Before the Great War, Siegfried Sassoon lived the life of the typical English sporting gentleman. Born into a wealthy banking family in 1886, Sassoon was educated at Marlborough College before going up to Cambridge, where he studied first Law, then History at Clare College. He did not complete his degree and left University to pursue his interests in foxhunting, golf and cricket. His Jewish father and Anglican mother separated when Sassoon was five, and he was denied the family fortunes by the disowning of his father by Sassoon's grandmother. Nevertheless, he was wealthy enough to be able to live without a profession.

His interest in poetry developed before the war, but he was regarded as a minor poet of the time - although he did have some success with "The Daffodil Murderer" - a parody of John Masefield's "The Everlasting Mercy."

Sassoon enlisted into Sussex Yeomanry as a trooper two days before the outbreak of the First World War, and was commissioned into the Royal Welch Fusiliers following a riding accident. His division was soon sent to France, and shortly afterwards Sassoon was to suffer personal experiences that were to affect him deeply. His brother was killed at Gallipoli on November 1st 1915, and on March 18th of the following year a close friend was killed in France. The entry in his war diary for 30th March reads,

Not only did he begin to experience the grim reality of war, but Sassoon himself has said that these deaths upset Sassoon to the point of making him lead a personal vendetta against the German Army and he carried out reckless patrols of his own, earning him the nickname of "Mad Jack." Before he could get himself killed in these impetuous acts however, he was sent on a course at Flixecourt. This seems to have cooled Sassoon's ardour for revenge, and his efforts in saving the dead and wounded of his platoon after a raid that was conducted soon after his return from Army School, earned him the Military Cross.

He was recommended for a further decoration in July 1916 after flushing out a German position near Mametz Wood, but following the failure of the British action as a whole it was deemed inappropriate to make the award.

Despite his personal courage, it is clear from Sassoon's war diary that he was not immune from the effects of the carnage. An entry from shortly after the Battle of the Somme describes it in graphic detail;

An attack of trench fever saw Sassoon invalided back to England in late July 1916 and it was then that he met Robert Ross, H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennet. His poetry was to receive encouragement from Ross, and Sassoon returned to France in February 1917. He participated in the Second Battle of the Scarpe where he was wounded in the shoulder. Whilst in hospital he wrote;

Sassoon's writing seems to have become more despairing, more stark, as his experience of the war progressed, and it is clear that this and his mistrust of the management of the war was growing. This, and the influence of meeting the celebrated pacifists John Middleton Murray and Bertrand Russell during his period of convalescence led to Sassoon writing his "Declaration" to his commanding officer and to the British Press. In it he expresses his conviction that the objectives of the war had changed from defence to aggression...

The publication of Sassoon's "Declaration," or even discussing such thoughts would have led him to a Court Martial. Indeed Sassoon fully expected this when he returned for duty at the Regimental Depot in Liverpool - where he refused to carry out further military duties. As if to underline his contempt for the prosecution of the War, Sassoon threw the ribbon of his Military Cross into the River Mersey.

Only by the intervention of his friend, the poet and author Robert Graves, (who also served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers) and possibly the wish by the Authorities to avoid the scandal of an officer's Courth Martial, did he escape a military trial and the likely consequences of imprisonment or even execution. Instead it was deemed that Sassoon was mentally ill, probably shell shock, and sent for treatment to Craiglockert Hospital in Edinburgh.

However, his hospitalisation did nothing to discourage Sassoon's poetry and the material he wrote in the four months at Craiglockert were later published in "Counter-Attack and other Poems."

Perhaps the most significant event to come from Sassoon's time in Edinburgh was his meeting with Wilfred Owen, and encouragement of his as yet unrecognised work. Owen was also referred to the hospital with shellshock following an incident in France.

Sassoon was treated by the celebrated psychchiatrist W.H.R. Rivers. Their long sessions seem to have convinced Sassoon that his protest had been futile, and had only served to make him neglect the leadership of the men he purported to defend. Whatever the reason, he applied again for General Service, was pronounced fit, and posted to Palestine - although he never retracted his Declaration. Three months later he was returned to France and his reckless bravery once again came to the fore. Without orders to do so he carried out a two-man attack on the German trenches opposite his Company's position but received a head wound from a British bullet fired by his own sergeant. There is doubt as to whether this was accidental.

Siegfried Sassoon was invalided back to England and was placed on sick leave until the Armistice. He thus survived the war and left the Army in March 1919.

Sassoon's subsequent life shows a marked contrast to the prewar "sporting gentleman." He became literary editor of the socialist "Daily Herald," where he developed the work of Edmund Blunden, met and befriended Thomas Hardy and undertook a speaking tour of the United States. He also wrote "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man" which was published in 1928, the first of his six volumes of autobiography culminating with "Siegfried's Journey." (1945).

He did not serve in the Second World War, but lived with his wife Hester Gatty (whom he married in 1933) and their son George, in Wiltshire. Although the marriage ended in 1945, Sassoon lived on in his Wiltshire home at Heytesbury House until he died in 1967, at the age of 80.

Siegfried Sassoon's epigrammatic and satirical war poetry brought much of the living horror of the Great War to public notice. His style is, in many ways, simple - unburdened by lyrical verse and easy to read and understand. Like Wilfred Owen, his anger was against those at home who simply failed to comprehend the hell that was being lived through each day by the men at the front. Although his "Declaration" failed in its intended aim, it brought together two men whose poetry was to echo down the generations.

My thanks to Michèle Fry for permission to use information from the Counter-Attack website.