Embedded Files
Summary
Summary
A group of British soldiers are waiting in a trench whilst on duty. They are scared to rest because they could be attacked at any moment, leaving them tired and vulnerable. Nothing eventually happens.
They watch the nature and the trenches which all seem to be showing signs of suffering also. They can hear the distant sounds of fighting in the background but this is as close to any action that they will get.
Dawn only seems to bring more misery and suffering for the men. The cold and frost are yet another aggressor that they must contend with. As the men can only hear the sounds of warfare in the distance, it is as if they truth aggressors in the war are the elements themselves as they are fighting off the cold rather than enemy soldiers.
The soldiers' belief in God begins to fade as they feel that they have been abandoned and left to die in the cold.
Time is shown to have passed when the snow begins to melt away signaling the end of winter and the beginning of spring.
A Reading of Exposure
A Reading of Exposure
Context
Context
World War One began in 1914 and at first it was predicted that it would end swiftly. However, as both sides dug trenches across France and Belgium, the opposing armies became locked in a stalemate that neither side could break. By the winter of 1917 both sides had sustained massive losses and extreme cold weather made the misery even worse. It was said to be the coldest winter in living memory. The soldiers suffered from hypothermia and frostbite and many developed trench foot, a crippling disease caused by feet being wet and cold and confined in boots for days on end.
Owen and his fellow soldiers were forced to lie outside in freezing conditions for two days. He wrote: “We were marooned in a frozen desert. There was not a sign of life on the horizon and a thousand signs of death… The marvel is we did not all die of cold.”
It was against this background that Owen wrote Exposure.
Owen and a number of other poets of the time used their writing to inform people back in Britain about the horrors of the war and in particular about life on the front line. The picture they painted contradicted the scenes of glory portrayed in the British press. Exposure is a particularly hard-hitting example of this.
Owen had joined the army in 1915 but was hospitalised in May 1917 suffering from ‘shell shock’ (today known as PTSD – Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). In hospital Owen met the already established war poet Siegfried Sassoon who, recognising the younger man’s talent, encouraged him to continue writing.
Owen eventually returned to the war but was tragically killed just days before the war ended; he was just 26. He is now regarded as one of Britain’s greatest war poets.
"The coldest winter was 1916-17. The winter was so cold that I felt like crying. In fact the only time… I didn’t actually cry but I’d never felt like it before, not even under shell fire. We were in the Ypres Salient and, in the front line, I can remember we weren’t allowed to have a brazier because it weren’t far away from the enemy and therefore we couldn’t brew up tea. But we used to have tea sent up to us, up the communication trench. Well a communication trench can be as much as three quarters of a mile long. It used to start off in a huge dixie, two men would carry it with like a stretcher. It would start off boiling hot; by the time it got to us in the front line, there was ice on the top it was so cold."
NCO Clifford Lane
Guided Annotation
Guided Annotation
Annotations & Notes
Annotations & Notes
"We were behind the line; we were in reserve, we were at Mametz Wood. We were under canvas in the middle of winter, this was December and I’d been down on a course and had come back. And my kit had gone on up, I knew where the battalion was, I was there before I left, I knew the way up to the battalion and had left my kit to be sent on, my valise, to be sent up with the rations. But my kit never arrived and I had no cover and the battalion had only one blanket per man. It was a very hard frost and I arrived at this place very hot and sweaty and got a chill and was carried down from that to hospital."
Charles Wilson, September 1917
Page updated
Report abuse