In An Underground Dressing-Station

Quietly they set their burden down: he tried
To grin; moaned; moved his head from side to side.
* * * * *
He gripped the stretcher; stiffened; glared; and screamed,
"O put my leg down, doctor, do!" (He'd got
A bullet in his ankle; and he'd been shot
Horribly through the guts.) The surgeon seemed
So kind and gentle, saying, above that crying,
"You _must_ keep still, my lad." But he was dying.

About Wilfred Owen

War poet whose visceral, anti-war verse exposed the horrors of trench warfare; killed one week before Armistice.

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