10 Question Literature Quiz: War and Remembrance | Poetry

Answer: Wilfred Owen

'Dulce et Decorum Est' is one of the best known examples of the work of Wilfred Owen, a First World War soldier and poet who was killed in a battle at the Sambre-Oise Canal in northern France just one week before the end of the conflict. Owen's war poetry is noted for conveying the horrors of war and the first verses of 'Dulce et Decorum Est' do just that - describing the suffering and condition of the men in the trenches and the effects of being attacked with poison gas. The final lines set out the contradiction between the hope for honour and glory held by many of the young men who signed up at the beginning of the war and the subsequent reality of their experiences.

The title and final line of Owen's poem comes from a much older work by the Roman poet Horace - proving that war propaganda has been around for probably as long as war itself.

Answer: MCMXIV

Philip Larkin's 'MCMXIV' - or '1914' when translated from the Roman numerals - was first published in his poetry collection 'The Whitsun Weddings' in 1964. While most war poetry tends to be about the battlefield, loss and death, Larkin's poem is about the impact (or lack of it) of the early stages of the First World War on civilian society. It opens with descriptions of men queuing up to enlist in the same manner that they would have queued up for entry to a cricket match at The Oval or a football match at Villa Park while "the pubs" remained "wide open all day" with "the countryside not caring". The ending though points out how that society was living through its last days of innocence - that they would all too soon lose their sense of distance from war and instead face the horrifying realisation that many of those men would not be returning.

The incorrect options for the title of the poem were the Roman numerals for 1861 (the start of the US Civil War), 1939 (the start of the Second World War) and 1950 (the start of the Korean War).

Answer: Light Brigade

The lines in question come from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's famous poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' about the battle of the same name that took place during the Crimean War. The poem was written in 1854, only weeks after the disastrous military action which sent the cavalry unit known as the Light Brigade into a direct battle against Russian artillery, with predictable results. The Light Brigade lost over 100 men and 300 horses and were forced into a quick and humiliating retreat. It turned out that the cavalry had been mistakenly sent into battle against the wrong target thanks to misleading communication and poor leadership. Tennyson's famous lines also reflect the fact that the soldiers must have been able to see that were headed for an incredibly mismatched fight, but followed orders and continued on with the charge regardless.

Tennyson was not a "war poet" in the sense of following or taking part in the action himself. In 1854 he held the position of Poet Laureate, which comes with the remit to produce poetry to commemorate events of national importance.

Answer: Irish

The poem is titled 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death'. The pilot memorialised in these lines by Irish poet W.B. Yeats was Major Robert Gregory, the son of his friend, colleague and compatriot Lady Augusta Gregory. Major Gregory fought for the British in the First World War; he was an ace pilot in the Royal Flying Corps and was killed while flying in Italy in January 1918. This was one of four poems that Yeats wrote about Gregory and was first published in his 1919 poetry collection 'The Wild Swans at Coole'.

Ireland was still part of the United Kingdom at the time of the First World War, but in addition to the wider conflict there was also an ongoing revolutionary movement seeking to achieve Irish independence. Events such as the Easter Rising of 1916, the subsequent treatment and execution of its leaders, and growing public support for independence might explain why Yeats' Irish airman, away fighting for Britain, is described as saying "Those that I guard I do not love".

Answer: Second Boer War

The clues in the poem to the war being described are "a kopje-crest" - an Afrikaans word for the top of a small hill - and "the veldt" - a term used for the open grasslands of southern Africa. The Second Boer War was fought by the British against the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State in what is now South Africa, between October 1899 and May 1902. The poem is called 'Drummer Hodge' and is one of many that Hardy wrote about this conflict.

Thomas Hardy is probably better known as a novelist, but he was also a prolific poet - particularly in the latter part of his career after he turned away from novel-writing following the poor reception of 'Jude the Obscure' (when some critics labelled it "Jude the Obscene"). Hardy's war poetry covered a range of conflicts, from the Napoleonic Wars (in 'The Dynasts' and other poems) to the Boer Wars and the First World War.

Answer: Rudyard Kipling

Kipling's 'My Boy Jack' is often associated with the death of Kipling's son John, who was a soldier killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915. However, the poem initially appeared in print (untitled) as part of a series of newspaper articles that Kipling had been asked to produce by the British Admiralty about the naval Battle of Jutland in 1916. It didn't gain the title 'My Boy Jack' until two years later when it was included in his collection entitled 'Twenty Poems from Rudyard Kipling'. While the titular character might not have been intended to represent his lost son, there is little doubt that his grief inspired both his literary output and later events in his own life, such as becoming a member of the organisation that went on to become the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

The poem is written as a conversation; the words of a parent asking after the fate of their son ("Have you news of my boy Jack?") and how they will cope with his loss ("Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"), and - usually printed in italics - the responses giving the unwanted answer ("Not this tide") and other advice, such as the final verse:

"Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide."

Answer: Second Battle of Ypres

The Second Battle of Ypres took place between April 22nd and May 25th, 1915. Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae of the Canadian Expeditionary Force fought in the battle along with a close friend, Alexis Helmer, who was killed. McCrae performed his friend's funeral and wrote his now famous poem 'In Flanders Fields' about the little red flowers (Papaver rhoeas) that grew on the graves of the fallen, as well as the bleak landscape of the battlefields.

The patriotic tone of the final verse ("Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw") meant that the poem was initially used as propaganda and an army recruiting tool, particularly in McCrae's native Canada. However, after the war its emotive lines have become more associated with Remembrance Day events.

Answer: Moina Michael

Moina Michael was not known as a poet when she wrote 'We Shall Keep the Faith' in response to the implicit plea of 'In Flanders Fields' for people to both remember the fallen soldiers and to continue in support of their efforts. She was actually a professor at the University of Georgia who volunteered to support the war effort and afterwards became instrumental in the promotion of wearing an artificial poppy as a symbol of remembrance in the United States. She also identified the production and sale of remembrance poppies as an important way of raising money to support injured and disabled returning servicemen. As a result she was often described as the "Poppy Lady".

Of the incorrect options, Frenchwoman Anna Guerin was also a key figure in the movement to recognise the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and responsible for establishing the Inter-Allied Poppy Day across the US, Canada, France, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Answer: The Soldier

Rupert Brooke was a member of the group known as the Georgian Poets, which included other famous names such as D. H. Lawrence, Robert Graves and his fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Brooke enlisted with the Royal Navy and began writing poetry about the war before actually seeing active service himself. He died from sepsis while sailing with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force off Greece in April 1915. Brooke was buried on the Greek island of Skyros - so it is that place that became Brooke's personal "for ever England".

The five war sonnets for which Brooke is best remembered were labelled I to V and were called, in order, 'Peace', 'Safety', 'The Dead', 'The Dead' and 'The Soldier'. The famous lines in question come from the last of these and tell of the final resting place of an Englishman who has lost his peace and his safety but become both a soldier and "the dead".

Answer: Ode of Remembrance

The fourth stanza of 'For The Fallen' is known as the Ode of Remembrance. It was written in honour of the soldiers that lost their lives as a result of the British defeat at the Battle of Mons, one of the earliest battles of the First World War. It is regularly used in remembrance services around the world, but is also recited every evening at 8pm during the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the Belgian city of Ypres. The reading of these lines is the part of the ceremony known as the Exhortation.

The third stanza of the poem is also often used in remembrance services in addition to the Ode of Remembrance itself:

"They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe."

Binyon's words (in both stanzas) vividly illustrate how the millions of soldiers who lost their lives in one of the most terrible wars of all time comprised a large portion of an entire generation of young men at the prime of their life - and that that is how we should continue to remember them, while the people they fought to protect have the opportunity to grow old and die in peace.