The Rear Guard
by Siegfried Sassoon
(Hindenburg Line, April 1917)
Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;a
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug.
And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug.
“I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply.
“God blast your neck!” (For days he’d had no sleep.)
“Get up and guide me through this stinking place.”
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard of ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat and horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.
Summary of The Rear Guard
- Popularity of “The Rear Guard”: “The Rear Guard” by Siegfried Sassoon, an English soldier, writer, and poet, is an excellent poetic piece about soldiering. It first appeared in his collection, Counter-attack and Other Poems, published in 1918 though it was written a year earlier. The poem beautifully outlines the feelings of a soldier in the rearguard who went through the destruction of war on this front. The beauty of the poem lies in highlighting the sufferings of soldiers.
- “The Rear Guard” As a Representative of War and Destruction: The poet opens the poem with a postscript of when it was written and puts the soldier in the battlefield. His first-person shows him in the battlefield of Hindenburg where he went through the harrowing experience of trench war between the Germans and the allied during WWI. The poem describes how they experienced the groping journey through tunnels amid dead bodies and human stench. The soldier is finding his way with his torch, smelling the acrid smell of the gun powder and human flesh. When the soldier moves in the tunnel fifty feet blow, he comes across tins, bottles, and different broken things. He grabs the wall, comes across a dead body, and moves on after having conversed with the unresponsive dead body. After that, he sees the livid face of the dead body, watches this dead by staring at eyes, and sees the agony in them. He moves to the next and feels the arrival of the dawn as if it is a ghost finding the soldiers living in the tunnels. He, finally, goes up to unleash “hell” on his enemies.
- Major Themes in “The Rear Guard”: A soldier’s experience of dead bodies in the trenches, destruction of war, and individual disgust are three major themes of the poem. The poet presents his personal experience of fighting the trench war during the Battle of Arras. The destruction wrought by the battle continues even in the trenches where he comes across a dead body and feels disgusted. This destruction of war makes him unleash another round of destruction despite feeling disgusted at it.
Analysis of Literary Devices Used In The Rear Guard
literary devices make poems flow and impact the readers with this flow. Sassoon has also used some literary devices in this poem whose analysis is as follows.
- Assonance: Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds in the same line such as the sound of /e/ in “Groping along the tunnel, step by step” the sound of /o/ in “The rosy gloom of battle overhead” and the sound of /a/ in “Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug.”
- Alliteration: The poem shows the use of alliteration in the shape of initial consonant sounds of the neighboring words such as the sound of /s/ in “saw someone” and the sound of /f/ in “fifty feet.”
- Consonance: Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds in the same line such as the sound of /g/ and /s/ in “And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug” and the sound of /g/ and /d/ in “Agony dying hard of ten days before.”
- Enjambment: It is defined as a thought in verse that does not come to an end at a line break; rather, it rolls over to the next line. For example;
Alone he staggered on until he found
Dawn’s ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
- Imagery: Imagery is used to make readers perceive things involving their five senses. Siegfried Sassoon has used imagery in this poem such as “A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed”, “The rosy gloom of battle overhead”, and “And flashed his beam across the livid face.”
- Metaphor: It is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between the objects that are different. The poet has used the eyes of the dead soldier and dawn as metaphors comparing them with ghosts.
- Symbolism: Symbolism is using symbols to signify ideas and qualities, giving them symbolic meanings that are different from literal meanings. The poem shows the use of symbols such as headquarter, trench, heap, and hell to show the destruction of war.
Analysis of Poetic Devices Used in The Rear Guard
Poetic and literary devices are the same, but a few are used only in poetry. Here is the analysis of some of the poetic devices used in this poem.
- Diction and Tone: The poem shows the use of descriptive diction of war with a serious, tragic, and somewhat disgusting tone.
- Rhyme Scheme: The poem follows ABB, ABAB, ABBADCEKFEF, and so on in all four stanzas.
- Stanza: A stanza is a poetic form of some lines. There are total four stanzas with a different number of verses.
Quotes to be Used
These lines from “The Rear Guard” are appropriate to quote when describing a battle zone.
Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;
A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.
