Independent study: Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Rear Guard”

Groping along the tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air. Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes too vague to know, A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed; And he, exploring fifty feet below The rosy gloom of battle overhead. Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw some one lie Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug, And stooped to give the sleeper's arm a tug. "I'm looking for headquarters." No reply. "God blast your neck!" (For days he'd had no sleep.) "Get up and guide me through this stinking place." Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap, And flashed his beam across the livid face Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore Agony dying hard ten days before; And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound. Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

Jamie Mackenzie

Independent study: Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Rear Guard

This poem is about a soldier who seems very disorientated, trying to navigate himself through the trenches to reach the fresh air outside. Because of this, the poem gives the reader a feeling of panic and urgency towards the soldier. It’s written in third person which leads the reader to believe that Sassoon is talking about either a friend or an acquaintance.

The poem has a ‘bouncy’ feel to it because Sassoon used rhyme throughout. The use of rhyme like “creatures underground...in muffled sound… in his hair…the twilight air” not only gives a bouncy feel, it also causes the reader to read the poem faster as it flows well and with good rhythm. This is very fitting for this poem as it links in well with the feel of panick.

“Groping” is a very carefully selected word to start off the poem. It’s a very powerful word which dives right into the poem without any warning right into the action. Sassoon may have decided to use this to show that the person talked about is struggling with what he’s doing. It may seem a small thing to think about but actually Sassoon is giving us an insight into war time and how everything was a struggle, but if you weren’t there, you never really know how bad things got.

Sassoon describes the torch in a similar way to how one would describe an eye. It says how “He winked his prying torch with patching glare”. Winking, prying and glaring are all verbs related to an eye and it shows that this is the soldiers’ substitute to vision as it’s pitch black. Because the torch flashes on and off, it also gives another sense of potential threat.

Smell is also involved when it says he “sniffed the unwholesome air”. This suggests that he’s starting to smell gas from an attack. All the senses are being mentioned because he’s trying to get up to fresh air and all he has to help him is his senses whereas a lot of the time he would have other soldiers to assist him. This could make him feel quite isolated or ‘bare’ if you will as it’s just a trench filling with gas, against him using impaired vision, touch and smell to try and escape.

The fact that Sassoon tells us that the soldier is “fifty feet below” emphasizes really how far away the soldier is from above ground where the fight is taking place. Again, this shows the reader exactly how isolated the soldier really is. In fact, he’s so isolated that the fight is actually described as “The rosy gloom of battle overhead.” Now while this may not be a particularly positive description, it doesn’t make the battle sound overwhelmingly bad. The reader knows that actually, it’s bound to be a horrible, bloody battle. But to the soldier, he would probably give anything to be up there fighting rather than down in the darkness trying to escape death. This causes the reader to sympathize with the soldier as his best option at that time would be to be up there, risking his life in a battle.

“Tripping, he grabbed the wall” is a very interesting way to start a line as again, Sassoon has used a verb at the beginning. Just like at the start of the poem when “Groping” was used, it has the same effect of showing the reader that the soldier is in trouble again, creating more and more suspense.

“Unloading hell behind him step by step” suggests, like before, that the soldier has just escaped another world and managed to get back into the real world, even though it was just a trench. He now feels like he is free and is now getting rid of all the bad things that has happened to him. Up until this line, the tone has been very dark and negative as the reader doesn’t know if he’s going to make it out. However, this line changes that and relieves the reader as they now know he made it out safely. It doesn’t say much, but the fact that the reader knows he’s escaped is powerful enough to put a positive twist on the end of this poem.