Disquiet on the Western Front: The Globe commemorates 1917 - pivotal year in life of Wirral war poet Wilfred Owen

We begin in January 1917 when Owen underwent a terrifying experience guarding a dug-out for 50 hours in no-man's-land on the Western Front.

His bleak vigil was the inspiration for his haunting poem The Sentry.

AS the centenary of World War One commemorates 1917, for Birkenhead-educated Wilfred Owen the year was the turning point in his life.

His reputation as the greatest war poet in history began now.

Owen was transferred to the hell of the trenches in January 1917 where his outlook on life changed forever.

He was bitterly enraged at the senseless slaughter on the battlefields and the inability of anyone to stop it.

He felt enormous pity for his fellow soldiers and was horrified by what he saw.

Through his poet's eye, he immortalised the futility with razor sharp words.

Wilfred joined the 2nd Manchester Regiment on the Somme on January 2, 1917, and was put in command of 3 Platoon, A Company.

From January 9 to January 16, Owen held a dug-out in no-man’s-land outside the village of Serre, where he saw a sentry blinded - inspiring one of his astounding poems.

The dug-out where Wilfred Owen was positioned in 1917 was discovered by archaeologists for a BBC documentary in 2003

On January 20, his platoon was in action again in freezing sub-zero conditions.

During this time, his mother Susan was sending him the weekly newsletter from Christ Church in Oxton, where Wilfred had been a choir boy.

He found great comfort in reading of the church’s activities.

Of his own current situation he wrote to his mother: “I have suffered seventh hell.

"I have not been at the front. I have been in front of it.

"I held an advanced post, that is, a dugout in the middle of No Man's Land… the seeng seeng seeng of the bullets remind me of my sister Mary's canary.

"On the whole I can support the canary better. We were stranded in a certain town one night.

"The place was like a bit of Blighty, all hung with English Greetings and Mistletoe.”

In the hundreds of letters Owen wrote to his mother from the front, it is thought they devised a code in which every time Wilfred used the word "mistletoe" it would denote where on the line he was stationed.

Owen's first taste of the horror of the frontline produced the breathtaking verses of "The Sentry."

THE SENTRY

We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew, And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour, Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.

What murk of air remained stank old, and sour With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den, If not their corpses… There we herded from the blast Of whizz-bangs, but one found our door at last.

Buffeting eyes and breath, snuffing the candles.

And thud! flump! thud! down the steep steps came thumping And splashing in the flood, deluging muck — The sentry's body; then his rifle, handles Of old Boche bombs, and mud in ruck on ruck.

We dredged him up, for killed, until he whined "O sir, my eyes — I'm blind — I'm blind, I'm blind!"

Coaxing, I held a flame against his lids And said if he could see the least blurred light He was not blind; in time he'd get all right.

"I can't," he sobbed. Eyeballs, huge-bulged like squids Watch my dreams still; but I forgot him there In posting next for duty, and sending a scout To beg a stretcher somewhere, and floundering about To other posts under the shrieking air.

Those other wretches, how they bled and spewed, And one who would have drowned himself for good, — I try not to remember these things now.

Let dread hark back for one word only: how Half-listening to that sentry's moans and jumps, And the wild chattering of his broken teeth, Renewed most horribly whenever crumps Pummelled the roof and slogged the air beneath — Through the dense din, I say, we heard him shout "I see your lights!"

But ours had long died out.