World war 1 had a deadly combination of new weapons and old strategies. in one battle lasting only a few days ( the third battle of ypres), one side of the war ( the allies) lost 300,000 soldiers in only a few square miles of battleground. one of the most terrible weapons used was poison gas, which entered the lungs and created a chemical reaction that caused an extremely painful death. the poet wilfred owen was a british soldier in world war 1, and he wrote this poem “ dulce at decorum est” to describe what he saw when one of his fellow soldiers died from a gas attack write a 300-400 word descriptive essay about owen’s use of voice in this poem

On 4 August 1914, the German army invaded Belgium. The Germans demanded King Albert to grant them free passage through the country, so that they could attack the French from the rear and defeat them. The king refused and the famous Schlieffen plan was launched to impose Germany’s military will by force. On 12 August 1914 at Halen (in the province of Limburg) Uhlans of the German cavalry (light cavalry armed with lances) attempted to charge a strong Belgian position with naked swords.The German advance was now moving more slowly than the German high command had originally hoped. At several places, the Germans believed that they were shot by ’civilians’. The often incomplete uniform of the Civil Guard indeed made it hard to recognise the soldiers. A large number of civilians were executed in retaliation in Dinant, Aarschot and LeuvIn Leuven 2,000 houses were also burnt to the ground, together with its fabulous university library. The fortress of Antwerp fell in October 1914. After the fall of Antwerp, the tired troops of the weakened Belgian Army withdrew behind the line of the River Yzer.