Personal experience in the war in Counter- Attack Essay Example for Free

Personal experience in the contend in Counter- Attack attemptBy considering iodin of the poems that you have read, explain how the poet presents their view of the conflict Counter-AttackSiegfried Sassoon 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 stark tune of report-like statements to ultimately convey the futility of the conflict, and the massive waste of life.Sassoon immediately establishes the sense impression of emotional detachment in the conflict the opening government notes simply state that they had gained (their) first objective hours before, provoking iniquity at the fact that soldiers were coerce to crusade in inhumane conditions and ultimately were made to detach themselves from the terror of watching their friends being murdered. A semi-omniscient narration is maintained to establish the collective horror o f the war, the fact that all soldiers would almost always face the same fate as the previous had and remains set throughout the poem as the contrast to the emotional detachment presented. The poet describes how at first even before the attack begins the soldiers ar already blind with smoke, yet they ar made to go to work as soon as dawn begins all the soldiers are immediately forced to join in with the clink of shovels, a sign of the rough conditions of living in the trenches, while the militaristic onomatopoeia coincides with the perceived order bourness, much(prenominal) as the bombers posted and Lewis guns well placed.The poet therefore establishes the horror of the almost methodical methods to which the war was fought, and that the death that would come later made to seem almost mechanical. Sassoon also 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 kneeling across the bank in order to keep their morale up, they are forced to stimulate sardonic, sarcastically describing the weather as the jolly old rain, yet serving to reinforce the message that the conflict has forced people to become disconnect 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 one rotten with dead putting surface clumsy legs. The use of rotten inherently suggests that the battlefield is full of bodies, many of which are likely to be decomposing which unaccompanied heightens the horror in which these soldiers must come through their daily lives. They are in effect also forced to separate themselves from the sights death is a normality in warfare, and the raw description of various soldiers sprawled and grovelled on the trenches defines the sheer brutality they face.The men are reduced from strong, able men who were previously high- booted to being helpless in the face of war, some even exposit as eventually dying face downward, a possible reference to the conflict only when bringing doom to their lives. The battlefield is not only strewn with countless bodies, but also described as treacherous itself the mud is personified as sucking the fallen soldiers down into it with little remorse, creating a sense of the indignity of the soldiers deaths. The soldiers that are still alive are simply wallowing like trodden sand-bags, indication of the hopelessness and lack of control in the situation they face. They are also metaphorically loosely- change, hinting possibly that these men are also physically as well as mentally exhausted, hence the soldier having knelt against the bank.The sudden switch from the collection of soldiers to the single one in the second stanza points towards Sassoons idea of the wrongs of war the stark realness that war costs numerous lives and each soldier is in effect a whole life, the on e about 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 shells, simply reduced as he recoils from the initial shock of warfare.Yet rather than get 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 confront with such a large strangled horror. The battlefield along with its weaponry spouts dark earth and wire with gusts from hell the poet explains the terrible nature of the war, likened to hell bust up 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, grotesque 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 add further to the futility, even the officer of the trench is blundering, somewhat dark comedy in the face of terrible times, and he continues only by gasping and bawling 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 sure 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 mix-up indicated by the sudden ellipses in his thoughts and he remembered his riflerapid fire Notably the soldier himself cannot remember to hold onto his own rifle shock is unite 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. Heavy 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 show the real brutal nature of war people become numbers rather than the real human beings presented in the second stanza.