The General -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem submitted by Bill Whiteford:

(Poem #1789) The General "Good-morning, good-morning!" the General said When we met him last week on our way to the line. Now the men that he smiled at are most of 'em dead, And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine. "He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack. But he did for them both by his plan of attack. -- Siegfried Sassoon

I'm suggesting this on November 11, Armistice Day here in Britain (and
presumably in many other countries). We're often taught the first world war
poets at school, and I remember being struck by the power of this short poem
then. I've never been very good at memorising long screeds of verse, but I
could usually remember the last three lines of this. Interestingly, I
thought there were two stanzas, of four and three lines. But I see most
sources render it as above.  Again , there's a lot you could do in the way
of analysis (the very strict rhythm of lines 1-6, the stutter-step in 7),
but I will leave that to others.

Bill Whiteford.

On Passing the New Menin Gate -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem sent in by GB (Ireland)

(Poem #1644) On Passing the New Menin Gate Who will remember, passing through this Gate, The unheroic Dead who fed the guns? Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, - Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones? Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own. Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp; Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone, The armies who endured that sullen swamp. Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride 'Their name liveth for evermore' the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime. -- Siegfried Sassoon

For poetry that brings home the vicious inhumanity of modern mass warfare,
it is hard to surpass Siegfried Sassson, and for me the best of his poetry
is On Passing New Menin Gate. Ironically, Sassoon himself volunteered
himself for service in the British Army in World War One, where his almost
suicidal courage (to some extent a reaction to the death of his younger
brother earlier in the War in the Gallipoli campaign) earned him a Military
Cross (the ribbon of which he later threw in the River Mersey) and would
have earned him another, but for the fact that the battle in which he had
fought had been lost and the award of a medal was deemed impolitic. At some
point, the slaughter became too much for Sassoon. He then showed that his
courage was not confined to the battlefield. Whilst on convalescent leave,
he wrote a Declaration of "wilful defiance" against the continuation of the
war, for which, but for the intervention of his friend Robert Graves, he
would have been court-martialled. Instead he was hospitalised for ‘shell
shock’ (with the poet Wilfred Owen, who became a great friend).  Eventually,
he resumed his military career, fought as bravely as ever, and was
recuperating from injuries sustained when the war ended. He lived quietly
through World War II and died in 1967.

I first came across this poem in school, where its shocking honesty gave it
an impact in the classroom that no other poem had. Not for Sassoon the
euphemisms and clichés that honour the dead of the war but simultaneously
disguise their fate. The fallen are ‘unheroic’. (Other poetry of Sassoon’s
looks at the motives which brought them to the war.) They are
‘unvictorious’. The fate inflicted on them by the society which sent them to
die in a ‘swamp’ is ‘foul’. They have been ‘fed to the guns’ by their
political masters (or by society or by all of us). Contrary to this monument
tells us, their name liveth not for evermore – they are no more than the
nameless victims of a criminal immolation, who, if they could live again,
would see what had been done to them and deride society’s payment in the
form of this monument  - a pile of stone. I can only imagine the impact that
this poem, which I believe was first published in 1936, must have produced
in the inter-war period to its readers, many or most of whom would have lost
friends or relatives in the war.

Compare this with Wilfred Owen's similarly impressive Dulce Et Decorum Est
(Poem #32 on Minstrels). Contrast it  with John McCrae’s In Flanders
Field (Poem #11 on Minstrels) which the dead ask for the living to ‘take
up our quarrel with the foe’, and which I must admit, perhaps because of my
awareness of the awful scale of the deaths in World War One, I have never
liked. For me, it seems far less impressively aware of terrible political
realities than this poem, but perhaps as a testament to individual
motivation for what (in spite of Sassoon’s valid perspective) in many cases
was heroic self-sacrifice, it is also worthy of attention. Another good poem
on Minstrels (with a good discussion attached) is Hayden Carruth’s On Being
Asked to Write a Poem Against the War in Vietnam (Poem #1214 on
Minstrels). Yeats was appropriately modest (or perhaps politically wise)
when asked to write a war poem (See Poem #1040) – but poetry like
Sassoon’s, Carruth’s , Owen’s, Kettle’s, Ledwidge’s  and perhaps even
McCrae’s show us that poets do have contributions of great value to give us
on this topic.

GB

[Links]

There are some good sites on Sassoon. The best biography is at
http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/ His obituary in the Times is also
worth reading. http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/sass-obituary.htm#top

Another biography is found at [broken link] http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/8103/
And a few of his poems are to be found at
http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/remembrance.htm

PS: There are a number of other good Sassoon poems on Minstrels.

Survivors -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem sent in by Vidur

(Poem #1189) Survivors No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk. Of course they're 'longing to go out again,' These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk. They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride... Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad. -- Siegfried Sassoon

so i can't get the impending war out of my head these days. so much so
that some nights i don't sleep too well. i don't think i've ever felt
this way before. a couple of months ago i read 'dear mr. president', a
collection of short stories by gabe hudson. it wasn't a great piece of
writing, but it was vivid and energetic in its description of
manifestations of the 'gulf war syndrome.'

i cannot even begin to fathom the trauma of war.

there are numerous poems on war, several superlative ones written at
the time of the great wars by the likes of auden, sassoon, owen, and
others. 'survivors' is one such poem. i particularly like the way in
which it opens with a dispassionate tone - very nonchalant - then toys
with irony, and finally strikes with chilling contempt for the
advocates of war.

what a shame that history has taught us nothing - not even when her
lessons are passed down with such eloquence.

:vb:

Everyone Sang -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem sent in by "Dave, Hash"

(Poem #1030) Everyone Sang Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight. Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away ... O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. -- Siegfried Sassoon

      April 1919

The poem speaks to me of a deeper, underlying reality - the closing lines
bring that into focus for me. Given what I know of Sassoon's war-service in
France during WW1 (he was a contemporary of Wilfred Owen) I'm torn between
deciding what drove him to write it - was it the idea of a dying serviceman
surrounded by the horror of war who hears a song, as if birds flying out of
sight, and the horror drops away as he realises the song never ends? Or was
it his love of nature, the wider, realer world that he saw as he wrote this
poem - realer and more deep than the man-made hell that he had witnessed and
fought in?

The one thing the poem has without a doubt - hope. The song will never end.

Hash

Links:

  Biography of Sassoon: http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/

  Sassoon poems on Minstrels:
     Poem #385, Base Details
     Poem # 535, The Working Party

The Working Party -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta:

(Poem #535) The Working Party Three hours ago he blundered up the trench, Sliding and poising, groping with his boots; Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk. He couldn't see the man who walked in front; Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep. Voices would grunt "Keep to your right -- make way!" When squeezing past some men from the front-line: White faces peered, puffing a point of red; Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore Because a sagging wire had caught his neck. A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread And flickered upward, showing nimble rats And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain; Then the slow silver moment died in dark. The wind came posting by with chilly gusts And buffeting at the corners, piping thin. And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots Would split and crack and sing along the night, And shells came calmly through the drizzling air To burst with hollow bang below the hill. Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench; Now he will never walk that road again: He must be carried back, a jolting lump Beyond all needs of tenderness and care. He was a young man with a meagre wife And two small children in a Midland town, He showed their photographs to all his mates, And they considered him a decent chap Who did his work and hadn't much to say, And always laughed at other people's jokes Because he hadn't any of his own. That night when he was busy at his job Of piling bags along the parapet, He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold. He thought of getting back by half-past twelve, And a tot of rum to send him warm to sleep In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes Of coke, and full of snoring weary men. He pushed another bag along the top, Craning his body outward; then a flare Gave one white glimpse of No Man's Land and wire; And as he dropped his head the instant split His startled life with lead, and all went out. -- Siegfried Sassoon

(one of a series of war poems submitted by Anustup; see poem #481 and
poem #503 for two previous instances; there are more to come - t.)

What can one say about these poems? Any poor words that I may construe are but
woefully inadequate beside the stark reality of these pictures of war and
suffering in the trenches. The impulse to string together some of these was
triggered by re-reading Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier" (Poem #280 on the
Minstrels) - a soulful evocation of fighting and dying for one's country. The
wistful melancholy of that poem is in sharp contrast to the dark underbelly of
war portrayed by Sassoon and Owen.

The first poem is by Sassoon, as grisly as any that Owen wrote - for instance,
one is forcibly reminded of "Dulce et Decorum est" (Poem #132 on the Minstrels).
A worthy poem for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier anywhere - far more
appropriate than "For the sake of their tomorrows". But great poetry
nevertheless - see for instance the craftsmanship of the last two lines, how
that freeze-frame of the fatal bullet is captured against the backdrop of the
flare's harsh light.

Anustup.

Base Details -- Siegfried Sassoon

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian :

(Poem #385) Base Details If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death. You'd see me with my puffy, petulant face, Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel, Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,' I'd say --- 'I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.' And when the war is done and youth stone dead, I'd toddle safely home and die --- in bed. -- Siegfried Sassoon

It's the sort of poem which really catches Sassoon's mood, a jaded
contempt for the war and all it stands for.  He's struck the right note
for a John Bull sort of officer - the sort who stays behind the lines
while others (like Spender) have to do all the dirty work of dying for
their country. A refreshing change from the sort of blood and glory
patriotism you'd get in most of the romantic poets like Byron.

Suresh.