Trafalgar Square, with its lions and Nelson's Column celebrating military glory, became the center of victory celebrations while disabled veterans begged in its shadows. The same square where recruitment rallies had promised glory to schoolboys in 1914 now hosted crowds carefully avoiding eye contact with limbless ex-soldiers propped against the National Gallery steps. The geography of central London told the whole bitter story: recruitment offices on Whitehall that had processed eager boys, hospitals along the Thames full of mangled veterans, and Trafalgar Square where society celebrated victory while forgetting the human wreckage scattered on benches around the celebration. Owen's soldier in "Disabled" would have been wheeled past these exact celebrations, hearing cheers from the same crowds who had cheered him off to war.
