Collection World War

Here are the extraordinary writings of a generation who fought through a war of unprecedented destructive power, and who had to find new voices to express the horror of what they discovered. The great names - Owen, Sassoon - are fully represented, but there are also many poems by lesser-known or unexpected figures, ranging from serving soldiers like Isaac Rosenberg and Richard Aldington to women such as Edith Nesbit and Vera Brittain.

John F. Kraft was an 18-year-old college student when he received his draft notice in the spring of 1943. He had been brought up in a well-to-do family, and had lived in Chicago, New York, and London. He went through a year of testing and training, and justifiably expected a position of some privilege. As the demand for infantrymen grew, his training was halted, and he was sent to Alabama to join a unit comprised mostly of more local residents. These were not personalities he had dealt with before. Soon afterward, he found himself aboard a ship heading toward the foxholes of Germany.

Seventeen iconic poems from World War One, including: Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Deorum Est"; "In Flanders Fields" by John McRae; "Counter Attack" by Siegfried Sassoon; Rupert Brook's "The Soldier"; and many more that bring the horrors of the Great War vividly to life through the eyes of those living them.