The advent of industrial-scale bombing, machine gun fire and gas attacks meant that many died like Homer's Trojan Thestor; “huddled and crouched in his finely polished chariot, / mad with fear” (16.478-77) without having experienced Patroclus' triumph. 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 emerging light and clear/ Beyond the plot where hopes were scattered” (Owen, 11-12). His poetry stands out from much of the literature on war in its depth of understanding and expression of this, the ultimate paradox of war: that the worst humanity can do sets the stage for its greatest