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Wilfred Edward Salter
Owen was born on
18th March 1893,
in Oswestry,
Shropshire but
the young and
impressionable
child didn’t
grow up there.
Despite giving
the impression
of being wealthy
and upper-middle
class, the family was
forced to the point of
bankruptcy when Owen’s
grandfather died, leaving behind some huge
debts. Forced into cheaper accommodation,
the family moved to Birkenhead when Owen
was two.
A bright child, who rather unexpectedly
failed to gain a scholarship for his second
choice university, and so he turned to the
Church and headed for Dunsden in Reading.
There, he lived and worked alongside the
Pastor as a lay assistant, in return for extra
tutoring. Surrounded daily by the discomfort
and distress of the poor people that the
church helped to serve, Owen soon looked
for an outlet to relieve the burden that
witnessing such suffering placed upon his
young shoulders. He turned to one of his first
loves, poetry.
Despite his increasing abilities with a pen,
Owen once again failed to win a scholarship
to university. Frustrated by his own
inabilities, he headed for a teaching post in
Bordeaux and then on to a private tutorial
assignment near the Pyrenees. Although war
broke out in 1914, Owen decided to stay and
teach rather than return home to volunteer,
expecting the situation to improve. But by
1915, it was obvious that this was to be a
lengthy conflict. Feeling the weight of duty
on his shoulders, Owen headed for home.
Owen was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant in the Second Manchester
Regiment. He began his time at the front
on 12th January 1917, at the start of a cold
winter. After a long break from writing,
Owen once again put pen to paper. He
started to write furiously of the suffering he
saw but his poems also took on a notable
homoerotic tendency, describing his
comrades in a far more physical way than
most other poets of the time were doing.
As is the main feature of Owen’s works, the
deeply guarded feelings he hoarded were
once again allowed to flow in his poetry.
Owen stayed at the front for a further
two months, writing poetry every night,
describing the horrors around him. A
precious break from the front line came
when Owen was thrown into the air by
a midnight bombing raid whilst he slept,
causing him some minor injuries. He was
taken to a grand French house some way
from the front in Abbeville.
His time in Abbeville was fleeting and he
soon returned to the front line. But his
time at the front was again cut short when,
in the midst of battle, Owen was trapped
in a trench, surrounded by the remains of
a well liked fellow soldier. This all proved
too much for Owen. He soon developed
the recognisable symptoms of shellshock,
suffering from tremors day and night,
becoming trigger-happy and possessing
a glazed look in his eyes. When a fellow
officer accused him of cowardice, another
breakdown ensued and Owen was shipped
back to England in shame, to recover at
Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland.
Whilst his breakdown was a terrible blow,
his time at Craiglockhart proved to be the
making of Owen. Whilst there, he met
several poets, all struggling to put into
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