Form = Meaning



I won't lie, when I first glanced at the title of this poem, I thought it would be another poem about love and the mere details of the feeling. Boy, was I WAY off or what?

  





You see this man here on your left? He put the pen to Base Details. Although it is stated above, I'll just tell you again that his name is Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). After reading line 9, "And when the war is done and youth stone dead,/" I assumed he was a soldier in the Great War. After some research I learned that Sassoon did indeed fight in the first World War and after being wounded, Sassoon wrote a letter to the war department refusing to fight any longer. After his protest, Sassoon was hospitalized and began writing his highly accredited war poems.  

In Base Details, Sassoon's usage of sarcasm is what mainly conveys his tone and message about war as a whole. More specifically, Sassoon uses polite sarcasm, which is when the audience realizes the speaker's polite statement/remark was actually sarcastic AFTER the fact. For example; let's begin with the very first three lines:

 

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,/ I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,/ And speed glum heroes up the line to death./

 

Here, Sassoon is explaining how he would be acting if he were an older soldier. Initially, I simply thought that he was describing what he would do if he did possess the physical qualities given in that first sentence. Then I realized that Sassoon is actually mocking older soldiers. Their physical appearance and stamina (or lack thereof) is being mocked, as well as the fact that older soldiers tend to send off "glum heroes", younger soldiers, off to war to fight and be killed first, while they "live with scarlet Majors at the Base". Reading this the first time around, I hadn't quite realized the message in these lines. It is obvious that Sassoon's tone is sarcastic, which led me to see that he is depicting old men who wear a soldier's uniform but do not actually fight the war. He is showing that the older soldiers just sit and direct the younger ones into battle in which they will soon die in.

 

Later on in the poem, Sassoon begins to portray how an older soldier would act while the youngsters are off at war, actually fighting. Then after the older soldier reads on the Roll of Honour, he'd say "'Poor young chap,'", "'I used to know his father well;/" Obviously by placing himself in an older soldier's shoes, Sassoon makes sarcastic remarks about younger soldiers who have passed. It is funny how he referenced knowing the "Poor young chap"'s father, when he is actually the one who directed the chap into his death. This is a case of polite sarcasm because although it seems as though the older soldier genuinely cares about the young chaps, he actually doesn't.

 

Sassoon finishes his poem with "And when the war is done and youth stone dead,/ I'd toddle safely home and die-in bed./" The imagery in this sentence is actually quite pleasant; a little old man, toddling home and dying peacefully in his own bed. Although one's first judgment would be that Sassoon would have wanted an old man from war to die peacefully in his bed, he is actually mocking it. For this old man to have led many young soldiers into battle which only led to their quick death, to be able to die peacefully in his own bed is outrageously unfair. Sassoon's usage of polite sarcasm in Base Details helped to convey what it is like at the Base during a war and thus support its title.