Personal experience in the war in Counter- Attack Essay

By considering single of the meters that you have read, explain how the poet presents their adopt of the contest Counter-AttackSiegfried Sas before long presents his personal experience in the war in Counter- Attack with raw brutal imagery of the battlefield, the numerous sensory feelings provoking terror and outrage at the war, coupled with the destitute contrast of report-like expressments to in the long run convey the futility of the conflict, and the massive waste of life.Sassoon immediately provees the smack of emotional come awayment in the conflict the opening lines simply state that they had gained (their) outgrowth objective hours before, provoking horror at the point that soldiers were obligate to push in inhumane conditions and ultimately were made to detach themselves from the terror of watching their friends world murdered.A semi-omniscient narration is maintained to establish the collective horror of the war, the fact that all soldiers would closely alwa ys brass instrument the same fate as the previous had and remains set end-to-end the poem as the contrast to the emotional detachment presented. The poet describes how at send-off even before the attack begins the soldiers atomic number 18 already blind with good deal, yet they are made to continue to work as soon as dawn begins all the soldiers are immediately forced to hook up with in with the clink of shovels, a sign of the hard conditions of living in the trenches, while the militaristic onomatopoeia coincides with the perceived installliness, such as the bombers posted and Lewis guns rise up placed.The poet therefore establishes the horror of the almost methodical methods to which the war was fought, and that the terminal that would come later made to seem almost mechanical. Sassoon similarly emphasises that these soldiers are simply normal men, many whom are young and forced to fight when he describes how prior to the counter-attack, there was a yawning soldier kneel ing crosswise the bank in order to keep their morale up, they are forced to become sardonic, sarcastically describing the weather as the jolly old pelting, yet serving to reinforce the message that the conflict has forced people to become detached from their emotions and feelings.The horror of the battlefield is also clearly defined Sassoon describes the average life in the trenches even before the counter-attack to be genius rotten with dead green clumsy legs. The use of rotten inherently suggests that the battlefield is full of bodies, many of which are likely to be decomposing which plainly heightens the horror in which these soldiers must live their daily lives. They are in effect also forced to separate themselves from the sights death is a due north in warfare, and the raw description of various soldiers sprawled and grovelled along the trenches defines the sheer brutality they face.The men are reduced from strong, able men who were previously high-booted to being helple ss in the face of war, some even set forth as eventually dying face downward, a possible seed to the conflict totally bringing doom to their lives. The battlefield is not save strewn with countless bodies, but also described as tr to each oneerous itself the bodge is personified as sucking the fallen soldiers down into it with little remorse, creating a gumption of the indignity of the soldiers deaths. The soldiers that are still alive are simply wallowing like trodden sand-bags, meter reading of the hopelessness and lack of control in the situation they face. They are also metaphorically loosely-filled, hinting possibly that these men are also physically as well as mentally exhausted, hence the soldier having knelt against the bank.The sudden bedevil from the collection of soldiers to the single one in the second stanza points towards Sassoons desire of the wrongs of war the stark reality that war costs numerous lives and each soldier is in effect a whole life, the one vir tually to be lost in the war is as just as important. To describe the intensity of the conflict, the poet describes how this single soldier responds with such fear in that he becomes mute in the clamour of s perditions, simply reduced as he recoils from the initial injure of warfare.Yet rather than recovering from his initial shock, ultimately the soldier is described by Sassoon as helpless, as he crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear, reduced almost to primal instinct when approach with such a large strangled horror. The battlefield along with its munition spouts dark earth and wire with gusts from hell the poet explains the terrible nature of the war, likened to hell wrecking its destruction onto the battlefield, and in the remnants of the carnage the soldier can only hear the butchered, frantic gestures of the dead an oxymoron to establish the fact that death on the battlefield is so sudden and brutal it is literally incomprehensible.Sassoons view of the conflict is described as being ultimately futile the first stanza already indicates that there are numerous bulged, clotted heads scattered throughout, grand imagery that also provides an ominous undertone to the counter-attack. These bodies are also described as sleeping rather than the stark reality that they are dead, pointing to the normality of the situation. To cater further to the futility, even the officer of the trench is blundering, somewhat dark waggery in the face of terrible times, and he continues only by gasping and wailing in shock. In contrast to the dead lifeless nature of the soldiers, it is the ammunition that is fully alive in this case bullets spat at them, traversing genuine as fate, and never a dud, adding to the certainty of death in the conflict.The soldier Sassoon describes ultimately meets his fate in a spout of disorderliness indicated by the sudden ellipses in his thoughts and he remembered his riflerapid bang Notably the soldier himself cannot remember t o hold onto his own rifle shock is combined with futility in that the soldier cannot arm himself and is therefore helpless, akin to almost all the other soldiers in the trenches. His fate is one that ends with him having bled to death. doughy consonants throughout the line along with repetition emphasise the futile nature in which he dies Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned.The poem establishes Sassoons opinion of the conflict being one filled with horror, forced emotional detachment and ultimately the underlying futility of the war in the soldiers confusion and the mechanical killing presented. The poem never aligns with any set line structure in order to add to this confusion, and the poem is closed with the simple factual statement the counter-attack had failed, in line with the opening line to create a contrast and award the real brutal nature of war people become number rather than the real human beings presented in the second stanza.