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Wwi Poems And Information

Siegfried Sassoon

Biography
With war on the horizon, a young Englishman whose life had heretofore been consumed
with the protocol of fox-hunting, said goodbye to his idyllic life and rode off on his bicycle
to join the Army. Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war poets. John
Hildebidle has called Sassoon the "accidental hero." Born into a wealthy Jewish family in
1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket,
golfing and writing romantic verses.
Being an innocent, Sassoon's reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter
and violent -- both his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield
(where, after the death of fellow officer David Thomas and his brother Hamo at Gallipoli,
Sassoon earned the nickname "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits against the German
lines -- in the early manifestation of his grief, when he still believed that the Germans were
entirely to blame). As said: "now he unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely
that had been sleeping all during his pastoral youth." Sassoon also showed his innocence
by going public with his (as he grew to see that insensitive political leadership was the
greater enemy than the Germans). Luckily, his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves
convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and he was sent
instead to the military hospital at where he met and influenced .
Sassoon is a key figure in the study of the poetry of the Great War: he brought with him to
the war the idyllic pastoral background; he began by writing war poetry reminiscent of ; he
mingled with such war poets as Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden; he spoke out
publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he influenced and mentored the then
unknown ; he spent thirty years reflecting on the war through his memoirs; and at last he
found peace in his religious faith. Some critics found his...