It was written in 1917, when Owen was a patient at Craiglockhard Military Hospital near Edinburgh, recovering from shell shock. The poem itself is a lament for young soldiers whose lives were unnecessarily lost in World War I. Owen, having met another poet, Siegfried Sassoon, at Craiglockhart, asked for his assistance in polishing the final version of the poem, and it was Sassoon who suggested the word "anthem" in the title. The amended manuscript copy, in both men's handwriting, still exists.