Wilfred Owen’s bugle will sing 100 years after death of poet

A BUGLE Wilfred Owen took from the battlefield was played in public for the first time today to mark 100 years since the poet’s death.

The instrument was used at a 6am ceremony at his graveside in northern France, where he was killed in action, aged just 25. The poet died during the crossing of the Sambre-Oise Canal a week before the signing of the Armistice in November 1918.

According to the Wilfred Owen Royalties Trust, he had written to his brother, Colin, saying that the military bugle was “loot from a packet which I rifled on the Field”: “I was thinking of you when I was unbuckling the bugle from the equipment and being then in a particularly noble frame of mind, meant to present it to you some day. But now I have got too fond of the thing to part with it!”

It was played at special ceremony attended by Elizabeth Owen, the widow of his nephew Peter, and trustees of the Wilfred Owen Association.

A service, lectures and an evening concert organised by the French Wilfred Owen Association featuring musicians from Belgium and Scotland will also be held throughout today.

Owen is regarded as one of the greatest poets of the First World War. The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon inspired him to write his own verses capturing the horrors of the trenches and gas warfare. Bugle calls feature in some of his poems, including Anthem for Doomed Youth and Bugles Sang.