Perspectives On The Front

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a subject that grabbed me some time ago when I came across a Circumstances of Death register that referenced a soldier who had “committed suicide”. It was something about which I hadn’t given a lot of thought until I came across that registry. Like so much else with The War it lit a spark, so I started to look into the subject of suicide in the First World War. I was taken aback by how little there was on the subject of death by suicide during the War. There were some pieces on suicide among veterans – specifically, the higher incidence of death by suicide of soldiers who returned home from the War. However this amounted to just a few articles, and none about suicide at the Front.

Since then I’ve had many thoughts on the subject and I intend to study it more in the hope of bringing to light something that today is such a critical, but still shadowed topic: suicide.

Let me begin with the words of one of the illustrious poets from the era, Siegfried Sassoon.

Suicide In The Trenches

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.

Siegfried Sassoon
23 February, 1918