'Survivors' - Siegfried Sassoon

Survivors

No doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain

Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.

Of course they’re ‘longing to go out again,’ –

These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.

They’ll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed

Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died, –

Their dreams that drip with murder; and they’ll be proud

Of glorious war that shatter’d all their pride…

Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;

Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.

Given that we celebrated the 75th anniversary of VE day in May, this poem is quite topical, not only because of its close tie with war (even though this is based on WW1,

not WW2) but also because it is a very moving poem that describes the struggles soldiers had with mental health conditions such as PTSD after the war; something which, as contemporary readers, we have more knowledge about than at the time the poem was written which I find very interesting.

The first thing that struck me about this poem was actually how it is laid out on the page. Every other line is indented, suggesting some sort of fragmentation which becomes even more evident as you read the poem. Each line that is indented describes the suffering of the soldiers and their inability to recover back to the men they used to be whilst the line before this description always suggests that the soldiers are fine and will be better in no time, so the indentation serves as a visible sign of the soldiers' detachment from the rest of the world, or rather, the rest of the world's lack of understanding about what the soldiers are going through. As modern readers, we understand that there is more than just physical injury haunting these soldiers so the indentation also reveals a distinction between the visible physical debilitation and the invisible, almost unreachable mental debilitation, making this poem, in my view, extremely pertinent.

There is an ironic, sarcastic tone to the poem in phrases such as "no doubt" and "of course" which really highlight how Sassoon, an injured soldier himself, had a greater understanding of what was happening inside the soldiers' heads and the psychological trauma they were experiencing. The sarcasm shows the difficulty for

the soldiers trying to live up to this societal expectation that they are indestructible men who can simply 'bounce back' after viewing the horrors of war. There is almost an ominous sense to this complacency on the part of the public; a sense that the soldiers will not properly have all their needs cared for and will be left, haunted by their memories, which was and is the case for so many war veterans.

The imagery of the supernatural in the references to "haunted nights" and "ghosts of friends that died" is, I think, a symbol of the psychological trauma they are experiencing; their minds are forever "haunted" by the horrific nature of war and the things they were exposed to. The phrase "ghosts of friends that died" is extremely emotive as it just shows how much the soldiers went through and the trauma they experienced; in order to save their country, they had to watch their friends be brutally murdered - something from which I doubt anyone can recover.

Another idea that I found extremely interesting was one that ran through the whole poem: men being reduced to boys. The poem is littered with references to childhood such as "learning to walk", showing the extreme effects of war; they are going back in time to being vulnerable little children having to "learn to walk" which depicts just how much the soldiers gave up for us - those that didn't die gave up independence or mental peace and so many other things. I think this reference also serves as a stark reminder about how young some boys were when they signed up to fight; they were children themselves. The last two lines really accentuate this idea as they are syntactically the same, but the words are changed:

"Men who went out to battle, grim and glad; Children with eyes that hate you, broken and mad"

Clearly, by changing "men" to "children", Sassoon is solidifying his argument that war reduced the men to helpless children, dependent on others for survival - a very moving image - but it also shows how the men are having to start their lives all over again, repeating the same stages they had already overcome when they were younger. The other noticeable change is the conversion from "grim and glad" to "broken and mad". In hindsight, the first image is quite a sad one as it depicts the optimism of the men as they went out to fight, ignorant of the horrors they would face both during the war and after it, and the second image conveys how the war tore

them apart, both physically and mentally: "broken" could refer to their physical state but also their emotions and mental state, while "mad" could portray their anger at what has happened, or how they were viewed by others if they suffered from mental health conditions such as PTSD.

In his poem, Sassoon subverts the wrong perception that soldiers would return back to normal and recover fully after witnessing the horrors of war, as shown through the continual use of juxtaposition which highlights the distortion of the soldiers' new lives from their old lives and the rest of society. People used to believe that things such as shell shock and PTSD would just disappear when, in reality, the visions of war continued to haunt war veterans for the rest of their lives which just emphasizes the extreme effect the war had on the soldiers; they started out as physically and mentally strong, healthy men, and returned as broken boys struggling to look after themselves and haunted by the terrors of war. The imagery is extremely emotive and moving – the idea of these men going off to fight to protect the country and coming back as vulnerable boys is a very thought-provoking image tainted with sadness at what they lost but also tinged with a wealth of respect and gratitude for the extent of what they gave to ensure our freedom today.