Siegfried Sassoon's "Base Details"

Clare DeLano (9/29/97): English 354/Finley

Base Details
 
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.
You'd see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,
Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,'
I'd say - 'I used to know his father well;
Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed.

Siegfried Sasson's "Base Details" demonstrates his cynicism towards the separation between high ranking military officers and the soldiers who fought on the front lines. Sasson, along with many of his contemporaries, saw these officers as somewhat similar to the enemies being fought in the war, in that they seemed to have little regard for the lives of the men that they were ordering to their deaths. As Fussel explains, the "Others Ranks" could be described as shepherds who sometimes had to "prod the sheep to get them moving," with the soldiers being the equivalent to the sheep (Fussel- p.239-40). While the officers may have felt some small amount of sadness upon seeing the men killed, they viewed the soldiers as interchangeable tools used during the war which could be easily replaced from a somewhat endless supply of new young men.

Sasson's contempt towards the officers is seen through his vivid descriptions of an officer in "Base Details." Within the first line of the poem, a hateful picture is drawn of an officer who looks "fierce" and "bald", and is later described as having a "puffy and petulant face." From this one can gain a clear picture of this man as any of the officers who sat comfortably away from the front lines, ordering the men to death. Even the descriptions of his actions during the war, as "guzzling and gulping" his drinks, without seeming to notice the war taking place, allow a clear picture to be formed of these supposed leaders and figures of authority.

Unlike the clear picture that is given of the officer, the soldiers are given little description, as if they have no faces at all. The only words used to describe them are "glum" and "youth", which follows with the idea that they are interchangeable and expendable in the eyes of the officers. Though it is acknowledged that they are being sent to their death, the only regret seems to be that it is merely a "'Poor Young Chap'" whose father may have once been a friend. One has to wonder if these orders would have been different had these men spent more time on the front lines, and were forced to deal daily with the horrors of death that were experienced by the soldiers.

While it is shown that both groups of men go to their death in the end, this death seems to be a totally different place, depending on the rank of the individual. While the officer is allowed to "toddle safely home and die" in comfort, as if by choice, the soldiers are sent to their death by these same officers; the soldiers are forced "to the line" to meet their fates, which is something that is out of their control since they are thought of as tools that can be used by the officers in their war. From the descriptions given by Sasson, it seems almost as if the officers are playing a game, similar to war games played by young children, it which winning is most important, not simply doing so with the fewest casualties. While the officer may attempt to include himself in this war, by claiming that "we've lost heavily," it is obvious that he plays a part in the war is that he decides the fates of others.

What originally attracted me to this poem was its similarity to the final scene in Gallipoli, where the officers insist on continuing with the assassination of their troops without choosing to stop and see that lives, and not merely machines, are being destroyed in the process. The frustration with which I watched this scene is minute compared to Sasson's anger towards the officers in the military during the war, as seen in this poem. This anger from someone who experienced the war seems to come from an inability to understand how these men were able to separate themselves emotionally from what was happening on the front lines, and yet still feel as if they were really a part of the war. To return again to Fussel's analogy, it is as if the shepherds were sending their sheep to be slaughtered, thinking only of the money that they could make from this decision, so that they could purchase more sheep and keep the cycle going.