Description
Book SynopsisOn 13 July 1917 a thirty-year-old junior officer on leave from the Western Front arrived at London's Euston Station, with its famous arch and great hall. Siegfried Sassoon was heading for Liverpool on a journey likely to end in his arrest. His destination was the headquarters of his battalion. A week earlier he had written to tell his commanding officer that he was refusing further military service. He enclosed a statement written to be read out in Parliament declaring that Britain's war aims were no longer worthy. He was committing, as he admitted', an act of wilful defiance of military authority'. He was ready to face court-martial and imprisonment (or worse). He was known in the Army as a brave and efficient soldier, already decorated and now recommended for a DSO. His speciality was in bombing. Now he had delivered a bombshell of a different kind. He hated what the war had become. He had lately turned his poetic talent into a new kind of satire. A recent composition, The One-Legged
