Born On This Day- September 8th... British Poet Siegried Sassoon

Suicide in the Trenches

I knew a simple soldier boy

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

& whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed & glum

With crumps & 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 & pray you'll never know

The hell where youth & laughter go.

The grueling years of WW I gave a harsh education in the devastation & futility of war to 300,000+ young British men, including those who grew up in privilege. One of these was the gay "war poet," Siegfried Sassoon.

Brought up in the leisured life of a country gentleman, Sassoon enlisted in the military just as the war was beginning. His poetry reflects the change of his attitudes towards war, beginning with a vision of combat as reflecting glory & nobility, & finishing with muddy, bloody realism & bitter recrimination to those who profited from the destruction of young soldiers. His later war poetry is filled with the ugly realities of the brutality & pointlessness of wars between nations. His later work retains a rather romantic affection for the average soldier, who does his duty with bravery, even when he does not understand why.

 With a cool & savage irony, Sassoon condemns the corrupt old men of government, military, & business, who profits from a war while sending young men off to die. In his poem Base Details:

If I were fierce, & bald, & short of breath,

I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,

& speed glum heroes up the line to death...

& when the war is done & youth stone dead,

I'd toddle safely home & die in bed.

Sassoon's friends, including early feminist author Robert Graves, sensed that his anti-war sentiments could get him into trouble & arranged for him to be hospitalized for shell shock. Always a loyal comrade,Sassoon could not stay away from the front while others fought, & he returned to battle. In July 1918, he was sent back to England with a head wound, & he remained there until the war ended.

Sassoon came of age during the1st golden period of modern homosexual culture. His friends & lovers were some of the best known writers, artists, & thinkers of the period (most of which I have done blog posts about on their birthdays): Evelyn Waugh, Edward Carpenter, E.M. Forster, J.R. Ackerly, Ivor Novello, Robert Graves, T.E. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Noël Coward, the Sitwells, & members of the Bloomsbury group. He had a long sexual relationship with William Park ("Gabriel") Atkin, a British painter & illustrator. During the 1920s & early 1930s, he engaged in several affairs, including a romance with the future Nazi Prince Philip of Hesse, & a long relationship with poet & decorator Stephen Tennant.

He died in 1967, 7 days before his 81st birthday of stomach cancer. In 1985, Sassoon was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription on the stone was written by his former lover & fellow War poet Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, & the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."

 
This was the photograph that started my collection of vintage photos of men being affectionate. It was the opening night gift from a fellow cast member. This image started me thinking about the work of Sassoon. I wonder if these men made it home, & possibly had a life together. Haunting.

Sassoon, post-war.