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poetry of world war 1
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how do the poets you have studied (Wilfred Owen and vidal sassoon) show the feelings and attitudes of soldiers throughout world war 1?
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Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886 - 1967)
Counter Attack.
"We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began,� the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,� loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
'Stand-to and man the fire-step! 'On he went...
Gasping and bawling, 'Fire- step...counter-attack!'
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine- guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
'O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle...rapid fire...
And started blazing wildly...then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him
out To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he
Counter Attack.
"We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began,� the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,� loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
'Stand-to and man the fire-step! 'On he went...
Gasping and bawling, 'Fire- step...counter-attack!'
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine- guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
'O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle...rapid fire...
And started blazing wildly...then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him
out To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he
The General by, er, one of the Sassoons
"Good morning, good morning" the general said
When we met him last week on our way to the line
Now the soldiers 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 with his plan of attack."
I imagine this, filtered through irony, represented the views of soldiers. But as an officer (one of his books was Memoirs of an Infantry Officer) he can't be guaranteed to have got the opinions of privates dead right.
"Good morning, good morning" the general said
When we met him last week on our way to the line
Now the soldiers 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 with his plan of attack."
I imagine this, filtered through irony, represented the views of soldiers. But as an officer (one of his books was Memoirs of an Infantry Officer) he can't be guaranteed to have got the opinions of privates dead right.
in terms of comprehending the poems try and place yourself in a situation of war. How would you feel yourself? Afraid, alone, patriotic, fearful on the day, becoming aware of the futility of war, transferring your feelings to help you get by and the aftermath of coping, (shell shock was major issue after World War One), witnessing the destruction of beautiful things and the killing of men and beasts.
Make your (short) list and then go search these items in the poems.
Example: think of that line "The monstrous anger of the guns." The guns were not angry. It was those people fighting the war on all sides who were angry.
Make your (short) list and then go search these items in the poems.
Example: think of that line "The monstrous anger of the guns." The guns were not angry. It was those people fighting the war on all sides who were angry.
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