Quotes by Siegfried Sassoon
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
I believe that the purpose for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
Man, it seemed, had been created to jab the life out of Germans.
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath, I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line of death.
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.
You are too young to fall asleep for ever; And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.
"Their name liveth for ever," the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied...
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back With dying eyes and lolling heads, those ashen-gray...
O, but Everyone Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
And there'd be no more jokes in Music-halls To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.
In me the tiger sniffs the rose.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers.
