| Birth: | Sep. 8, 1886
Matfield
Kent, England | | Death: | Sep. 1, 1967
Marlborough
Wiltshire, England | 
Poet. One of the better known so-called "war poets" to come out of World War I, he was born to a wealthy Jewish father and a Christian mother; his parents separated when he was five and his father died of tuberculosis when he was nine. Sassoon was educated at Marlborough and studied law and history at Clare College, Cambridge, but left without taking a degree. He earned a minor reputation as a poet before the war, but most of his time was taken up with hunting, horseracing and cricket. He enlisted as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry on August 2, 1914, the day after Germany declared war on Russia but two days before England declared war on Germany. However, a riding accident sidelined him with a badly broken right arm until May 1915, when he was commissioned in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. In November 1915 his brother Hamo was killed at Gallipoli – which occasioned the first of his war poems, "To My Brother" – and in March 1916 he lost a close friend, 2nd Lieutenant David C. Thomas. These events seemed to spur him into acts of recklessness, such as going on patrol in no-man's-land even when there were no raids or attacks planned, and he soon got the nickname "Mad Jack." He was awarded a Military Cross in July 1916 for actions in a raid that was conducted in preparation for the Battle of the Somme. He distinguished himself in action at Mametz Wood, but was sent home in late July to recuperate from an attack of trench fever. During his convalescence he was introduced to novelists Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells, among others. He returned to France in February 1917 but and was wounded at the Second Battle of The Scarpe in April. This time while convalescing he was introduced to a number of prominent pacifists, which may have had a lot to do with his "Declaration," in which he stated "I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust." Well aware of the consequences, he gave the Declaration to his colonel and was preparing for a court-martial when his friend, the poet and novelist Robert Graves ("I, Claudius") intervened and persuaded the authorities that Sassoon was suffering from shell shock and should be sent instead to hospital. He was subsequently transferred to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh, where he met another budding war poet, Wilfred Owen. Their friendship sparked something in each other's poetry; some critics have said that neither would have developed their post-war reputations had they not served as each other's critic while at Craiglockhart. Sassoon's sessions with Dr. William H. R. Rivers convinced him that his protests had gained nothing except to keep him from doing his duty to the men who served under him. In November 1917 he was passed fit for service, and returned to duty in January 1918. (This episode was the basis for Pat Barker's 1991 novel "Regeneration" and the subsequent 1997 film starring Jonathan Pryce as Rivers, James Wilby as Sassoon, Stuart Bunce as Owen, and Dougray Scott as Graves.) He spent three months in Palestine, then returned to France where in July his old foolhardiness took over and earned him a head wound and a final ticket home. (While he was recovering he learned that Wilfred Owen had been killed only a week before the Armistice was signed; subsequently Sassoon was the man chiefly responsible for seeing that Owen's poetry was published.) The poems from the two of Sassoon's collections published during the war, "The Old Huntsman" and "Counter-Attack," that were chiefly concerned with the war, most notably "They," "The Hero," "Base Details," "The General," and "The Glory of Women," were collected and published in 1919 as "War Poems." He spent most of the rest of his writing career working on his semi-fictionalized autobiography, published in six volumes as "Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man" (1928), "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" (1930), "Sherston's Progress" (1936), "The Old Century and Seven More Years" (1938), "The Weald of Youth" (1942) and "Siegfried's Journey" (1945). He died at Heytesbury House in Wiltshire, one week short of his eighty-first birthday. (bio by: Paul F. Wilson)
Search Amazon for Siegfried Sassoon | | | Burial:
St Andrew Churchyard
Mells
Somerset, England |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Dec 14, 2000
Find A Grave Memorial# 18860 |
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