 Captain Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895 – 1915)
Biography
Charles Sorley was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and was educated at Marlborough College (as was Siegfried Sassoon). Whilst at college Sorley was an avid cross-country runner (a theme that cropped up several times within his poetry).
After college Charles studied at Schwerin in Germany up until the outbreak of the First World War. He returned to England, joining the Suffolk Regiment, and arrived at the Western Front in France, positioned as a Lieutenant, rising to the rank of Captain at the mere age of twenty.
Sorley was shot in the head by a sniper at the Battle of Loos, October 13th, 1915.
His poetry is seen as the forerunner to Sassoon and Owen, and his style less sentimental than the works of poets such as Rupert Brooke. Sorley’s famous last poem ‘When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead’ was retrieved from his person just after death.
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