Counter-Attack and Other Poems

Project Gutenberg's Counter-Attack and Other Poems, by Siegfried
Sassoon
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Counter-Attack and Other Poems
Author: Siegfried Sassoon
Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8930]
[Yes, we are more
than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August
26, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
COUNTER-ATTACK AND OTHER POEMS ***
Produced by John M. Wyrwas
COUNTER-ATTACK
AND OTHER POEMS
BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
With An Introduction By
Robert Nichols
TO ROBERT ROSS
Dans la trêve desolée de cette matinée, ces hommes
qui avaient été
tenaillés par la fatigue, fouettés par
la pluie, bouleversés par toute une
nuit de tonnerre,
ces rescapés des volcans et de l'inondation
entrevoyaient
à quel point la guerre, aussi hideuse au moral
qu'au
physique, non seulement viole le bon sens, avilit
les grandes idées,
commande tous les crimes--mais ils
se rappelaient combien elle avait
développé en eux et
autour d'eux tous les mauvais instincts sans en
excepter
un seul; la méchanceté jusqu'au sadisme,
l'égoisme jusqu'à
la férocité, le besoin de jouir jusqu'à
la folie. HENRI BARBUSSE.
(Le Feu.)
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT NICHOLS
PRELUDE: THE
TROOPS
COUNTER-ATTACK
THE REAR-GUARD

WIRERS
ATTACK
DREAMERS
HOW TO DIE
THE
EFFECT
TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
THE FATHERS

BASE DETAILS
THE GENERAL
LAMENTATIONS
DOES
IT MATTER?
FIGHT TO A FINISH
EDITORIAL
IMPRESSIONS
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
GLORY OF
WOMEN
THEIR FRAILTY
THE HAWTHORN TREE
THE
INVESTITURE
TRENCH DUTY

BREAK OF DAY
TO ANY
DEAD OFFICER
SICK LEAVE
BANISHMENT


SONG-BOOKS OF THE WAR
THRUSHES
AUTUMN

INVOCATION
REPRESSION OF WAR EXPERIENCE
THE
TRIUMPH
SURVIVORS
JOY-BELLS
REMORSE
DEAD
MUSICIANS
THE DREAM
IN BARRACKS
TOGETHER
INTRODUCTION
Sassoon the Man
In appearance he is tall, big-boned, loosely built. He
is clean-shaven,
pale or with a flush; has a heavy jaw,
wide mouth with the upper lip
slightly protruding and
the curve of it very pronounced like that of a
shrivelled
leaf (as I have noticed is common in many poets).
His
nose is aquiline, the nostrils being wide and heavily
arched. This
characteristic and the fullness, depth and
heat of his dark eyes give
him the air of a sullen
falcon. He speaks slowly, enunciating the
words as if
they pained him, in a voice that has something of the

troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who
emerge from a
deep grief. As he speaks, his large
hands, roughened by trench toil
and by riding, wander
aimlessly until some emotion grips him when
the
knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the
edge of
the table. And all the while he will be breathing
hard like a man who
has swum a distance. When
he reads his poems he chants and one
would think
that he communed with himself save that, at the
pauses,
he shoots a powerful glance at the listener.
Between the poems he is
still but moves his lips...
He likes best to speak of hunting (he will
shout of it!),
of open air mornings when the gorse alone flames

brighter than the sky, of country quiet, of his mother,
[Footnote: His father was a well-to-do country gentleman of
Anglo-Jewish stock, his mother an English woman, a Miss

Thornycroft, sister of the sculptor of that name.]
of poetry--usually Shelley, Masefield and Thomas

Hardy--and last

and chiefly--but always with a rapid,
tumbling enunciation and a
much-irked desperate air
filled with pain--of soldiers. For the incubus
of war
is on him so that his days are shot with anguish and
his
nights with horror.
He is twenty-eight years old; was educated at
Marlborough and
Christchurch, Oxford; was a master of
fox-hounds and is a captain in
the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. Thrice he has fought in France and once in

Palestine. Behind his name are set the letters M.C.
since he has
won the Military Cross for an act of
valour which went near to
securing him a higher
honour.
Sassoon the Poet
The poetry of Siegfried Sassoon divides itself into
two rough
classes--the idyllic and the satiric. War
has defiled one to produce the
other. At heart
Siegfried Sassoon is an idealist.
Before the war he had hardly published a line. He
spent his summers
in the company of books, at the
piano, on expeditions, and in playing
tennis. During
winter he hunted. Hunting was a greater passion with

him than poetry. Much of his poetry celebrated the
loveliness of
the field as seen by the huntsman in the
early morning light. But few
probably guessed that
the youth known to excel in field sports
excelled also
in poetry. For,