"When I was first thinking of a
possible title for this book, I considered annexing the line “Obscene as
cancer,” from Wilfred Owen’s terrifying poem about death on the Western
Front, “Dulce et Decorum Est.” The action describes the reaction of a
group of exhausted British stragglers, caught in the open during a gas
attack for which they are ill–prepared:
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of
fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and
stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime
. . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick
green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him
drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking,
drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too
could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his
face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of
sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted
lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile incurable sores on innocent
tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such
high zest
To children ardent for some desperate
glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori."
(Christopher Hitchens, Mortality, Loc. 757-69)
