The "haunting flares" you refer to in your question comes in the
first stanza of this excellent war time poem and it is part of the overall description that helps
create a slightly surreal theme of the horrors of war and the impact of war on the soldiers
involved. Whenever you are trying to work out the meaning or the contribution of such phrases or
lines, it is always important to look at them in context to see if that can help in your
understanding of them. Let us do that now:
Bent double, like old beggars under
sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through
sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest began to
trudge.
Note how the overall picture
is one of severe exhaustion and illness. The "haunting flares" in this picture, especially
through the use of the word "haunting," seem to add a definite flavour of the other-wordly,
almost making the scene ghost-like as the soldiers, in their crippled, exhausted state, try to
focus on heading towards the "distant rest" that awaits them.
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