Siegfried Sassoon

[irishmen1916]

Just came across this this morning on the BBC News site, interesting story about the papers of Siegfriel Sassoon, anybody know if anything happened to him for refusing to go back to the front in 1917 ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/a...ure/8340852.stm

Peter

[Richard Matlock]

Yes

they sent him to an mental hospital thats were he meet Wilfred Owen , very interesting chap, refused to go back but also got an MC and was recomended for a VC , get a biography on him you will be amazed

Rich M

[ulsterlad2]

Cheers Rich.

Was just about to ask if he had refused during the time period when he met Owen or before.

[ian turner]

Yep, read the poems, read his "Memoirs of an Infantry Officer" - he met Owen at Craiglockhart Hospital (treating shell-shocked officers).

[corisande]

Siegfried Sassoon on Wikipedia has a brief account of his life, and includes this snippet

At the end of a spell of convalescent leave, Sassoon declined to return to duty; instead, encouraged by pacifist friends such as Bertrand Russell and Lady Ottoline Morrell, he sent a letter to his commanding officer titled A Soldier’s Declaration, which was forwarded to the press and read out in Parliament by a sympathetic MP. Rather than court-martial Sassoon, the Under-Secretary of State for War, Ian Macpherson decided that he was unfit for service and had him sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh, where he was officially treated for neurasthenia ("shell shock"). Before declining to return to service he had thrown the ribbon from his Military Cross into the river Mersey.

[irishmen1916]

Thanks for that lads, will have to do some more reading up on him.

Peter

[truthergw]

Thanks for that lads, will have to do some more reading up on him.

Peter

Try his " Complete Memoirs of George Sherston", a thinly disguised autobiography.

[roughdiamond]

Just came across this this morning on the BBC News site, interesting story about the papers of Siegfriel Sassoon, anybody know if anything happened to him for refusing to go back to the front in 1917 ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/a...ure/8340852.stm

Peter

There's a dramatised film account of Sassoon and Owens time at Craiglochart Castle called "Regeneration", based on a book of the same name by "Pat Barker" there are other characters it focuses on like Johnnie Lee Millers fictional character "Billy Prior", Jonathan Pryce as Dr William Rivers one of the real life leading lights on Shellshock and there's even an appearance of Robert Graves played by Dougray Scott, not hugely commercially successful but worth a look.

Sam

[SiegeGunner]

Pat Barker, not Baker, and personally I think the dramatisation of Regeneration, which in book form is a trilogy, deserves more than the faint praise offered in the last post. As has often been noted on this forum, a film that would tick all the boxes for us would be unlikely to be a commercial success - QED.

[per ardua per mare per terram]

This evening's BBC Radio4's PM programme had of his 'Soldiers Declaration'. Clicking the link should give you the chance to listen again; it is 14 minutes into the programme:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00njdb4#synopsis

[roughdiamond]

Pat Barker, not Baker, and personally I think the dramatisation of Regeneration, which in book form is a trilogy, deserves more than the faint praise offered in the last post. As has often been noted on this forum, a film that would tick all the boxes for us would be unlikely to be a commercial success - QED.

I didn't try to give an impression of "faint praise", I actually think the film is fantastic but as I said "not hugely commercially successful" it is though a WW1 buffs film, especially the polar opposite difference in treatment for shellshock advocated by Rivers and his compatriot Dr Lewis Yealland.

BTW for our American based members the films called "Behind the Lines" in the U.S.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120001/

[CBooth]

There's a photo of him with Ottoline Morrell and the painter Dorothy Brett at Garsington Manor here:

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/l...e=sit&rNo=3

This would have probably been taken in June 1917 while he was on convalescent leave (from which he refused to return to the front).

There's another shot here of Sassoon and Robert Graves together shortly after the war, taken by Lady Ottoline Morrell:

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/l...11&role=sit

There's quite a lot of material on his relationship with Lady O in her biography (by Miranda Seymour, pub 1992). Garsington Manor was offered by the Morrells to a number of conscientious objectors as a place to live and work on the land, so it would have been fertile ground for Sassoon drafting his declaration. There are some quite amusing accounts in the literature of how useless many of them were as manual labourers at the Manor.