Poem ~ Trooper Siegfried Sassoon - Sunday, 1 November 1914

Siegfried Sassoon May 1915 

by George Charles Beresford

Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon [Accessed on 15 November 2014]

The hunting season

Had gone and in 1914

Created a debt for

Siegfried Sassoon.

Already a poet,

With poems published,

As he went to war,

On a roasting August day.

The man and poet

Like many had no prediction

Of what might come.

Another new start

Leaving the boredom

Of days behind at Weirleigh.

Already a trooper

By August 14,

Sassoon stepped forth,

Into the Sussex Yeomanry.

Ready for war as the horses

Were ready for him

To carry fetch and groom

For officers and them  - 

Yet he was still to make

The frontline of war,

When, in October Sassoon

Was putting some horses

Through their field work

Only to promptly fall

And break an arm.

Given time to brood

In slow recuperation.

The climax of what

Might have been now

Seemingly far away

Sassoon considered

A commission with an

Infantry division

Might get him quickly

To the front.

The idea bloomed,

In his writing a letter,

Addressed to the

Royal Welch Fusiliers.

Came the Adjutant’s

Reply, to his keen

Idea, the suggestion

Being for him to wait

And join May 1915.

by Jamie Mann.

Roberts, J.S., 1999. Siegfried Sassoon. Richard Cohen Books.  Ch. 4

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