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| Stories
from the Museum |
Medals
awarded to Siegfried Sassoon |
In 2007 The Royal Welch Fusiliers Regimental Museum was
fortunate to acquire, with the assistance of members of his
family, the Military Cross awarded to Siegfried Sassoon.
Siegfried Sassoon is probably the best known of the war poets of
1914-18. His public objection to the war in 1917 was a brave
stand against the might of the military and political
authorities of the period and paved the way for future
generations to think as individuals about the realities of war
rather than to accept, without questioning, the views of others.
Sassoon sowed the seeds of a peace movement that flourishes
today ninety years after his solitary protest.
Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (1886-1967), author, war poet and
anti-war objector, served as an officer with the Royal Welch
Fusiliers from 1915 until 1919 and won the Military Cross in May
1916 whilst attached to the 1st Battalion serving in France.
Nothing in his background had prepared Sassoon for the reality
of war, or indeed for life outside his privileged and
introverted world. The war, with its brutality, the suffering it
caused and its physical and emotional deprivations, brought
Sassoon to a crisis that he could not comprehend and which, as
he learned later from W H Rivers at Craiglockhart, he had lacked
the objectivity to deal with.
The Military Cross physically represents Sassoon’s crisis point.
Despite his shy, sensitive nature, and struggling with his
sexuality, Sassoon displayed extraordinary courage, heroism and
leadership on the Western Front. Nick-named “Mad Jack” by his
fellow officers, his exploits, fuelled by grief and often
suicidal, had a manic quality. He set out deliberately to win a
Military Cross with the same determination he had showed in
winning pre-war steeplechases. When it came, his Military Cross
was won for his part in a failed trench raid near Fricourt on
the Somme battlefront. With the raiders pinned down by enemy
fire and grenades he organized the collecting and bringing back
of the wounded and dead under heavy fire.
Sassoon believed that the only escape from the agonies of war
was to be at its centre where there was no time to rationalize.
His poetry written at the Front, sharpened and toughened by his
experience, was truer as a result. Returned to England with
respiratory problems in July 1916 Sassoon made contact with
pacifists, notably the Morrells, Bertrand Russell and leading
members of the Bloomsbury Group, who eagerly fed his
uncertainties. With his conviction about the rightness of the
war shaken, and wracked with guilt for not being at the Front,
Sassoon wrote about his Military Cross - “My absurd decoration
is the only thing that gives me any sense of responsibility at
all.”
Back at the Front Sassoon longed to go home or to be shot dead -
the ultimate release. His loathing of those who desired and
conspired for the war to continue fuelled his satire. A
selection of his poems, which he knew might cross the line of
acceptable comment, was published in October 1916.
A wound returned Sassoon home again in April 1917. By this time
he had rejected poetry as his sole means of protest. He set
about writing a statement for publication in which he would
declare “on behalf of soldiers” that the continuance of the war
was no longer justified. His pacifist supporters immediately saw
in it a powerful publicity coup - an anti-war statement made by
a known writer who was a war hero with the Military Cross.
Sassoon’s “Statement” was completed on 15th June 1917. Copies
were sent to supporters and the Statement was made public.
Fellow writer and RWF officer Robert Graves, along with other
friends scared for Sassoon, worked hard to persuade the military
authorities that his actions were the result of war weariness
and that his case should be treated as a medical condition
rather than as a rebellion. But Sassoon was determined to avoid
any suggestion of mental breakdown or exhaustion. A Medical
Tribunal was to be avoided at all cost. Sassoon wanted to be
court-martialed as the publicity aroused by a British officer
protesting against the war might encourage others to speak out.
Higher authorities wished to prevent the Statement from becoming
a public cause and Sassoon was given time to reconsider. By
playing it along the Army took the sting out of the protest.
Sassoon’s patience was thin. By now back with 3rd Bn RWF at
Litherland near Liverpool, he took the train to Formby, and in a
fit of frustration and anger, he tore off the Military Cross
ribbon from his tunic and threw it into the Mersey. “The poor
little thing fell weakly onto the water and floated away as
though aware of its own futility”. It was the most extreme act
of rebellion against the Army that Sassoon could conceive.
Eventually, convinced by Graves that he would never get a
court-martial and that if he continued to refuse a Medical Board
he would be silenced by being sent to a lunatic asylum, Sassoon
submitted. His Medical Board declared that Sassoon was suffering
from Neurasthenia and referred him to Craiglockhart War Hospital
and Dr W H R Rivers.
Most reports of the Formby incident state that Sassoon threw his
Military Cross into the River Mersey. That his protest involved
only the ribbon, and not the medal itself, is itself an
interesting reflection on his tortured ambiguity. The Military
Cross itself remained among Sassoon’s possessions until forty
years after his death.
Later in the year, to accompany the Military Cross the Museum
was loaned The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry awarded to
Siegfried Sassoon in 1957. Both medals are displayed in the
Regimental Museum in the Castle, Caernarfon. |
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Siegfried
Sassoon’s Military Cross and ID tag
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The
Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, awarded to Sassoon in
1957. The Gold Medal For Poetry was instituted by King
George V in 1933 at the suggestion of the then Poet
Laureate, Dr John Masefield. |
The
reverse of the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. The design
by Edmund Dulac (1882-1953), shows “Truth emerging from
her well and holding in her right hand the divine flame
of inspiration – Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty”. |
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