Counter-Attack and Other Poems – Reviewed
We’d gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps;
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
“Stand-to and man the fire-step!” On he went …
Gasping and bawling, “Fire-step … counter-attack!”
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
“O Christ, they’re coming at us!” Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle … rapid fire …
And started blazing wildly … then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans …
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.
Snug at the club two fathers sat,
Gross, goggle-eyed, and full of chat.
One of them said: “My eldest lad
Writes cheery letters from Bagdad.
But Arthur’s getting all the fun
At Arras with his nine-inch gun.”
“Yes,” wheezed the other, “that’s the luck!
My boy’s quite broken-hearted, stuck
In England training all this year.
Still, if there’s truth in what we hear,
The Huns intend to ask for more
Before they bolt across the Rhine.”
I watched them toddle through the door—
These impotent old friends of mine.
“Good-morning; good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He’s a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
* * * * *
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
When life was a cobweb of stars for Beauty who came
In the whisper of leaves or a bird’s lone cry in the glen,
On dawn-lit hills and horizons girdled with flame
I sought for the triumph that troubles the faces of men.
With death in the terrible flickering gloom of the fight
I was cruel and fierce with despair; I was naked and bound;
was stricken: and Beauty returned through the shambles of night;
In the faces of men she returned; and their triumph I found.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
You may find the complete collectiong preserved as a part of the Gutenberg project here.
These poems are a part of a collection Counter-Attack and Other Poems, and can be found on Goodreads here, with this review posted here.
Analysis
Siegfried Sassoon’s Counter-Attack and Other Poems offers a harsh, unvarnished look at war, especially World War I. Written from his experience as a soldier in the trenches, Sassoon’s poems cut through the myths of heroism and glory that were so often associated with war. Instead, he paints a picture of soldiers who are physically and mentally scarred, caught in an endless cycle of violence and trauma. These poems aren’t just about the horrors of battle—they’re about the toll war takes on people, both during and long after it’s over.
One of the most striking themes in Counter-Attack is the sense of futility. War doesn’t make anyone a hero; it strips people down to their basic instincts for survival. In poems like Dreamers, Sassoon shows soldiers who once had hopes and dreams, but now they’ve been reduced to mere survivors, “citizens of death’s grey land.” What they remember of home—the warmth of a firelit room or a clean bed—feels impossibly far away. The soldiers’ lives before the war seem distant, and now all that matters is getting through each day. There’s no glory in it, just the grim reality of trying to stay alive.
This sense of chaos and disorientation is mirrored in the structure of Sassoon’s poetry. Many of the poems are fragmented, with short, jarring lines that reflect the unstable, unpredictable nature of the soldier’s world. In Counter-Attack, for example, Sassoon shifts abruptly from one scene to the next—one moment, soldiers are fighting in the trenches, and the next, they’re retreating or reflecting on the carnage. The unevenness of the rhythm and the fractured lines make it feel like the reader is trapped in the confusion and terror of the front lines. This style isn’t just a formal choice; it’s an attempt to capture what the soldiers go through mentally and emotionally. The world around them is chaotic, and so are their thoughts.
The tone of Sassoon’s poetry is bitter and disillusioned. There’s no romanticizing of war in these poems—only anger, frustration, and sorrow. In Base Details, for example, Sassoon targets the officers who stay safe behind the front lines while sending young soldiers to die. Through sharp sarcasm, he paints a picture of an officer who takes pleasure in his comfortable position, indifferent to the suffering of those he commands. Similarly, in The General, Sassoon mocks the incompetence of military leadership, showing how a general’s mistakes can lead to the deaths of his men. There’s no sense of honor or nobility in these men’s actions, only a dangerous disconnect between the people who make the decisions and the soldiers who pay the price.
But it’s not all anger. Sassoon also captures the quiet, haunting moments of despair that soldiers face. In How to Die, for example, the idea of death isn’t romanticized or even feared. Instead, the soldier accepts it as part of his duty, as though it’s just another step in a cycle that never ends. It’s almost a resignation, a recognition that death in war has been stripped of its meaning and is just something that happens. In Wirers, the soldiers are reduced to mechanical beings, numb and exhausted, but still carrying out their work under constant threat of death. There’s no escape from the madness of war—they can’t stop, and they can’t look away.
The emotional toll of war is also central to Sassoon’s poetry. Many of the soldiers in his poems are physically alive but emotionally shattered. In Survivors, Sassoon paints a picture of men who have made it through the battle but are left haunted by the violence they’ve witnessed. They are “grim and glad” on the outside, but on the inside, they are lost, forever changed by the horrors they’ve seen. In Repression of War Experience, the soldier tries to suppress the memories of war, but they keep creeping back, always there, “whispering” in the background. This constant trauma is what Sassoon emphasizes—the way war doesn’t just kill bodies, it breaks minds.
One of Sassoon’s most striking critiques is aimed at those who are untouched by the war. In The Fathers, he shows the civilians back home who, though they may express sympathy, are too far removed from the reality of the war to understand what the soldiers are going through. They have their own romanticized ideas about the war, believing that their sons are fighting for a noble cause. But these people don’t see the truth of what’s happening on the front lines. Similarly, in Does It Matter?, Sassoon highlights the indifference of society to the suffering of soldiers, both physical and psychological. The poem’s repetitive structure, with its dismissive answers to the speaker’s questions, shows how society continues to move on while the soldiers are left behind to deal with the lasting scars of war.
Yet, even with all the anger and sadness, Sassoon’s poems are not without moments of humanity. In The Triumph, for example, amidst the chaos of battle, there are brief glimpses of connection. Despite everything, the soldiers retain their humanity, finding small moments of beauty and meaning in each other’s faces. This tension between the dehumanizing effects of war and the moments of humanity that still survive is part of what makes Sassoon’s poetry so powerful. Even in the darkest circumstances, the soldiers are still people, still capable of feeling and connecting in small ways.
Ultimately, Counter-Attack and Other Poems is a stark, unflinching critique of war. Sassoon doesn’t just show the physical destruction of battle—he dives deep into the psychological toll it takes on soldiers, the trauma that follows them long after they leave the front lines. Through vivid imagery, sharp irony, and fragmented structure, he forces readers to confront the truth of war, rejecting the sanitized versions of battle that society often clings to. The soldiers in these poems are not heroic warriors, but broken men trying to survive in a world that has lost its sense of meaning. The collection is a powerful reminder of the real cost of war—not just in lives lost, but in the emotional and mental scars that never fade.
Photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash
