Siegfried Sassoon, along with his friend and fellow poet, Wilfred Owen, may be the best known names from England’s share of WW I.  Owen died in the last weeks of the war. Sassoon lived until 1967, contributing more poetry, several novels and his widely acclaimed Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. It is for his graphic, acerbic, often cynical war poetry he is best remembered.  Cambridge University has recently announced the availability on-line of some 4,100 handwritten pages from Sassoon’s journals.

This was the first day at the battle of the Somme which, by its end 18, November 1916, would carry over 1,000,000 men, German, British and French, to their graves or to injury wards.

Saty, July 1st, 1916, 7:30 a.m.  Last night was cloudless & starry & still — the bombardment went on steadily.  We had breakfast at 6. — the morning is brilliantly fine — after a mist early.  Since 6:30 there has been hell let loose.  The air vibrates with the incessant din — the whole earth shakes & rocks & throbs — It is one continuous roar — Machine guns tap & rattle — bullets whistling over head — small fry quite outdone by the gangs of hooligan shells that dash over to rend the German lines with their demolition parties.  The smoke-cloud is cancelled as the wind is wrong since yesterday.  Attack should be starting now, but one can’t look out as the m.g. bullets are skimming.  Inferno – inferno – bang – smash!

Ω

As the introduction to the collection tells us:

At the outset of war Sassoon was an ambitious and enthusiastic warrior, but by 1917 his first-hand knowledge of the horrors of trench warfare, and his anger at the needless suffering of his men and the ruinous waste of life which characterized battles such as the Somme and Arras, had led to a fundamental change of attitude. This development was reflected in his increasingly well-regarded poetry, the tone of which had grown gradually more bitter as the War progressed. With language incorporating soldierly slang, his poems began to employ sardonic or sarcastic twists, deliberately devised to disturb the complacency of the civilian population at home.

SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES

By Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

and to hear Sassoon read it, try this.