Is Dying Really That Sweet?

Owen's poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est, can be seen as an anti-war poem simply because of its use to show readers that fighting in a war does serve your country well, but is it "sweet and proper to die for one's country", as Owen states or is it just a "lie"? According to Owen he sees that fighting for one's own country and dying is not as sweet or patriotic as it seems. In the poem he tells of a young man that dies from simply not putting on his gas mask fast enough to make him escape from his suffocating death. This death of a soldier can be seen as an insult because of his reason for death which was simply not to put on his gas mask on within a quickness of when the attack took place. Most people that think of a soldier dying, picture them dying in battle trying to protect their country, but in reality most people die from careless mistakes such as this one. Owen thinks that it is outrageous to think that it was "sweet and proper" for this young man to die from failure to put on a gas mask. His "friend" that he speaks to at the end of the poem which was Jessie Pope would think twice about encouraging young men to enlist and fight if she knew what soldiers have to go through to fight for one's country. He wrote this poem so that she would realize that encouraging these men by telling them "lies" about the patriotism and recognition behind serving in the war are all lies and nothing about dying for one's country is "sweet and proper." If Pope knew about Owen and Rosenberg being killed in action, Brooke dying on a troopship from blood poisoning, or how Sassoon was severely wounded in battle, she would feel very opposed to the war and would not want a whole generation of young men to die in vain and then had the truth behind their deaths covered up by the "old lie" like the one told in Dulce Et Decorum Est, but would want the truth to be known. As the old saying goes, "The truth shall set you free," but will the truth if told by Pope or other anti-war poets set the real death stories of soldiers free to readers or just settle like the "old lie"?