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Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon at the Fourth Army School, May 1916

Siegfried Sassoon, one of the best known poets to emerge from the First World War, enlisted in the ranks of the Sussex Yeomanry on the outbreak of war in August 1914, and was commissioned the following year into the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Serving as a subaltern on the Western Front, Sassoon gained a distinguished reputation, receiving the Military Cross in June 1916 and earning the nickname "Mad Jack" for his daring exploits in action.

Wounded in the shoulder in April 1917, Sassoon was evacuated back to Britain. During his convalescence his discontent with the course of the war became more pronounced, and in July he issued a public declaration of his belief that the war was being deliberately prolonged by those who had the power to end it. Narrowly avoiding a military court martial through the intervention of his friend Robert Graves, the authorities decided that Sassoon's behaviour was a direct result of neurasthenia ("shell-shock"), and he was ordered to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh where he was placed under the psychiatric treatment of Dr W H R Rivers.

The Department holds two main collections relating to Siegfried Sassoon. Of greatest significance are the original manuscript and typescript drafts of Sassoon's autobiographical novel Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. Complementing these is a series of letters written by, but mainly to, Sassoon, concerning his service in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and time in Craiglockhart; many of the letters which he received are from fellow soldiers and contemporaries who appear, under fictionalised names, in the Memoirs.

Medical case sheet [IWM Cat No.: P444 & Con Shelf; Dept of Documents]

There are also letters and published works written by Dr Rivers, the medical case sheet from Craiglockhart providing the historical and psychological background to Sassoon's protest, and his personal album which records public reaction to his anti-war stance.