The advent of industrial-scale bombing, machine gun fire and gas attacks meant that many died as Thestor of Troy of Homer; “squatting on his beautiful polished chariot, mad with fear” (16.478-77) without having experienced the triumph of Patroclus. In Apologia Pro Poemate, Meo Wilfred Owen describes his experience of battle in its fullness, not simply as the horror of terror and death in the trenches, but in the exultation of a successful attack, of "the 'spirit arising light and clear / Beyond the tangle'. where hopes were scattered” (Owen, 11-12). His poem stands out from much of the literature on war in the depth of its understanding and expression of what constitutes the ultimate paradox of war: that the worst that humanity can do sets the stage for its worst. big