Attack- Siegfried Sassoon

Attack

Siegfried Sassoon was well-known for his poems about the harsh reality of war. In wartime, people focused only on the glory of war, thinking it was disrespectful to the soldiers to talk about it negatively. Sassoon, however, was bold enough to portray the real atmosphere and feelings of the soldiers who fought and died on the battlefield.

At dawn the ridge emerges massed and dun

'Dawn' is generally associated with new beginnings and therefore hope; here, the dawn signals death for many of the soldiers on the battlefield. The 'ridge' is personified, emerging as the dun would. It is a threatening image, especially when followed by the word 'massed', which suggests a great size or a large assembly. 'Dun' is a dull grey-brown colour, which paints a gloomy and dark picture of the landscape.

In the wild purple of the glow'ring sun,

The sun is described as a 'wild purple' colour. 'Wild' suggests a lack of civility, reflecting Sassoon's negative views on war. Purple is not a colour normally associated with the sun; this creates an unnatural, almost nightmarish atmosphere. The fact that the sun is 'glow'ring' implies hostility, as if the sun itself disapproves of what is going on below.

Smouldering through spouts of drifting smoke that shroud

'Smouldering' suggests the sun is burning, perhaps out of anger. The smoke is shapeless, 'drifting' over the landscape. A 'shroud' is a traditional cloth used to wrap a dead body in; using the word here shows how the battlefield is a mass grave for most of the soldiers present.

The menacing scarred slope; and, one by one,

Alliteration of the 's' sound creates a hissing noise when read, like a snake. This adds to the adjective 'menacing', which is used to personify the 'scarred slope'. Sassoon describes a landscape that has been 'scarred' by the battles fought on it. He shows how it is not only the humans that suffer the consequences of war; the land suffers too.

Tanks creep and topple forward to the wire.

This line begins the description of warfare. The fact that it has been delayed so far suggests that Sassoon saw war more as a natural disaster than a fight between nations. The awkward motion of the tanks could either show…