Every time it jolts Owen hears the gargling of blood, from froth-corrupted lungs. As a reader this line is so traumatizing that it is almost beyond words. It is clear that this is what the gas attack has done to Owen’s friend. Owen continues, “Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/ Of vile incurable sores on innocent tongues.” Owen’s uses similes of diseases to describe the horrors of war. Cud is portion of regurgitated food that returns from a cow’s stomach to be chewed again. I think the idea behind that is to emphasize that Owen keeps on regurgitating the same image of his friend dying in the gas attack, and that his friend death is as obscene as any disease particularly because his friend and young soldiers are