Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war poets. John Hildebidle has called Sassoon the "accidental hero." Born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses.

Being an innocent, Sassoon's reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter and violent -- both his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield (where, after the death of fellow officer David Thomas and his brother Hamo at Gallipoli, Sassoon earned the nickname "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits against the German lines -- in the early manifestation of his grief, when he still believed that the Germans were entirely to blame). As Paul Fussell said: "now he unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely that had been sleeping all during his pastoral youth." Sassoon also showed his innocence by going public with his protest against the war (as he grew to see that insensitive political leadership was the greater enemy than the Germans). Luckily, his friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced the review board that Sassoon was suffering from shell-shock and he was sent instead to the military hospital at Craiglockhart where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen.

Sassoon is a key figure in the study of the poetry of the Great War: he brought with him to the war the idyllic pastoral background; he began by writing war poetry reminiscent of Rupert Brooke; he mingled with such war poets as Robert Graves and Edmund Blunden; he spoke out publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he influenced and mentored the then unknown Wilfred Owen; he spent thirty years reflecting on the war through his memoirs; and at last he found peace in his religious faith. Some critics found his later poetry lacking in comparison to his war poems. Sassoon, identifying with Herbert and Vaughan, recognized and understood this: "my development has been entirely consistent and in character" he answered, "almost all of them have ignored the fact that I am a religious poet."
(Source: PoemHunter.com)


Sassoon's experiences of World War I can be read in his Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (1930) and in his poems, which he wrote when he was serving as an infantry officer in the army. He had a talent for satire, and often the satire is savage.
In these satiric poems he wanted to shake and disturb the homefront's complacent attitude to the war.
In his opinion the people in England had absolutely no idea at all of the horrors of trench warfare. Above all, he wanted to destroy 'the old lie' that it was sweet and decorous to die for your country. He attacked the conscience of the English at home who had romantic ideas about the war or were hypocritical about it.
As Sassoon's objective was more limited in its scope, more practical in the desired effect, his poems do not usually have the wider significance found in Owen's later poetry.

De Bisschop vertelt ons: 'Als de jongens terugkeren,
Zullen zij veranderd zijn, want ze hebben voor
Een Goed Zaak gestreden: zij leiden de Iaatste aanval
Tegen het Kwaad; door het bloed van hun kameraden Komt het hun toe een nieuw rechtschapen ras te kweken:
Zij, die de Dood trotseerden en in zijn gezicht uitdaagden.

'Geen van ons is nog hetzelfde!' antwoorden de jongens
'Want George is zijn benen kwijt en Bill is stekeblind;
Arme Jim is door zijn longen geschoten en zal wel sterven.
En Bert heeft syfilis: je zult geen kerel vinden
Die gediend heeft en niet veranderd is.'
En de Bisschop zei: 'Gods wegen zijn vreemd!'