THE HORSES IN WORLD WAR
BİRİNCİ DÜNYA SAVAŞI ŞİİRİNDE ATLAR

Author : Mustafa GÜLLÜBAĞ
Number of pages : 473-488

Abstract

When the subject matter is World War I poetry, the Western Front comes to mind in the first place. The reason for this comes from the fact that famous poets of WWI overwhelmingly served on the Western Front and reflected their Western Front experiences in their literary outputs. It is not certain whether these famous poets and future war poets served there as a result of a coincidence or not, a reader who is not familiar with World War I history may think that the whole warfare took place on the Western Front. However, there had been though battles in Mesopotamia where more than five new states were founded thereafter. A few English and Australian soldiers who were known as professional poets fought in the salient. It is rather unfortunate that the poetry produced by those men of talent were not put into a book until a time which could be considered rather recent. Therefore all that happened in Mesopotamia Campaign are nothing but historical facts to many. Australian and Indian cavalry corps fought tooth and nail by their soldiers from motherland, England. The battles conducted in the salient are realized mostly as cavalry charges; and horses have a pivotal role and significance in the victory. Handling the reflection of a historical fact into literary works, this article also examines the war poems, especially the ones which put emphasis on the place of horses in battle fields and their significance. In addition, this study is noteworthy in terms of reflecting how differently horses were viewed by English and Australian riders.

Keywords

WWI Poetry, horses in war poems, war horses, image of horse in war poetry

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