Suicide in the Trenches

Suicide in the Trenches is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, written during his First World War military service and published in his 1918 collection: Counter-Attack and Other Poems.

The Poem

I knew a simple soldier boy.....
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
And no one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Points of interest

Soldier Boy (line 1) - Portrays the innocence and young age of the soldier (explaining why he could not cope)
Lark (line 4) - Male Skylarks flew over battlefields singing their song. Crumps (line 6) - The noise made by shells falling in soft earth. Lack of rum (line 6) - Rum was given to the troops, sometimes before an attack and sometimes after, to steady nerves, increase confidence and numb feeling. Kindling (line 9) - Shining or enthusiastic.
When soldier lads march by (line 10) - This probably refers to the enthusiastic parades of new soldiers marching through town and city centers before going off to fight..

Cultural references

Siegfried Sassoon provided much influence to Pete Doherty, Carl Barat of The Libertines. An early Libertines song, 'Lean as a Runner Bean', contains a line from the poem ("The hell where youth and laughter go"), and Doherty would later put music to the poem during a BBC Radio 4 interview. You can listen to this interpretation at Albion Arks.

Doherty and Barat also recited the poem, line by line, to each other at the NME Awards in 2004 upon collecting an award.

In 2009, Brian Blessed read the poem within the song "Army of the Damned", part of the album Beneath the Veiled Embrace by the band Pythia.