke, in real time, the experience of the protests. “These are our weapons,” she says, brandishing her smartphone.

For some reason this Vanity Fair piece reminded me of that “Victory” speech by George Bush about Iraq in 2003, 'mission complete': hopeful, arrogant, assumptive. Think I’m a doom-monger? Here are some of the stories that have surfaced in a post- Mubarak Egypt:

8 March 2011:

Egyptian women's protest for equal rights turns violent:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2011/03/08/Egypt_women_s_rights_protest_march

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369259/Egypt-protests-Women-forced-virginity-checks-arrests-Tahir-Square.html#ixzz1KYN3ZZj6

April 7 2011:

Egypt’s Revolution is Leaving Women Behind

http://www.expatcairo.com/2011/04/egypt%E2%80%99s-revolution-is-leaving-women-behind/

March 2011:

At women's march in Egypt, men prove women's point by scolding, shoving, beating, groping them, and telling them to "go home where they belong"

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2011/03/at-womens-march-in-egypt-men-prove-womens-point-by-scolding-shoving-beating-groping-them-and-telling.html

As with the First World War, it seems that in Egypt the men were happy to let the women help out when it was needed – protesting in Tahrir square replacing working in factories – but after the job was done, their presence in a public capacity was no longer desired. Women were excluded from the official body that formulated the amendments to the constitution that were approved on March 19, 2011. Human Rights Watch has expressed serious concern about the place of women in Egyptian society.

Who was it who said that history was just the same thing happening over and over again?

I am reminded of Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys, where a woman history teacher remarks:

“History is women following behind with a bucket”

Except of course, they get no say in the mess they have to clean up. That used to be the case in the West, as World War 1 demonstrates. It still is the case in certain parts of the world, particularly the Middle East.

Women journalists during the War

Women journalists have been in the media a lot recently; CBS News reporter Lara Logan’s sexual assault in Egypt, whilst covering the recent uprisings, has sparked a controversy as to whether it is appropriate for women to put themselves in dangerous areas, or appropriate for their editors to ask them.

Here are some examples of the media firestorm that engulfed this issue:

BBC HEADLINE: 19 February 2011

Lara Logan attack turns spotlight on female reporters

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12510289

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110417/NEWS03/304179926/1066/NEWS03

Fox News pundit Bill O’ Reilly asked the question:

"Is it worth the risk now, with all of the horror going on in the Middle East-- and it's been going on for years-- is it worth the risk for women to cover the news there?"

As someone who is hoping to become a journalist, perhaps in conflict zones, I have endeavoured to find out about those brave women journalists during the Great War, who were the trailblazers in that field. The first accredited woman foreign correspondent was Margaret Fuller who became commissioned by the New York Tribune to cover the Roman revolution in Italy in 1848. But even by 1914, women journalists, let alone women conflict journalists, were few and far between.

One such trailblazer Mary Roberts Rinehart, a successful writer of mystery novels and later known as the “American Agatha Christie”, was among the first American reporters to reach the Belgian front in the First World War.

In an account filed from Belgium for the Saturday Evening Post she wrote:

"The German lines are very close now. The barbed wire barrier tears my clothes... No man's land lies flooded but full of dead bodies... Here the stench begins... My heavy boots chafe my heel, and I limp. But I limp rapidly. I do not care to be shot in the back... I have done what no woman has done before, and I am alive."

Another trailblazer was Nellie Bly. Already famous for her journalism in America, she was on holiday in Europe on the outbreak of the war. She immediately travelled to the Eastern Front where she reported the war for the New York Evening Journal.

Here is one of her clippings. Beautifully written and incredibly moving, I think a feminine influence is seen in the way she is unafraid to write about her own feelings, and in her vivid descriptions of the scenery and the faces of the men.

Nellie Bly

December 10, 1914

New York Evening Journal

“Nellie Bly’s Story of the War

PERILS OF THE CHOLERA”

The following is a continuation of the article by Miss Nellie Bly, special correspondent for the Evening Journal, now on the firing line in Austria:

Przemysl, Nov. 1 – Winter is here. Before this article reaches New York what shall the bitter cold show us? Can the horror be pictured? Countless thousands frozen in trenches, countless wounded frozen by the roadsides in their search for hospitals; countless thousands frozen in the freight trains on their way to the cities.

Daylight brought the same ugly picture – unending monotony of either dark-grey men or dark-blue men, moving briskly but unsmilingly everywhere. In windows, in doorways, in the streets, on the fields, marching in great unending columns here, standing in silent lines before straw-made sheds from which they get their food. Every few yards flies the flag most seen in all the world, the Red Cross, always so symbolic, with its red staining blood crimson the white. Everywhere they are, in school buildings, in hovels, on high land, in mud puddles, and always, in startling numbers, the yellow flag, the cholera. We pass the new cholera barracks where I was the other day. Men are bringing a rude black coffin out of one building. Three more coffins are being carried toward the gate, where wagons of the same queer construction as the one I am in stand waiting.

Patient, uncomplaining soldiers! Noble, brave doctors! I turn away.

RED CROSS AND YELLOW CROSS WAVE OVER VILLAGE.

We pass through a village, a cluster of filthy hovels built in a muddy swamp. The Red Cross and the yellow flag wave ghastly. Now the long trains of supply wagons begin. Men wrapped in blankets or bags, clapping their hands for warmth, gaze at us indifferently.

At a sudden turn in the road we come upon great wooden gates with square holes in them, apparently for cannons. We pass within to a sea of barbed wire. On every side, for miles and miles, it stretches.

Before us is a most wonderful view. We are on the brow of a hill. In the valley seem to be thousands and thousands of men. They are cooking or forming in line or marching or constructing new trenches and shelters from trees and straw for the unnumbered horses which are everywhere. At one place they are marching around a ring for exercise. It is the largest ring, with the greatest number of horses, I ever saw in my life.

Everywhere are the grave-shaped trenches where men lived, fought and died. On this ground the Russians were three weeks ago. Now they are only behind the next hill, 2,000 feet away. The many double crosses made of branches shows where hundreds fell as they retreated before the victorious Austrians.

The appearance of these camps, men and horses was vastly superior to those I saw the day I had my baptism of fire. The horses were larger and better fed. I did not see a sick, dying or dead one. The sanitary arrangements were excellent and filth was not visible.

MUD-STAINED SOLDIERS GATHER BEFORE THE ALTER.

We followed and took our places in the square formed by the troops around the altar.

The priests were in long white lace robes. The chaplain of the camp stood before the altar, cup in hand. An officer in red breeches and blue jacket assisted as altar boy.

It was an impressive sight, this early mass before those pale, mud-stained, shivering soldiers. On a broad board by the side of the altar, around a framed picture of the Emperor and Empress in their youth, lay sixty medals, all silver, of two sizes, with the exception of one gold and the iron crown. This, by the way, might be iron, but it does not show it. It is gold, with two branches of tree enamel. It is suspended on two wide ribbons of the national color.

After the priest had made a short address and prayer, and blessed the medals with holy water, three cheers were given for the Emperor and Austria. Then the commander of the brigade, Prince Schonburg, stepped before the altar and addressed the troops.

BRIGADE COMMANDER ADDRESSES HIS TROOPS.

He is a tall man, taller than any one among all the assembled there – so much that it is distinctly noticeable. He has a serious, strong face. His eyes are steady, sky blue and firm. He wore high black boots, the regular gray overcoat and cap. His manner was quiet, earnest and modest.

This address was delivered in an unaffected way, much as one would speak to close friends. The soldiers, their thousands of sky-blue eyes fixed trustingly upon him. These troops were from Tyrol, the country so frequented by Americans.

When the speech was ended, the next in command made a brief address, which was greeted by cheers. It was to the effect that Prince Schonburg, though long retired from military service, had, on the outbreak of war, rejoined the army – not as a dummy, alas, too plentiful, but as a real soldier. On several occasions, with drawn sabre, he has led his troops right into the face of the enemy’s fire. For these brave acts, the Emperor decorated him with the iron crown. He bowed his tall head gravely as the medal was fastened around his neck. Meanwhile the booming of guns at the base of a hill facing us continued at regular intervals. As usual we could see the little white smoke and hear the explosion, but we could not see or follow the course of the bullet which curved in the air and fell somewhere over the brow of the hill among the Russians.

“I expect a grenade at any moment,” said Lieutenant Frederick Pichl. “The Russians are in that gold-red woods there, 1,000 feet away. They see and shoot at every move.”

But the Russians were silent. No shot answered the Austrians. Down below us a long line of field kitchens were trailing toward the firing line.

Another of her articles was titled “How Wounded Are Cared For”. Bly was primarily concerned with the lives of those most vulnerable, and also of the inherent disadvantages suffered by women at this time.

Elizabeth Cochrane was another Great War journalist. In one dispatch from the front line she described the last hours of a mortally wounded Russian soldier, ending with an account of his last words:


“His words were a sound my ears shall never forget . . . “What does he say?” I cried, unable to stand it . . . “He is asking for his children,” was the low reply. The hollow black eyes turned again to search mine.


“I could not endure their question. I had no answer to give. “Could Emperors and Czars and Kings look on this torturing slaughter and ever sleep again?” I asked the doctor.


“They do not look,” he said gently.”


Dangerous as war reporting certainly is, for both sexes, it seems that some of the comments surrounding the Lara Logan story could have been written in 1914, not 2011. Can women handle conflict reporting? Are they not too vulnerable? Should their editors even send them? What heroes (heroines!) those women Great War journalists were, and how much more difficult must it have been for them. Social and political opinion was greatly against them (see post on post-war attitudes to women), more so than today. The risks they faced were enormous and yet the perspective they brought was essential.


In 1898 Arnold Bennett wrote a handbook called Journalism for Women, which addressed the small but growing number of female writers and editors in British newspapers and journals. 


"Of the dwellers in Fleet Street there are, not two sexes, but two species – journalists and women-journalists – and ... the one is about as far removed organically from the other as a dog from a cat."


This last observation is as true today as it was then. It seems clear that eliminating a perspective from something as important as a war, eliminating half the demographic; that would be the most risky journalism because it would end up being one-sided journalism.


A recent article in the Independent caught my eye:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/women-at-war-the-female-british-artists-who-were-written-out-of-history-2264670.html


It points out that out of the host of artists commissioned by the British government during the Great War, there were only four women compared to 47 men, and of these four, three had their work rejected, while one did not take up the commission, so there was effectively no "official" female representation.

The Great War was in grave danger of being presented from an entirely male perspective. Had it not been for these courageous female journalists, an entirely different perspective might have been lost.


It is also worth remembering that it was the journalist Clare Hollingworth, who broke the story (to the British government as well as to her readers) of Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939...

Making sure we make the right connections...

Today, when asked to sum up the horrors of the Great War or attempt to encapsulate the emotions of a soldier in the trenches, our minds are often cast to the works of Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon. Despite the remoteness the First World War, the poetry it inspired seems to provide a specially sensitive register of what a tragedy it was.  I am far from alone in finding “Dulce Et Decorum Est” the most arresting of all these poems. It still serves as a clarion call to the anti-war movement, its title plastered on posters at anti-war demos; a warning to those who would take the matter of war lightly. it portrays the helplessness of the ordinary soldier, his detachment from those who order him over the top.

On YouTube there are numerous videos with recitals of “Dulce Et Decorum Est” whilst images of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld flashing across the screen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vllKoRAjCio

How interesting that almost 100 years later, this one poem is still seen as the best example of the horrors of war.

But while the poem does a brilliant job of encapsulating the brutality of men slaughtering each other on the battlefield, the most important element of the writing is the last stanza. The last 12 lines are a stinging chastisement of those who encouraged young boys to volunteer for fighting with tales of heroism and glory.

Owen never directly criticizes war in this poem, nor the tactics being used. The gory, vivid depictions of death in the trenches are not particularly directed to those at home, less still the commanders during the war. It is directed at the jingoistic propagandists who spoke of war as a game, who exploited boyish sentiments to serve their own purposes, without ever realizing the reality of the place they were sending them off to.

Thus any comparison with George Bush or Iraq, although affective in its message, is misdirected for it misinterprets the vital message of the poem.

in the original draft of “Dulce,” Owen dedicated it “To Jessie Pope etc.” this backs up my point, for Jessie Pope was a well known jingoistic poet and propagandist. One poem called “Who’s for the game?” opens with the lines:

“Who’s for the game, the biggest that’s played,

The red crashing game of a fight?”

Whether the Iraq war was right or wrong, the vernaculars of the Great War and the Iraq War are very different. As Owen demonstrated, he was fighting against people who trivialized war, who thought it was a game.

The prevalent lighthearted approach was brilliantly satirized in Blackadder, with the dim-witted public schoolboy George stating "I joined up straight away - 10th August 1914. What a day that was. Myself and the fellows leap-frogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office, then playing tiddlywinks in the queue”.

How about this recruitment poster, the perfect example of war being seen as a game, a sport, another excursion on the rugby pitch:

Contrast this with a post-2001 world, in which the rhetoric used to describe Afghanistan and Iraq was literally a battle of good versus evil, a fight to the death, one so serious that it was impossible to make fun of:

George Bush, September 16 2001: “This crusade - this war on terrorism”

Tony Blair, March 5 2004: “Here were terrorists prepared to bring about Armageddon”

Thus the propaganda to recruit soldiers in 1914 was presented in entirely different terms to that of post 9/11, so it is unfair to compare the two. The lack of clarity as to the war aims is demonstrated in the propaganda which only asks for recruits, but never says why or what the purpose of war is. This confusion is brilliantly presented again in Blackadder:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk37TD_08eA

Whether it was Iraq or Afghanistan, the vernacular of the war was always about saving civilization, defending Western values – very clear and defined messages, a very powerful pull, and not one that in any way made light of the situation.

So although understand why the individual in the first video placed Owen’s poem over the top of modern images of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, he is confusing two completely different things. Though he might believe as many do, that all three wars were unnecessary, Owen’s actual message in “Dulce” was not anti-war per se, rather anti the trivialization of war. And in a post-9/11 world, the biggest hawks never once trivialized the situation. In fact, quite the opposite. The language of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘crusade’ show the seriousness with which the war was presented to the public.