Biography of Wilfred Owen

Wilfred Owen is one of the most famous poets of World War I and a contemporary of Robert Graves, Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon, and there is probably no better, or memorable, war poem than “Dulce et Decorum Est”. Wilfred Owen was one of the best poets of his generation, and yet sadly the writer would not live to see his 26th birthday.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was born on the 18th March 1893, in a house known as Plas Wilmot just outside of Oswestry in Shropshire. Owen was the oldest of four children born to Thomas and Susan Owen. As the name suggests Owen had a mixed Welsh and English ancestry. The early years of Owen’s life were fairly comfortable as the family lived in a house owned by his grandfather, and the family had income from his father’s wages as a railway worker. When Owen was just four though, his grandfather died, and the family was forced to move into lodgings in Birkenhead.

Wilfred Owen - PD-life-70

It was in Birkenhead that Owen was educated, first at the Birkenhead Institute and then at the Shrewsbury Technical School. It is often recorded that Owen was only ten when he discovered a love of writing poetry, although little remains of any early poetry from this period. Schooling obviously played a big part in his life, but Owen was also heavily influenced by his family’s strong Anglican beliefs.

In 1911, Owen left school and tried to gain entrance to the University of London. Due to his relative impoverished state, it meant that Owen was forced to take a matriculation exam to gain entrance; Owen needed to gain first-class honours, which he failed to achieve. Owen though was not done with education though and went to lessons at University College, Reading, reading both botany and Old English. To pay for his lodgings and board, Owen offered tuition at Wyle Cop School and also worked as a lay assistant to the Vicar at Dunsden. Owen went on to become a teaching assistance at the Berlitz School in Bordeaux in 1913.

Owen’s stay in France though ended in 1915 when, like so many of his generation, Owen joined the army to fight on the Western Front. Owen had previously thought of himself as a pacifist before the outbreak of the war, but he felt that it was his duty to fight alongside his fellow countrymen. As such in October 1915, Wilfred Owen enlisted in the Artists’ Rifles. Training at Hare Hall Camp in Essex was long and hard, although Owen eventually was commissioned as a second lieutenant in January 1917. Owen was then sent to join the Manchester Regiment fighting in France. On arrival in France, Owen was optimistic and, like the majority of other soldiers, believed in the propaganda that often portrayed war to be like a game of cricket, alongside the belief that it was both right and fitting to fight for your country. This propaganda itself was often propagated by many English poets of the day, people like Rupert Brooke who often painted a very rose-tinted view of war.

Soon though, Wilfred Owen was writing his own poems about his own war. Owen saw plenty of fighting and, in the summer of 1917, led his troops into battle at the Somme. Owen was badly concussed in the fighting, a shell exploding yards from him, the explosion throwing him into a shell crater, in which he lay for three days alongside the body of another officer. Owen was eventually rescued from the hole, but was diagnosed as suffering from shell shock.

Following the diagnosis, Owen was sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh to recover. There he met Siegfried Sassoon who read through his poems, Sassoon was already recognized as a leading poet of the age, and both encouraged and advised Owen. Sassoon also introduced Owen to Robert Graves, who was also a patient at the hospital. Graves also encouraged Owen to continue with his poetry.

Sassoon’s influence can be seen in the poems written at Craiglockhart, and it was in the period of convalescence that such poems as “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, “Disabled”, “Dulce et Decorum Est” and “Strange Meeting” were written. Owen though exceeded even the reputation of Sassoon and Graves, and his war poetry was full of the realism of gas and trench war on the Western Front. Convalescence continued into the Spring of 1918, when Owen undertook some work as a teacher before being posted to regimental duties at Ripon.

It is often speculated that Owen was homosexual, and having been introduced by Sassoon to many in the literary circle, it is thought that he had affairs with several male members of the circle. There is though little evidence of Owen’s sexuality as much personal correspondence did not survive after his death.

Eventually though, Owen’s period of convalescence at the hospital ended in August 1918. Although he could have stayed on home duty for the duration of the war Owen though, despite recognizing the horrors of war, believed it was his duty to return to the fight, as well as to report on the events going on at the front. Owen also knew that there were few realistic poets left fighting, as Sassoon had been placed on permanent sick leave after being shot in the head. Sassoon himself was opposed to the return of Owen to the fighting and even threatened to stop him from doing so, as a result Owen did not tell him he was going back to France.

Wilfred Owen found himself back on the Western Front in August 1918, where he promptly led his troops in storming enemy positions at Joncourt and Beaurevoir on Somme. For his leadership he was awarded the Military Cross, although the award was made after his death. On the 4th November 1918, Owen took part in the Battle of the Sambre Canal at Ors. There the troops were directed to take positions on the other side of the canal. In the lead, Owen was killed by enemy machine gun fire; he was only 25 years of age.

It is poignant to think that the war ended only seven days later. It was in fact as the bells of peace were rung across England that the news of his death was delivered to his family. Wilfred Owen’s body was laid to rest with so many of his colleagues at the Ors Communal Cemetery.
After the war, Owen’s work was not forgotten, mainly due to the patronage of Siegfried Sassoon. It was Sassoon who arranged for the “Collected Poems” of Owen to be published in 1920. The collection contained all of Owen’s thought provoking poems, including “Anthem for Doomed Youth” and “Dulce et Decorum Est”. Memorials were also created to Owen at Oswestry, Shrewsbury, Ors and Gailly.

There are many things to consider when you think of the life of Owen. Would he have become well-known if he had not met Sassoon at the Craighlockhart hospital? Would he have been as famous if he had survived the war? What could he have achieved if his life had not been cut short? These questions will never have any answers and so Wilfred Owen can only be remembered for what he achieved in his life. He was not the most prolific of poets but his work expressed the horrors of war, and brought a more realistic image of what warfare actually meant. Even today his works are still studied in many English schools, both as poetic masterpieces but also works that express the first hand feelings of a soldier fighting for his country.

Copyright - First Published 10th July 2008