The pips that the poems have on their shoulders neither diminish their quality nor obscure the universal message they carry. But they do often create the impression that the poet is describing what he feels about others' suffering rather than his own. That may be a strength. The message would be weaker if the poetry was in self pity. Wilfred Owen's Anthem for Doomed Youth is, if its pronouns are to be believed, about somebody other than the author. The "passing bells" are for "these", not we, "who die as cattle". The bugles call "them" not us "from sad shires".
There are, of course, plenty of poems about private soldiers. We know what Harry and Jack thought of the general who met them as they "slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack". And we know too that most of the soldiers he smiled at were dead by the end of the afternoon. But the last line of the poem describes the fate that befell them in a way which makes the reader feel like an observer, not a participant. We despise the "incompetent swine" who "did for them both by his plan of attack". But although Siegfried Sassoon's The General is a great poem, it is the report of a sympathetic company commander, not a bitter letter home from one of his men.
By comparison with The General, For Johnny is just verse. But when John Pudney argues that it is "better by far/for Johnny the bright star/to keep your head/and see his children fed", he is expressing the opinion of a generation of working men who went to fight in the second world war determined that, when it was over, they would be demobilised into a better world than the one from which they had been recruited. One of the most extraordinary characteristics of first world war poetry is the almost total absence of speculation about what is going to happen when the fighting stops. Most of the poets were junior infantry officers. Perhaps they simply assumed that they would not live to enjoy the peace.
And the nature of patriotism changed with the years. In September 1914, before the bitterness set in, Laurence Binyon could write "with proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children/England mourns for her dead across the seas", and conclude with a comforting conceit that "they shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old". In the same year, Rupert Brooke actually wrote on behalf of "the rich dead" that "dying has made us rarer gifts than gold". That was before Owen denounced "the old lie; dulce et decorum est/pro patria mori". But in neither mood did they talk much about the little things in England that they loved and missed.
After 1939 a different generation of war poets began to recount what it was about England that made the country worth fighting for. Henry Reed, going through the ritual called Naming of Parts, is reminded of "early bees assaulting and fumbling the flowers". Alun Lewis, wet in camp on the moors, writes home about "children ... shaking down burning chestnuts for the schoolyard's merry play". The poetry of the second world war creates a firm impression that the soldiers went to battle thinking less about king than country. They fought not for the flag but memories of home. And they retained their affection right until victory was won in 1945. The war poets of 30 years before had lost their illusions well before Armistice Day, 1918.
All these ideas came into my mind because last week was the anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele - an attempt to gain ground by a bombardment which, although intended to make way for a cavalry charge, ended with nothing but massive infantry casualties. No wonder the soldier poets despised the "scarlet Majors at the Base [who] speed glum heroes up the line to death". In the second world war, we fought for a noble cause, and most of the slaughter was not the result of mistakes by generals who were as callous as they were incompetent. But I wonder what sort of poetry will come out of Iraq.
· The article above was amended on Tuesday July 17 2007. The second world war poet who wrote Naming of Parts was Henry, not Herbert, Reed. We may have confused him with Herbert Read, a poet who served in the first world war. In the same article we misquoted a line from Laurence Binyon's For the Fallen. It should have read: "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old." These changes have been made.