Siegfried Sassoon was a British poet and novelist who is best known today for his angry, satirical, and compassionate poems concerning the horrors of World War One. "Base Details," written in the poet's diary in 1917 and published in the collection Counter-Attack and Other Poems in 1918, homes in on the unjust hierarchy in the military chain of command.
In the poem, the speaker imagines himself as a British Army major in the First World War. Sassoon uses this scenario to satirize military officials and criticize the war establishment that sent young men to their deaths.
Counter-Attack and Other Poems was well-received. Many of the poems are startling in their realistic portrayal of the way that war disfigures humans and the environment. "Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land," as the speaker puts it in the poem "Dreamers." The collection is regarded by scholars as an important cultural artifact in the genre of British War Poetry.
