Dulce et Decorum Est

The poem graphically depicts a chlorine gas attack on British soldiers in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I, including the agonizing death of a fellow soldier who failed to get his gas mask on in time. Owen uses the scene to denounce the patriotic lie that it is 'sweet and fitting to die for one's country.'

Wilfred Owen drafted the poem in 1917 while serving as a soldier on the Western Front. It was published posthumously in 1920 in a collection edited by his friend and fellow war poet Siegfried Sassoon, after Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, just one week before the Armistice.

The phrase translates as 'It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country' and comes from the Roman poet Horace's 'Odes.' Owen calls it 'The old Lie' at the poem's conclusion, deliberately weaponizing the graphic horror of the gas attack to expose the emptiness of this classical patriotic sentiment.

Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal in northern France, just one week before the Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the war. His mother reportedly received the telegram announcing his death on the very day the church bells rang to celebrate the Armistice.