Wilfred Owens is one of several poets known as the "trench poets"--a group of men who were actually involved in combat who wrote realistic, non-romanticized poems about what really goes on in battle and in the life between battles. The trenches they dug, fought from, and lived in were disgusting, muddy, damp, smelly (littered with human waste and corpses), unsanitary hell-holes. There was nothing glorified, dignified, or honorable in the way these men lived their day to day lives.
The occasion of the poem "Dulce et Decorum est" is the aftermath of an actual WWI battle where a man has not gotten his gas mask on quickly enough and the others have placed him in a wagon to carry him back to camp with them. He describes how the man is gurgling and his eyes are writhing and it is not a good death.
Owens uses this description to let the world know that the romanticized views of war and fighting for your country is NOT the wonderful, patriotic, honorable thing they want you to believe. He says the whole thing is horrible, destestable, and hell on earth. There is nothing about it that is romantic or rosy.
One of the horrible ironies of his work as a trench poet is that Owens dies eight days before WWI is declared over.
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