19 pages • 38 minutes read
Wirers
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Themes
The Dangerous Task of Wirers
Repairing damaged barbed wire in no-man’s-land was one of the most dangerous tasks for a WWI soldier. The wire might have been cut by a wiring party sent out by the enemy; it could have been damaged in a battle, or by the frequent barrages of artillery fire from enemy lines.
The work had to be very quietly done to avoid alerting the enemy whose trenches could be just a few yards away. This is why the wirers are “stealthy” (Line 4). The risk of attracting enemy fire was imminent.
The danger is shown in the poem when the Germans send up a flare. The men “stand rigid” (Line 5). Any movement would betray their presence; standing still “like posts” (Line 6) literally means they will—they hope—be indistinguishable from the posts to which the wire is affixed. Any sound or movement might betray their presence and position and trigger enemy fire.
Repairing the wire—and cutting enemy wire, which was also a task fell to a wiring party—was physically demanding work, as the words, “unravelling; twisting; hammering” (Line 3) imply. The men carried rolls of barbed wire and equipment such as shovels and muffled mallets, as well as steel pickets. They used the mallets to drive in the posts that supported the wire; this is what makes the “muffled thud” in Line 3.
Also, the men did not have long to work; the repairs had to be done solely after dark, which is why they “toil with stealthy haste” (Line 4) because there is no time to waste. They stride “hither and thither” (Line 7) because there is a wide area to cover. Some of the barbed wire entanglements could be formidable in size: up to six feet high and more than 150 yards long. They could also be hazardous in themselves; the men could be tripped up by the “clutching snare / Of snags and tangles” (Lines 7-8) formed by the wire.
The Omnipresence of Death
The soldiers on the Western Front knew that that the chances of getting wounded or killed in battle were high. Many of their comrades were dead, and the evidence of death was literally all around them. Corpses rotted in the trenches and in no-man’s land. Sassoon wrote in his diary on April 4, 1916, as he contemplated the prospect of going over the trenches to engage the enemy: “If I get shot it will be rotten for some people at home, but I am bound to get it in the neck sometime” (Siegfried Sassoon Diaries: 1915–1918. Faber and Faber, 1983, p. 53).
Death is a theme of the poem, too. The poet mentions but one actual death, though it is likely that there were more—just in this single night. When the Germans sent up a flare over no-man’s land, as described in Line 5, it was not uncommon for them also to open up with machine gun fire on the assumption that the enemy might be there (although this is not explicitly stated in the poem).
The reality of death becomes absolutely apparent in Stanza 3 in the form of “Young Hughes” (Line 11). Referring to just one soldier by name, with a brief descriptor, is much more powerful than saying that, say, 100 men died. “Young Hughes” is personalized with a name and concept of his age (although, of course, most soldiers were “young”). The brief description of his suffering as he moans on the stretcher while carried across bumpy terrain, stands for the suffering of all the soldiers in the war. A quick death is the only merciful outcome he can expect. The speaker’s matter-of-fact comment, “no doubt he’ll die today” (Line 12) suggests that this is by no means the first mortally wounded man he has seen. It is clearly a common occurrence for him.
The Pointlessness and Cruelty of War
While the first two stanzas present a realistic picture of the dangerous task undertaken by the wiring party, the final stanza presents the speaker’s view of the night’s events and what they signify. Having acknowledged the wounding and imminent death of “Young Hughes” (Line 11) the speaker states in the last line, “But we can say the front-line wire’s been safely mended” (Line 13). The statement is heavy with irony: The speaker’s intended meaning is the opposite of what the words literally say. Without irony, this statement might suggest that the speaker, himself a soldier in the trenches, is pleased with how things have turned out; he thinks it was all well worth it; the wiring party accomplished its goal; and the death of Hughes was just an inevitable consequence of war that must be accepted.
Given the irony, however, the actual meaning is entirely different. The speaker’s statement in the final line brings attention to the pointlessness, cruelty, and futility of the war. It implies that the price paid in casualties is not worth it. It cannot be said that that the success of the wirers is the only thing that counts, regardless of the human cost (which of course is repeated in this and other contexts, day in day out on the Western front). Such thinking, the speaker implies through his irony, is a perversion of decent values.
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