Poignantly, he was killed just a week before the Armistice, on November 4, 1918, leading his men in the sort of suicidal attack he had implicitly protested about in his incomparable poetry.  “The Dead-Beat”, one of Owen’s less well-known poems, was based on a real incident he had witnessed in France, and was the first he wrote after meeting his mentor Sassoon at Craiglockhart. The poem therefore has a strong Sassoonian influence, with a directness and bitterness untypical of Owen’s later and more subtle work.  He dropped, – more sullenly than wearily,  Lay stupid like a cod, heavy like meat,  And none of us could kick him to his feet;  Just blinked at my revolver, blearily;  – Didn't appear to know a war was on,  Or see the blasted trench at which he stared.  "I'll do 'em in," he whined, "If this hand's spared,  I'll murder them, I will."  "It's Blighty, p'raps, he sees; his pluck's all gone,  Dreaming of all the valiant, that aren't dead:  Maybe his brave young wife, getting her fun  In some new home, improved materially.  It's not these stiffs have crazed him; nor the Hun."  We sent him down at last, out of the way.  Unwounded; – stout lad, too, before that strafe.  Malingering? Stretcher-bearers winked, "Not half!"  Next day I heard the Doc.'s well-whiskied laugh:  "That scum you sent last night soon died. Hooray!"  More from Inside the First World War, part seven:  Four artists who defined the conflict >>  Four writers who defined the conflict >>  Four composers who defined the conflict >>  'We're all ready to lay down everything if needs be' >>  He stood by his gun as shells started major fires >>  How First World War poetry painted a truer picture >>  Vaughan Williams: ‘A vivid awareness of how men died’ >>
Direct and bitter, Wilfred Owen's representation of the unsympathetic military attitude to mental breakdown is a reflection on his own moral fibre