Maybe even his brother officers. He"d never know. He never saw their faces." The men that were supposed to be his allies and even friends, not enemies, raped him. Findley is attempting to expose his readers to the ways of war can turn ordinary people- people that ordinarily would hurt no one, into barbaric animals with no regard for the feelings, emotional stability or mental anguish of their fellow soldiers. Under normal circumstances, Findley assumes the assailants would never succumb to the sub-primal urges at the core of mankind, but war can change everything. Findley sends his readers back through time to allow them to experience the realism and horror of both the First World War and every war that has taken place since. Wilfred Owen attempts to convey this as well through "Exposure", but the examples he uses are slightly more vague, and expose far more of the physical, rather than the mental brutality of war. For example, the first line of "Exposure" reads; "Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us- The physical aspects of war are far more easily recognizable; it is Findley's effective use of the jargon of war that heighten the realistic image of war he portrays. Owen has an appropriate question in the tenth line of his poem; "What are we doing here?" but he needs to expand on this idea. The following stanza could have demonstrated the mental anguish the soldier felt, and then addressed the treacherous weather condition. Each author has his own unique style for depicting the psychological affects war has on man, but Findley's description and explanation demonstrate with clarity and greater evocativeness of the horror that is war for the person who has not had the experience of serving his or her country.
Both works clearly depict the physical brutality of war, but one does so with far greater depth and a more accurate picture of the actual conditions which soldiers on the front lines face on a daily basis.