Counter Attack and Other Poems
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Siegfried Sassoon >> Counter Attack and Other Poems
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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, in its way, this early poetry does excel.
It was characteristic of him that nearly every little
book he then wrote was privately printed. Poetry was
for him just something for private and particular
enjoyment--like a ride alone before breakfast. Among
these privately printed books are Twelve Sonnets
(1911), Melodies, An Ode for Music, Hyacinth
(all 1912). The names are significant. He was occupied
with natural beauty and with music. In 1913 he
publishes in a limited and obscure edition Apollo in
Doelyrium, wherein it seems that he is beginning to
find a certain want of body and basis in his poems
made of beautiful words about beautiful objects.
Later in the same year, with Masefield's Everlasting
Mercy (1911), Widow in the Bye Sheet (1912) and
Daffodil Fields (1913) before him, he starts to write a
parody of these uncouth intrusions of the sorrows of
obscure persons into his paradise but half way through
the poem adopts the Masefield manner in earnest
[Footnote: I had this from his own mouth.]
and finishes by unsuccessfully endeavouring to rival his
master. In 1914 the War breaks out. Home on leave
in 1915 he privately prints Discoveries, a little book
which contains some of the loveliest of his 'paradise'
poems. In 1916 the change has come. He can hardly
believe it himself. 'Morning Glory' (privately printed)
includes four war poems. He has not definitely
turned to his later style but he hovers on the brink.
The war is beginning to pain him. The poems 'To
Victory' and 'The Dragon and the Undying' show him
turning toward his paradise to see if its beauty can save
him ... The year 1917 witnesses the publication of
The Old Huntsman.
[Footnote: 'The Old Huntsman,' Dutton & Co., 1918.]
This book secured instantaneous success.
Siegfried Sassoon, on its publication,
became one of the leading young poets of England.
The book begins with the long monologue of a retired
huntsman, a piece of remarkable characterisation.
It continues with all the best of the 'paradise'
poems, including the loveliest in 'Discoveries' and
'Morning Glory.' There are also the 'bridge' poems
between his old manner and his new such as the 'To
Victory' mentioned above. But interspersed among
the paradise poems are the first poems in his final war
style. He tells the story of the change in a characteristic
manner--Conscripts (page 51, 'The Old Huntsman').
For like nearly every one of the young English poets,
he is to some extent a humourist. His humour is not,
however, even through 'The Old Huntsman' all
of such a wise and gentle tenor. He breaks out into
lively bitterness in such poems as 'They,'
'The Tombstone Maker' and 'Blighters.'
CONSCRIPTS
"Fall in, that awkward squad, and strike no more
"Attractive attitudes! Dress by the right!
"The luminous rich colours that you wore
"Have changed to hueless khaki in the night.
"Magic? What's magic got to do with you?
"There's no such thing! Blood's red and skies are blue."
They gasped and sweated, marching up and down.
I drilled them till they cursed my raucous shout.
Love chucked his lute away and dropped his crown.
Rhyme got sore heels and wanted to fall out.
"Left, right! Press on your butts!" They looked at me
Reproachful; how I longed to set them free!
I gave them lectures on Defence, Attack;
They fidgeted and shuffled, yawned and sighed,
And boggled at my questions. Joy was slack,
And Wisdom gnawed his fingers, gloomy-eyed.
Young Fancy--how I loved him all the while--
Stared at his note-book with a rueful smile.
Their training done, I shipped them all to France.
Where most of those I'd loved too well got killed.
Rapture and pale Enchantment and Romance,
And many a sickly, slender lord who'd filled
My soul long since with litanies of sin.
Went home, because they couldn't stand the din.
But the kind, common ones that I despised,
(Hardly a man of them I'd count as friend),
What stubborn-hearted virtues they disguised!
They stood and played the hero to the end,
Won gold and silver medals bright with bars,
And marched resplendent home with crowns and stars.
This book (in consequence almost wholly of these
bitter poems) enjoyed a remarkable success with the
soldiers fighting in France. One met it everywhere.
"Hello, you know Siegfried Sassoon then, do you?
Well, tell him from me that the more he lays it on thick
to those who don't realize the war the better. That's
the stuff we want. We're fed up with the old men's
death-or-glory stunt." In 1918 appeared 'Countermans'
Attack': here there is hardly a trace of the 'paradise'
feeling. You can't even think of paradise when you're
in hell. For Sassoon was now well along the way of
thorns. How many lives had he not seen spilled apparently
to no purpose? Did not the fact of war arch
him in like a dirty blood-red sky? He breaks out,
almost like a mad man, into imprecations, into
vehement tirades, into sarcasms, ironies, the hellish
laughters that arise from a heart that is not broken
once for all but that is newly broken every day while
the Monster that devours the lives of the young
continues its ravages. Take, for instance, the magnificent
'To Any Dead Officer', written just before America
entered the war. Many reading this poem would think
Great Britain was going to cease fighting. But nothing
of the sort. One must always remember that bitter
as these imprecations are against those who mismanaged
certain episodes in the war, the ultimate foe
is not they but the German Junkers who planned this
war for forty years, who have given the lovely earth
over to hideous defilement and the youths of all nations
to carnage...
Sometimes in this book Sassoon fails to express himself
properly. This fact is, I think, a tribute to his
sincerity. For his earlier work very clearly displays
his technical proficiency. But here what can he do?
Indignation chokes and strangles him. He claws often
enough at unsatisfactory words, dislocates his
sentences, tumbles out his images as if he would pulp the
makers of war beneath them. Very rarely does he
attain to the poignant simplicity of 'The Hawthorn
Tree' or the detached irony of 'Does it Matter?'
Can he then see nothing else in war? I remember
him once turning to me and saying suddenly apropos
of certain exalté poems in my 'Ardours and
Endurances': 'Yes, I see all that and I agree with
you, Robert. War has made me. I think I am a man now
as well as a poet. You have said the things well
enough. Now let us nevermore say another word of
whatever little may be good in war for the individual
who has a heart to be steeled.'
I remember I nodded, for further acquaintance with
war inclines me to his opinion.
'Let no one ever,' he continued, '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. Were
there anything to say for it, it should not be said for
its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.'
For myself this is the truth. War doesn't ennoble:
it degrades. The words of Barbusse placed at the beginning
of this book should be engraved over the doors
of every war office of every State in the world.
While war is a possibility man is little better than
a savage and civilisation the mere moments of rest
between a succession of nightmares. It is to help to
end this horror that Siegfried Sassoon and the many
others who feel like him have continued to fight as
after the publication of this book he fought in Palestine
and in France.
You civilized persons who read this book not only as
a poet but as a soldier I beg of you not to turn from it.
Read it again and again till its words become part of
your consciousness. It was written by a man for mankind's
sake, that 'that which is humane' might no more be an
empty phrase, that the words of Blake might blossom
to a new meaning--
Thou art a man, God is no more,
Thine own humanity learn to adore.
New York City,
Nov. 20th-23rd.
ROBERT NICHOLS.
PRELUDE: THE TROOPS
Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom
Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals
Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots
And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky
Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down
The stale despair of night, must now renew
Their desolation in the truce of dawn,
Murdering the livid hours that grope for peace.
Yet these, who cling to life with stubborn hands,
Can grin through storms of death and find a gap
In the clawed, cruel tangles of his defence.
They march from safety, and the bird-sung joy
Of grass-green thickets, to the land where all
Is ruin, and nothing blossoms but the sky
That hastens over them where they endure
Sad, smoking, flat horizons, reeking woods,
And foundered trench-lines volleying doom for doom.
O my brave brown companions, when your souls
Flock silently away, and the eyeless dead
Shame the wild beast of battle on the ridge,
Death will stand grieving in that field of war
Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent.
And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass
Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell;
The unreturning army that was youth;
The legions who have suffered and are dust.
COUNTER-ATTACK
We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began,--the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,--loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
"Stand-to and man the fire-step!" On he went ...
Gasping and bawling, "Fire-step ... counter-attack!"
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
"O Christ, they're coming at us!" Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire ...
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans ...
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.
THE REAR-GUARD
(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know,
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug,
And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug.
"I'm looking for headquarters." No reply.
"God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.)
"Get up and guide me through this stinking place."
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.
Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat of horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.
WIRERS
"Pass it along, the wiring party's going out"--
And yawning sentries mumble, "Wirers going out,"
Unravelling; twisting; hammering stakes with muffled thud,
They toil with stealthy haste and anger in their blood.
The Boche sends up a flare. Black forms stand rigid there,
Stock-still like posts; then darkness, and the clumsy ghosts
Stride hither and thither, whispering, tripped by clutching snare
Of snags and tangles.
Ghastly dawn with vaporous coasts
Gleams desolate along the sky, night's misery ended.
Young Hughes was badly hit; I heard him carried away,
Moaning at every lurch; no doubt he'll die to-day.
But _we_ can say the front-line wire's been safely mended.
ATTACK
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glowering sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make it stop!
DREAMERS
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
HOW TO DIE
Dark clouds are smouldering into red
While down the craters morning burns.
The dying soldier shifts his head
To watch the glory that returns:
He lifts his fingers toward the skies
Where holy brightness breaks in flame;
Radiance reflected in his eyes,
And on his lips a whispered name.
You'd think, to hear some people talk,
That lads go West with sobs and curses,
And sullen faces white as chalk,
Hankering for wreaths and tombs and hearses.
But they've been taught the way to do it
Like Christian soldiers; not with haste
And shuddering groans; but passing through it
With due regard for decent taste.
THE EFFECT
"The effect of our bombardment was terrific. One man
told me he had never seen so many dead before."--_War Correspondent_.
_"He'd never seen so many dead before."_
They sprawled in yellow daylight while he swore
And gasped and lugged his everlasting load
Of bombs along what once had been a road.
_"How peaceful are the dead."_
Who put that silly gag in some one's head?
_"He'd never seen so many dead before."_
The lilting words danced up and down his brain,
While corpses jumped and capered in the rain.
No, no; he wouldn't count them any more ...
The dead have done with pain:
They've choked; they can't come back to life again.
When Dick was killed last week he looked like that,
Flapping along the fire-step like a fish,
After the blazing crump had knocked him flat ...
_"How many dead? As many as ever you wish.
Don't count 'em; they're too many.
Who'll buy my nice fresh corpses, two a penny?"_
TWELVE MONTHS AFTER
Hullo! here's my platoon, the lot I had last year.
"The war'll be over soon."
"What 'opes?"
"No bloody fear!"
Then, "Number Seven, 'shun! All present and correct."
They're standing in the sun, impassive and erect.
Young Gibson with his grin; and Morgan, tired and white;
Jordan, who's out to win a D.C.M. some night;
And Hughes that's keen on wiring; and Davies ('79),
Who always must be firing at the Boche front line.
* * * * *
"Old soldiers never die; they simply fide a-why!"
That's what they used to sing along the roads last spring;
That's what they used to say before the push began;
That's where they are to-day, knocked over to a man.
THE FATHERS
Snug at the club two fathers sat,
Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
One of them said: "My eldest lad
Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
But Arthur's getting all the fun
At Arras with his nine-inch gun."
"Yes," wheezed the other, "that's the luck!
My boy's quite broken-hearted, stuck
In England training all this year.
Still, if there's truth in what we hear,
The Huns intend to ask for more
Before they bolt across the Rhine."
I watched them toddle through the door--
These impotent old friends of mine.
BASE DETAILS
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. "Poor young chap,"
I'd say--"I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap."
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die--in bed.
THE GENERAL
"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He's a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
* * * * *
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
LAMENTATIONS
I found him in the guard-room at the Base.
From the blind darkness I had heard his crying
And blundered in. With puzzled, patient face
A sergeant watched him; it was no good trying
To stop it; for he howled and beat his chest.
And, all because his brother had gone West,
Raved at the bleeding war; his rampant grief
Moaned, shouted, sobbed, and choked, while he was kneeling
Half-naked on the floor. In my belief
Such men have lost all patriotic feeling.
DOES IT MATTER?
Does it matter?--losing your leg? ...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
Does it matter?--losing your sight? ...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit? ...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know that you've fought for your country,
And no one will worry a bit.
FIGHT TO A FINISH
The boys came back. Bands played and flags were flying,
And Yellow-Pressmen thronged the sunlit street
To cheer the soldiers who'd refrained from dying,
And hear the music of returning feet.
"Of all the thrills and ardours War has brought,
This moment is the finest." (So they thought.)
Snapping their bayonets on to charge the mob,
Grim Fusiliers broke ranks with glint of steel.
At last the boys had found a cushy job.
* * * * *
I heard the Yellow-Pressmen grunt and squeal;
And with my trusty bombers turned and went
To clear those Junkers out of Parliament.
EDITORIAL IMPRESSIONS
He seemed so certain "all was going well,"
As he discussed the glorious time he'd had
While visiting the trenches.
"One can tell
You've gathered big impressions!" grinned the lad
Who'd been severely wounded in the back
In some wiped-out impossible Attack.
"Impressions? Yes, most vivid! I am writing
A little book called _Europe on the Rack_,
Based on notes made while witnessing the fighting.
I hope I've caught the feeling of 'the Line'
And the amazing spirit of the troops.
By Jove, those flying-chaps of ours are fine!
I watched one daring beggar looping loops,
Soaring and diving like some bird of prey.
And through it all I felt that splendour shine
Which makes us win."
The soldier sipped his wine.
"Ah, yes, but it's the Press that leads the way!"
SUICIDE IN THE TRENCHES
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
* * * * *
You snug-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.