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Before Britain had declared its involvement in the First World War <\/a>, Siegfried Loraine Sassoon had signed up.<\/p>\n He would later allude to \u201cserious aspirations to heroism\u201d that took him from his life of a country gentleman in Kent \u2013 where he had been born on 8 September 1886, grown up in a wealthy family, and spent his twenties enjoying fox hunting, cricket and writing poetry \u2013 to the battlefield in the name of king and country.<\/p>\n Sassoon kept writing as a soldier: his verse befitting the jingoistic and glory-fuelled works of many poets at the start of war, like Rupert Brooke.<\/p>\n \u201cWar is our scourge; yet war has made us wise \/ And, fighting for our freedom, we are free,\u201d reads his 1915 poem, Absolution<\/em>. And serving on the Western Front with the Royal Welch Fusiliers, Lieutenant Sassoon distinguished himself.<\/p>\n He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions during a raid on a German trench, where he stayed for 90 minutes under fire to assist the wounded and dying. Such was his fearlessness \u2013 he once captured a section of enemy trench singlehandedly \u2013 that his men nicknamed him \u2018Mad Jack\u2019.<\/p>\n Sassoon was, for all intents and purposes, a good soldier, but he would become a vocal opponent to the war. In 1915, his younger brother Hamo was killed in the Gallipoli campaign<\/a> and his poetry grew angry, bitter and acerbic. He depicted the suffering in the trenches and hospitals while satirising and condemning the military leaders who sent tens of thousands to their deaths.<\/p>\n One of his 1917 poems starts with a general cheerily greeting troops on their way to Arras with a \u201cGood-morning, good-morning!\u201d before matter-of-factly being followed with the lines: \u201cNow the soldiers he smiled at are most of \u2018em dead \/ And we\u2019re cursing his staff for incompetent swine\u201d.<\/p>\n Shortly after writing The General<\/em> \u2013 one of the dozens of anti-war poems he penned, making him a well-known figure back in Britain \u2013 Sassoon was wounded and sent to England to recover.<\/p>\n He got to know several prominent pacifists, including the philosopher Bertrand Russell, and came to the decision that he must protest the continuation of the war. And that he would do so publicly with an open letter to his commanding officer.<\/p>\n \u201cI am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority,\u201d began the missive, dated 15 June 1917. It went on to describe the purposes of the war as \u201cevil and unjust\u201d, the soldiers as victims of \u201cdeception\u201d, and voiced the desire that his protest may help to \u201cdestroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise\u201d.<\/p>\n Sassoon\u2019s declaration risked a court martial, even execution, especially after being read out in the House of Commons and printed in newspapers. The military authorities instead hoped to discredit Sassoon by making out that he had gone mad as a result of neurasthenia, or shell shock, and sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland, for psychiatric care.<\/p>\n While there, Sassoon witnessed the traumatic effects of shell shock and its often-brutal methods of treatment, and wrote prolifically (completing some of his best poems, such as Does it Matter?<\/em> and Counter-Attack<\/em>).<\/p>\n It was his friendship with a patient that had the greater impact, however, for it was at Craiglockhart that he met and greatly influenced Wilfred Owen. The younger officer was a keen fan and his own style developed dramatically thanks to Sassoon\u2019s guidance and encouragement, leading to iconic poems like Dulce et Decorum Est<\/em>, Insensibility<\/em> and Anthem for Doomed Youth<\/em>.<\/p>\n Before the year was out, both men had rejoined their regiments. The months at Craiglockhart had quelled Sassoon\u2019s protest and he chose to return to active service and not abandon his men. Yet, even then, his voice could not be silenced, as Sassoon published his poems in two collections entitled The Old Huntsman (1917) and Counter-Attack (1918).<\/p>\n Sassoon survived the war, although barely, as he picked up a head wound when shot by a fellow British soldier who mistook him for a German. Owen was not so lucky, dying just a week before the Armistice<\/a>.<\/p>\nSiegfried Sassoon\u2019s war poems<\/h2>\n
Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen\u2019s relationship<\/h2>\n
Siegfried Sassoon after the First World War<\/h2>\n