在一戰結束的前一周戰亡，25歲，Owen生前只出版過5首詩。在1918年初，當他滿心期待著有一天能出版自己的詩集時，他草擬過一篇序言：
“This book is not about heroes.
English poetry is not yet fit to speak of that.
Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour,
might, majesty, dominion, or power,
except war.
Above all, I am not concerned with poetry.
My subject is war, and the pity of war.”
影片開頭，Samuel用他那標誌性的略帶變聲前稚嫩的半少年聲線念出以上獨白，他是沒能走完25歲的Owen，正因為他和他堅定為之表達聲音的一群普通戰士一樣永遠停在了少年亦或青年，有Samuel的這些閃回鏡頭盡顯遺憾，揪心。
歷史系男孩和文道的文里都提到過的Owen最知名的詩“Dulce et Decorum est( It's sweet and right to die for your country)”因為Samuel柔軟到淒涼的聲音尤其動人：
"Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
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."
我自詡是喜歡紀錄片的，但能戰勝心浮氣躁而有找對心境的時候太少，所以很高興看到影片開頭有一位不裝腔作勢的真誠男低音做敘事者：
"But one of the many ironies of Owen's story, is that what made him a great poet also killed him.
It was being thrown into the horror of war that turned him from an unexceptional, frankly, rather wet young man, into a proper poet, and a genuine military hero.
What could be more opposite than war and poetry?
And yet the reason Wilfred Owen is such a great poet is that he embodies these contradictions.
He was a very ordinary man who produced extraordinary verse, which pulsed with this anger against the armchair generals and war mongers who sent young men off to die, and yet at that same time dignified and celebrated those who had to do the fighting.
His most famous poem rails against the idea of dying for your country, and yet, of course, that's precisely what he did."
影片進行大半后，主持人/敘事者採訪了一位受過勛的年輕在役英國軍官，這一段很有意思：
” I'm at Horse Guards Parade to meet Justin Featherstone, who won the Military Cross in Iraq.
— Why do you like Wilfred Owen?
— It's his resonance, resonance to the common soldier. He speaks a soldier's tongue.
— Lots of people would say the message he's giving in many of his poems is a really anti-military one. He's actually saying, "This is the age-old lie, that it is sweet and good to die for your country." But in your profession you have to believe that, don't you?
— 100%, and with no hint of irony. But he speaks with an honest, almost blunt, vision of what being a soldier is about. But he was equally saying that committing people to what you think is a great Valhalla, a great and glorious way to die. Actually, the bloke on the back of the cart, with his writhing face that is not a glorious way to go. And I think the romaticisation of warfare at the time, and even hymns, in inverted commas, like Jerusalem, were all-pervasive, and his was a reaction to that.
雖然軍官的回答到最後感覺有些含糊，但在盡職業操守的同時至少也能意識到Owen詩中用殘酷的直白描寫體現出的對戰爭的強烈譴責，擁有這種矛盾體的軍人是讓人尊敬的。
在接受shell shock治療一年後，Owen在戰爭結束前的1918年夏天重回前線：
“He felt it would give him the authority to speak to speak...He felt the responsiblity to lead his men...As a poet, he felt in his role to bear the witness to their suffering and courage"
在戰爭和他生命的最後的幾個月裡，Owen徹底轉變了，為了生存下去而麻木自我過後的是驚人的英勇，他完全成為了一個高效無私的出色戰士：
" But more than any citation for gallantry, it's the words Wilfred Owe
uses himself when he writes to his mother to describe what happens, which tell us how much he's changed.
'I have nowords to qualify my experiences,
except the word...
sheer.
It passed all limits of my abhorrence.
I lost all my earthly faculties and fought like an angel.
I came out in order to help these boys -
directly, by leading them, as well as an officer can,
indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can.
I have done the first.
Wilfred.
and more than Wilfred.“
一個曾經浪漫、敏感甚至有些軟弱的男孩，從戰爭初的滿眼都是驚駭與憎惡到生命末時對恐懼、危險、粗野等等那種真心到難以置信的平靜和滿足，短短三年，他的故事里的這些反差盡顯殘酷和苦澀：
" Nov 4th, 1918 dawned misty.
At 5.45 in the morning the whistles blew and the attack began, but the Germans were dug in on the other side and dug in with machine guns, they were cut to pieces.
Wilfred Owen never made it to the other side.
Precisely seven days later, on November 11th, 1918, the First World War ended.
It had taken the lives of young men in almost every village, town and city across the country and in every village, town and city, people poured onto the streets to celebrate the Allied victory.
In Shrewsbury, Susan Owen heard the church bells peeling, but at this moment of collective relief and joy, the final irony of Wilfred Owen's story was about to unfold.
Susan Owen received the news of her beloved son's death on this
Armistice Day, with the crowds cheering just outside her door."
結尾處的解說詞簡單而動人：
"During his short life, Wilfred Owen had seen only five of his poems published.
......
It wasn't until the 1960s that Owen's poetry really gained popularity.
His unflinching depiction of war spoke powerfully to the protest generation, but these poems speak to every generation which chooses to listen."
Owen被安葬在一個漂亮乾淨的烈士公墓，他的墓碑旁就是一排排整齊的戰士的墓碑：
“It seems to me that these beautifully-tended war cemeteries tell something of a lie.
With their immaculately straight ranks and their uniformed headstones, they seem to suggest that all soldiers are the same, and they're not.
Some were tall, some short, fat, thin, sporty, bookish, some probably were fearless and many were utterly terrified and what Owen does is to enable us to understand that war is about more than the strategies of generals or the manufactured animosities of politicians.
His lasting memorial is to enable us to understand the human experience of war.
In short, the pity of war."
