#war hero

Siegfried Sassoon was English poet, writer, and soldier who won awards for bravery during World War One. But he spoke out and wrote about the horrors of the trenches.

Sassoon was motivated by patriotism when he joined the British Army at the start of the Great War. A broke arm (due to a training riding accident) prevented him from being immediately deployed to the front. By mid 1915 he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion as a Second Lieutenant. There he met and developed a friendship with fellow poet Robert Graves.

Sassoon poetry was greatly impacted by the realities of the war. Until then his poetry could be described as romantic and sweet. But it shifted towards revealing the ugly truths of the war. He was no longer swayed patriotic propaganda and wrote about rotting corpses, mangled limbs, cowardice and suicide.

Despite his personal feeling, or perhaps because of them, Sassoon performed bravely, once single-handely capturing of a German trench. In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry during a raid on the enemy’s trenches. He continued while under fire bringing in wounded soldier.

Robert Graves described Sassoon suicidal in his bravery.

Later in 1916, while convalescing in a English hospital, Sassoon decided that he would not return to the front. Encouraged by leading passifist, Sassoon wrote “Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration” where he declared:

“I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority… I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest.”

The letter was sent to his commanding officer, the press, and even read aloud in the House of Commons. Rather than be court Marshallese’s for treason, Sassoon was sent to a psychiatric hospital to be treated for shell-shock.

Sassoon was homosexual. In Britain is was a crime of gross indecency and could be punish with jail time and hard labor (as was Oscar Wilde’s 20 years earlier). Sassoon had a number of relationships with men. The most significant were with Welsh actor Ivor Norvello, English actor Glen Byam Shaw, and Stephen Tennant, a socialite known for his decadent lifestyle.

After 6 years together, Tennant ended the relationship. It was reported that Sassoon was devastated. Three year later, in 1931, Sassoon married Hester Gatty. She was 20 years younger. They had one son. By the end of WWII, they separated and lived apart.

In 2019, a research student discovered an unpublished poem by Sassoon. Sassoon written the night he had dinner with his soon to be lover Glen Byam Shaw. Sassoon was 39 and Shaw 20.

“Though you have left me, I’m not yet alone:

For what you were befriends the firelit room;

And what you said remains & is my own

To make a living gladness of my gloom

The firelight leaps & shows your empty chair

And all our harmonies of speech are stilled:

But you are with me in the voiceless air

My hands are empty, but my heart is filled.”

Sassoon died from stomach cancer in 1967.

Check this link for a profile I wrote earlier about Ivor Norvello:

https://100gayicons.tumblr.com/post/659069305971949568/in-the-1930s-ivor-novello-was-named-britains