Perhaps the most famous of these poems is that of Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est", a poem based on a re-occurring nightmare that Owen says haunts him "In all my dreams". It is a dream of the young, helpless soldier Owen watches suffocate and die during a sudden attack after the men were retreating: "Flound"ring like a man in fire or lime I saw him drowning". What makes this death so alarming is the fact that, although we feel great sympathy for the young boy, this young soldier died simply because he could not put his gas mask on fast enough. His death is both useless, wasteful and is not in any way heroic thus exposing the truth behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers during the war, a poignant yet useless loss of life.
A reflection of how deeply this traumatic experience has affected Owen can be seen through is use of an enjambment to describe the boy's death: " the blood, Come gargling- This is used not only to develop the images Owen sees in his nightmare, but also to emphasize a powerful burst of emotions that cannot be contained within one line; an emotion of anger and bitterness towards those who lied to the people, to those who do not see the dream he does every time he goes to sleep and thus do not suffer as he does. Through this, the audience's reaction turns to shock and sorrow for those who, like Owen, took part in the war as they begin to realise the effect psychological trauma had on the young soldiers.
To illustrate how exceptionally horrible death is and thus build up our sympathy of the soldiers who took part in it further, perhaps the most affective linguistic device that Owen uses is the use of comparisons that he makes in which he uses both metaphors and similes. The simile "like a devil's sick of sin" is used yet the exact meaning is not clear. One explanation might be that Owen used this comparison to describe the actual face of the boy as he was dying.