Susan Owen once described her last conversations with her son before he left for the war, saying that he said goodbye with “When I go from hence, let this be my parting word.” When Wilfred’s pocket notebook was returned to his mother, she found those same words written “in his dear writing.”

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

—“Dulce et Decorum Est”

Heartbreaking

Last Letters From World War I Literary Heroes (Photos)

Read three last WWI letters—two from great war poets, and one from a legendary editor’s son. By Jimmy So.

05.27.12 4:45 AM ET