Two Poems by Sassoon on Rememberance Day

Survivors

by Siegfried Sassoon

No doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain

Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.

Of course they're "longing to go out again,"--

These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk,

They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed

Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--

Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud

Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride ...

Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;

Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

(Craiglockart, October 1917.)

---

The Rear-guard

by Siegfried Sassoon

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.

(Hindenburg Line, April 1917.)