War is the main theme in all of Wilfred Owen's poems and in "The send-off" it focuses on the response of the people at home to it's events. The title itself is ironic for a send-off is usually a happy occasion of farewell and the send-off to war is more often than not a celebrated event. But Owen's poem deals with harsh realism and argues that there is nothing to celebrate for the facts are these men will either be killed or return home as broken men. In the poem the troops are being sent off most likely to their death and yet the people fail to understand the full implication of the event, which adds bitterness to Owen's criticism.
             At the beginning of the poem we are presented with the image of a typical rural scene, with soldiers merrily singing through the streets to their farewell. The excitement in the words of 'they sang their way' is compensated by the notion of the fatefulness of the occasion. Down the 'close darkening lanes', creates a image and sense of claustrophobia that the lanes are fatefully closing in on them, implying that it is a point of no return. Their send-off march is clouded in the oncoming darkness as they bid farewell, but it is this darkness, which is a metaphor of the dark destiny that awaits the soldiers. In the oxymoron, 'grimly gay,' the men's expressions as seen in the train windows emphasises the uncertainty of their departure and the beginning of recognition of the implications of their destiny.
             The would-be hero's are adorned with flowers, 'Their breasts were struck all white with wreath and spray' some of which the women have pinned to their uniforms. But this seemly gracious act is clouded in negativity for the flowers remind Owen of wreaths found on the body of corpses. For 'Their breasts were struck all white' the verb 'struck' adding brutality in sound and sense. This mere d
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