England than his life," (H. Owen, v.III, 119) wanting to believe that the unpleasantness would not affect his life.
             He eventually enlisted, after experiences in visiting wounded soldiers and feeling pressured by the recruitment campaign in England. The army counted his time abroad as compensation for a higher education and commissioned him. (Hibberd, 8) Trained and placed in the 5th Battalion, Manchester Regiment as a second lieutenant, he was sent to France on December 20, 1916. He was thrown into the battle of Somme. In the following four months he showed bravery on the front line, but also spent several weeks in a rest-training course and two weeks in a clearing station for a concussion. After leading his troops in a successful raid on the hills by St. Qeuntin, he was thrown about by a shell. This near miss, and the following confrontation with a dismembered body sent him into a state of "neurasthenia" and he was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital, near Edinburgh.
             Dr. Arthur Brock worked with Owen to help him utilize his far past to overcome the recent past. He used Owen's ability and desire for writing to help him help him unite an artist and a soldier. A proponent of ergotherapy, Brock set up activities for communal work and field trips. Sent with other patients to work in a nearby boarding school, Owen chose literature to teach, rather than more soldierly skills as map reading or first aid. (Hibberd, 29) He also assumed editorship of the hospital's literary magazine, The Hydra. When Siegfried Sasson arrived in July, he was placed in the unwilling place of mentor as Owen brought all his work to him for critique. Though Sasson may have been irritated, his influence on Owen's work is clear. He pushed the young man off of his Romantic centered world and asked him to confront the war, not play with art. "Now Brock had shown him how to control his phantoms and Sassoon had shown him how to use them in the cause of peace." (Hibberd, ...