Bayonet Charge

Bayonet Charge by Ted Hughes follows one soldier, probably in the First World War, in the few seconds of charging at the enemy across open ground. In panic and confusion, he stops thinking about the reasons for the war and runs only to survive.

Hughes was born in 1930, after the war, but his father had fought at Gallipoli and told him about it. The poem was published in 1957, in his first collection.

The poem has three stanzas. It begins in the middle of the action: ‘Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw’. There is no introduction, so the reader is thrown in with the soldier.

• Stanza 1: the charge, fast and chaotic, with enjambment that rushes forward.
• Stanza 2: time seems to stop as he wonders why he is there.
• Stanza 3: he runs on, and all his ideals fall away.

The slow middle stanza is like a freeze-frame in a film, between two bursts of speed.

In the second stanza the soldier stops, bewildered. He wonders where he fits ‘In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations’: he is just a tiny part in a huge machine he cannot control.

Then a hare bursts from the ground, ‘a yellow hare that rolled like a flame’. It is terrified and in agony, an innocent creature caught in the fighting, and it mirrors the soldier himself.

In the last stanza, his ideals vanish: ‘King, honour, human dignity, etcetera’ are dropped. The word ‘etcetera’ dismisses them as meaningless. Only fear is left: ‘His terror's touchy dynamite’.

Themes: the reality of war against its propaganda; fear; the individual as a small part of a huge conflict. His ‘patriotic tear’ in stanza 1 shows the ideals he enlisted with, before they fall away.

Compares well with:

• Exposure: a soldier's suffering in the First World War.
• The Charge of the Light Brigade: another charge, but told as glory rather than terror.
• Remains: a single soldier's experience and how it affects his mind.