Bayonet Charge

• context

  Ted Hughes was a famous war poet but wasn't alive during World War 1 and was a child in World War 2. He never fought in or saw a war first hand but grew up in a post-war era and saw the influence that war had on his home town.

  Published in 1957, but most likely set in World War 1. Hughes’ father had survived the battle of Gallipoli in World War 1, and so he may have wished to draw attention to the hardships of trench warfare. -He draws a contrast between the idealism of patriotism and the reality of fighting and killing