The first change that I thought had significance to the poem was in the first stanza. In line 5 “Men marched asleep” was originally in one of his previous drafts “Halting each mile”. I feel like the purpose of this stanza is mainly to explain how exhausted his men are from battle. These three words probably do his explanation the most justice. We all can agree that marching asleep is humanly impossible but I think that saying things like this is the only way to let his audience know how he felt. If he were to have kept “Halting each mile” in the poem I think this would have inferred that they had small increments of time for rest which they did not.

The next change I felt that was important is in stanza 2. In this stanza he tells the reader a story where his fellow soldiers were attacked by some type of gas bomb and how they struggle quickly to get their mask on. I noticed in one of his drafts he that he might have second guessed whether or not he wanted to put the word “ecstasy” in this stanza. So I looked up what the word ecstasy meant. Ecstasy is “an overpowering emotion or exaltation; a state of sudden, intense feeling.” This word explains how quick they actually had to react because of the life or death situation hence “overpowering emotion” in the definition.

The last thing that caught my attention was the lines that he was going to add to the second stanza. Keep in mind that in this stanza he was explaining how his team was attacked with gas. I won’t quote it because it’s about 4 lines long. Basically this section gives a sense that there is really no urgency and that the soldiers are kind of oblivious to what is going on. Or I think this could possibly be a build up to the climax. I think it was a smart move by Owen to take to take this section out. Without it the stanza opens with more excitement “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” Also the exclamation points give me a hint that this is what he is trying to get at.