Attack
Siegfried Sassoon * Track #1 On Counter-Attack and Other Poems
Download "Attack"
Album Counter-Attack and Other Poems
Attack by Siegfried Sassoon
Performed by
Siegfried SassoonAbout
Written as Sassoon was serving in the Royal Welch Fusiliers from 1915-1917, and first published in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918), “Attack”, like many of Sassoon’s poems, presents a vividly realistic depiction of the soldiers' experience, and created controversy for its lack of patriotism an...
Attack Annotated
At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun
In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,
Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud
The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,
Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.
The barrage roars and lifts. Then, clumsily bowed
With bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear,
Men jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire.
Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear,
They leave their trenches, going over the top,
While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists,
And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists,
Flounders in mud. O Jesus, make it stop!