grgr4 Proof of the pudding (was Re: GRGR(4): Episode 12

[Paul Mackin]

On Tue, 22 Jun 1999, rj wrote:


<Anybody know whether Siegfried Sassoon really did refuse to
> fight? Unlike Owen and Brooke, he did survive the Great War. He threw
> away his Military Cross in 1917 and denounced the war administration in
> his 'A Soldier's Declaration', after which outburst (and at the
> intervention of Robert Graves to deflect a possible court martial) he
> was sent to Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh to be treated for
> shellshock (!) before returning to Flanders.

I believe the return to the front, where he was wounded, was his
wish. According to an author's note about the real persons in her
novel _The Eye in the Door_, Pat Barker states: At Craiglockhart, Sassoon
reached the conclusion that, although his views on the war had not
changed, it was nevertheless his duty to return to active service, where
he could at least share the suffering of his men.

					P.