The Permanent Stain of the Somme
Since the early 1960s, historians have shone a more positive light on the Battle of the Somme, writes Allan Mallinson. But we must not forget the excesses and failures of that terrible campaign.
In his 1918 poem ‘Futility’, Wilfred Owen plays with the theme of Nature’s restorative power. ‘Move him into the sun’, begins the speaker. But the effort is futile because the soldier is already dead. Owen has created a metaphor for the conflict as a whole.
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