Perspectives On The Front

One of the treasured items I have that ties me to the First World War is a collection of poems by Siegfried Sassoon: a copy of The War Poems, first published in 1919. The copy I have was given to me as a gift, and is a first edition published in 1920 by London-based publisher William Heinemann. The small collection (the person who gave it to me was surprised at how thin the book was) contains 64 poems, 12 of which were published for the first time – the remaining poems were captured in volumes of previous works.

Siegfried Sassoon first came to my attention when I was reading Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy, in which he appears as a patient of Dr W. H. R. Rivers at Craiglockhart War Hospital – appearing prominently in the first of the three novels. From there I was inspired to pick up Sassoon’s semi-autobiographical Sherston Trilogy. To date I’ve only made it part way through the first of the three novels, Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man, but I have every confidence I will return to it. It was also in Regeneration that Wilfred Owen appears, principally in the second book, The Eye in the Door.

From that time onwards – I was in my early 30’s at the time and my fascination with the War was just beginning – I was deeply affected by the raw perspective that colours Sassoon’s writing. On my first visit to the Front it was impossible not to reflect on his words, especially seeing the monolithic Menin Gate Memorial which he described as a “sepulchre of crime”.  

When I pick up my copy of The War Poems, a book that could well have been one to appear on the shelves of London a year after the war ended, I feel a connection to Sassoon’s words even before reading a single poem. It is the ability of poems like Sassoon’s “Suicide in the Trenches” or Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” to convey the mindless, futile slaughter of the First World War that marks them as some of the most powerful writing to emerge from the War, and such a treasure to hold.