WWI War Poetry Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon

“I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.”

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886–1967)

• Siegfried joined the Sussex Yeomanry on 4th August 1914.

• He was promoted to lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers in May 1915.

• Joined the Battalion in France on 17th November as a transport officer.

• In March 1916 Siegfried was finally secured a front-line placement.

• He spent the early summer of 1916 on leave. He contracted dysentery and was in hospital for sometime.

• He returned to France in January 1917, was wounded by a sniper during a raid near Fontaine-les-Croisilles in April

• Wrote his soldier's statement or declaration against the War 15th June 1917, calling for a Negotiated peace.

• Siegfried was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh to be treated for neurasthenia (trauma of war).

• There he met and formed a friendship with the psychiatrist W. H. R. Rivers, and the poet Wilfred Owen.

• In February 1918 Siegfried was dispatched to serve in Palestine, but in May found himself back in France with the battalion supporting allied forces.

• On 13th June while returning to the trenches from a patrol in No Man's Land he was accidentally mistaken for a German by a sentry from his company, and was shot in the head.

• Throughout his war service he continued to read and write poetry, encouraged by Robert Graves.

• in December 1933 Siegfried married Hester Gatty

• In 1951 Siegfried was made aCommander of the Order of theBritish Empire

• He died at the age of 80 and is buried at St Andrew’s Church.

• On 11 November 1985 his name, along with 15 others, was added to a slab in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 1893 - 1918

• From the age of nineteen Owen wanted to be a poet and immersed himself in poetry.

• He wrote almost no poetry of importance until he saw action in France in 1917.

• He felt pressured by the propaganda to become a soldier and volunteered on 21st October 1915 He was full of boyish high spirits at being a soldier.

• Within a week he had been transported to the front line in a cattle wagon and was "sleeping " 70 or 80 yards from a heavy gun which fired every minute or so.

• experiencing gas attacks and was horrified by the stench of the rotting dead; his sentry was blinded, his company then slept out in deep snow and intense frost till the end of January.

• That month was a profound shock for him: he now understood the meaning of war.

• He saw a good deal of front-line action, he was blown up, concussed and suffered shell-shock.

• At Craiglockhart, the psychiatric hospital in Edinburgh, he met Siegfried Sassoon who inspired him to develop his war poetry.

• Owen, too, wanted to make his protest like Sassoon, yet he couldn't relate to the pacifists.

• Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. “My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

• By April 1918 he had taken another crucial decision. He had decided to turn his back on life.

• Talking to his brother whilst home on leave he said that he wanted to return to the front line. "I know I shall be killed. But it's the only place I can make my protest from."

• He was sent back to the trenches in September, 1918 and in October won the Military Cross by seizing a German machine-gun and using it to kill a number of Germans.

• 4th November he was shot and killed near the village of Ors.