Counter-Attack and Other Poems
1918
Siegfried Sassoon was a soldier who went to war believing in glory, and came back writing the most furious poetry of his generation. This 1918 collection captures what it actually meant to live in the trenches: the mud, the rats, the gas, the endless waiting to die. But Sassoon's real target was never the enemy across no-man's land. It was the generals, the politicians, the comfortable civilians who sent young men to die and then called it heroism. The title poem "Counter-Attack" drops you into a gas attack with terrifying immediacy. Poems like "The General" and "Does it Matter?" skewer the chasm between those who wage war and those who fight it, juxtaposing memories of peaceful English countryside with the nightmare of the present. This is not sentimental war poetry. It's angry, precise, and unflinching. A century later, it remains essential for anyone who wants to understand what war actually costs and who profits from the lie that it matters.
Editions
X-Ray
“Mute in that golden silence hung with green,Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyesRemembrance of all beauty that has been,And stillness from the pools of Paradise.””
— Siegfried Sassoon
“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
“They march from safety, and the bird-sung joyOf grass-green thickets, to the land where allIs ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky””
— Siegfried Sassoon
“Alone he staggered on until he foundDawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stairTo the dazed, muttering creatures undergroundWho hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.””
— Siegfried Sassoon
“In bitter safety I awake, unfriended; And while the dawn begins with slashing rainI think of the Battalion in the mud. ‘When are you going out to them again? Are they not still your brothers through our blood?””
— Siegfried Sassoon
“Let no one ever from henceforth say a word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell and those who institute it are criminals.””
— Siegfried Sassoon
“He’s a cheery old card”, grunted Harry to JackAs they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.But he did for them both by his plan of attack. (The General)””
— Siegfried Sassoon
