Creative Analysis of Two War Related Poems
Uploaded by Medina on Dec 25, 2004
Creative Analysis of Two War Related Poems
Just north of the Danube River, west of Chartres, the earth is scarred with the trenches of the most vile and destructive conflict anyone has ever witnessed, or experienced. The earth, viewed from the heavens, has been disfigured to resemble the surface of the moon, with craters from the persistent onslaught of the German artillery. The shell smoke eclipses the sky and the only light is the man-made stars that light the horizon from the rifles and not the night sky as they have always been for the soldiers. The shrill shriek of enemy bullets are heard without pause. They buzz over the heads of the soldiers or into the corpses of comrades fallen days or weeks ago in No Man's Land. The odor from the dead, hundreds of yards away, almost overpower the stench of the spent gunpowder or the effects of the soldier's dysentery covering the trench floors. The stench is almost too appalling for the soldier's unceasing messmates: the rats. Just yards behind the south part of the British trenches is Hospital Station 3.
"I will take the men as they come." An overworked Dr. McCrae snapped at his head nurse.
"Enlisted men and officers are the same rank here: wounded or seriously wounded, or dead on arrival. That is all."
With a wave of his hand the Canadian physician dismissed the veteran nurse into the crowded hospital station. The command of the British 3rd army created a large break in the southern German trenches. They ordered a series of charges, which McCrae knew failed by the expressions on the faces of wounded brought in. He did not even need to hear what happened.
The hospital was overcrowded as per usual. McCrae's expression remained solemn and he and his veteran nurses worked as if surgery was polishing a boot. Blood flowed more than water and the smell of the soldiers lingered on McCrae's hands and tools even with hundred washings.
McCrae ordered a stiff looking officer in for a probable amputation: The quickest solution for any wounded extremity. Less chance of infection, quick, and the soldier gets to go home. McCrae's mentality was not insane. Soldiers sometimes would beg him to amputate an injured leg just to go home with disability pay. McCrae, despite regulations of the British Army, treated officers and NCOs no different than enlisted men.
The young officer's trousers were soaked through...