Credit: Life on The Seventh Cloud and Foto Cordero
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.
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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.
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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.
This poem is very straightforward about its content. It tells us about a boy who could have been anyone: where he was, what happened to him, and then, at the end, a warning.
Usually, poems and texts about war speak about heroism, goodbyes, Country, patriotism, sacrifice, and pride. Sassoon does something very different. He shows us an ordinary young soldier, describes how the war destroys him, and then turns directly toward the people at home who celebrate the war.
The poem has 3 parts:
1. Before the war, there was an ordinary boy
2. The trenches destroy that simple world
3. People need to face the reality: YOU
We are reading about a soldier boy, not a hero, not a special man, not the patriot we should all look up to. He is alive, enjoying the simple things that surround him. The second part is the cold and raw reality of the war, the soldiers and what desperation looks like. No heroes, no cheering, no fireworks, just a bullet through his brain, the sound of a gunshot. Finally Sasson, Sassoon wants to talk directly to the readers, the ones who are alive, the ones who cheered when the "lads" marched off to war, but these people didn't face death, coldness, hunger, and fear.
There is also an important historical context surrounding suicide and military service. During the First World War, suicide and other forms of psychological collapse could carry enormous stigma, and the way a soldier's death was classified and treated depended on the circumstances and the military authorities involved. We should therefore be cautious about treating every wartime suicide as having been handled in exactly the same way.
The first and final parts of the poem are so closely connected. The boy begins with laughter and a carefree relationship with life. The trenches take that away.
I believe Sassoon must have been angry; he is saying that he saw what the people were cheering for. How frustrating, to say the least, must have seen young lads trying to escape, trying to find a way out of the hell of war, but no one understands; they just want to punish them.
What happens when a society sends young men into hell, celebrates them as they leave, and then looks away from what happens to them there?
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Siegfried Sassoon