‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Tennsion Dirge

The three poems that we are reading are all written at different times and places in the war. The Charge of the Light Brigade was written as the battle was actually happening. The Dirge of the dead sisters was written behind the front line where all the injured soldiers went, and the poems concentrates on the way that the nurses were, like the condition that they had too work in and the facilities that they had. The last of the light brigade is all about after the war has finished and after the men have become heroes, they are sat in the street with no money and they asked him they could write a poem on the suffering that have had after the war.

The charge of the light brigade shows a side if war that isn’t seen today. This attitude is to do as you were told to, this meant even if you knew that you were going to die. For example

‘Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.’

This is one example from the poem that shows what the attitude to war was in those days by the way that the writer Tennison has captured the mood in which the soldiers saw there role in the war to do as they were told. I think that little caption at the top shows the attitude just right for the people there. Like in the Crimean war were it was the biggest mess up to send the soldiers down the middle of a valleys surrounded by guns, but they did it, one third of the men came back. But yet the poem that Tennsion wrote was still on about how glorious the war was for example at the start of the poem they are saying

‘ Charge for the guns!

Into the valley of death,

Rode the six hundred.’

Then at the end of the poem they where still saying how great it was and how there glory will never end.

‘When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the light brigade,

Noble six hundred!

This again I think gives a good view on the attitude to war and the way that they made everything so glorified. In these poems because that was what they were told to believe and also I think that they were trained to believe. I think that some people wrote theirs in such glorified way so that when there friends read it could also become like the propaganda news article that was in England to make every think that every thing was going to plan.

The soldiers also believed that they were fighting for a reason. They were told and believed that they were the good and the Russians were evil. This why they sacrificed themselves. They believed that they were fighting for the bigger and the right cause.

The last of the light brigade is looking at what happened to them after the war, when they had been brought home. After there names had been in the headlines and they had been the local heroes and national heroes.

It tells you the condition that they were in, the state of pity that they were at. There entire life depended what that writer wrote. It showed how fickle as a nation we are and point every one out. The whole nation became ashamed of the way that they had treated these great soldiers. Because once they had been so great, so great that their children lisped with ‘the charge of the light brigade’.

Dirge of the dead sisters is all bout people in the camps having a nice time after a day of battle, then you go to these pitiful hopeless places were the nurses are the kings. They have to help as much as they can and in the bad conditions they have to put up with. These young women that will be scared for life because of the traumas that they have seen. These young women have seen more dead bodies in one day then she calls to remember. The only time that these people were allowed to stop was when they had to be seen to for aliments. These people had it as bad as the soldiers did but just not in the same doses.