Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC (1886 – 1967)

THE HERO

‘JACK fell as he’d have wished,’ the Mother said,
And folded up the letter that she’d read.
‘The Colonel writes so nicely.’ Something broke
In the tired voice that quavered to a choke.
She half looked up. ‘We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.’ Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He’d told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt.
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how ‘Jack’, cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he’d tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

UK Buyers Purchase the Book Siegfried Sassoon by Max Egremont (Author) SIEGFRIED SASSOON DENIED that he was 'a typical Jew' and disliked to be thought rich, but at the end of the nineteenth century, when he was born, the name of Sassoon meant great riches: a 'gilded' Jewish family linked to the raffish Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and to an exotic, slightly mysterious past... US Buyers

Other War Poets

John Mcrae		Wilfred Owen		Edward Thomas		Herbert Read		Isaac Rosenberg
William Hodgson		Siegfried Sassoon		Rupert Brooke		Alan Seeger		Charles Sorley