It is important to honour the memory of the men who fell in the wars in the defence of their nation. War poetry is a fundamental tool to this end.  War poetry, although foreign to our own experiences of peacetime, enables us as readers to gain insight into the minds of the terrified men who fought for our freedom. Wilfred Owen suffered from shellshock as a result of fighting in the war. In his poem Mental Cases, he describes his time and experiences at Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital in Scotland, where he and Siegfried Sassoon (another WW1 poet) were treated for the condition; "Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows" (lines 1-2)1In our time of peace, we will never be able to fully empathise with their terrifying experiences, or successfully decode every observation, but we must read some of their poetry in order to appreciate the true and full horrors of war. We must do this out of respect for those who died for our freedom, and as such war poetry must be taught in schools. 1 Owen Owen, Wilfred, "Mental Cases", Wilfred Owen,accessed 1 September 2011.