Thank you for that heartfelt pre-war speech Sergeant Erin McGrath. It is truly an honour to be invited to share my views and beliefs about poetry during the war. Poetry contains important emotions, images and memories hidden in a text. It is a puzzle of words put together waiting to be discovered with a desire to be heard. A majority of people already know and understand what war was like and what it meant to those who fought. However, some people are often blinded by the reality and truths of war because of poets and authors that paint a picture of war as an exciting adventure. Literature is proven to capture the writer’s experiences and emotions, especially at such a marginal event of war. I believe that War is not something that should be celebrated, through this belief I believe that anti-war poetry opposes those who think it should be. The anti-war war poems oppose the marginalised view that soldiers turn from innocence to heartless killers, whereas majority of the soldiers were genuine, soft soldiers made to do their jobs. The first poem in which I have brought to this ceremony foreground’s this ideology. It is called “Attack” by Siegfried Sassoon. Siegfried Sassoon was an English poet, writer, and soldier. Highly awarded for his bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the most well-known poets of the First World War. During this time, despite his high reputation, in 1917 Sassoon made the decision to stand up against the conduct of the war. One of the many