Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967)

132 Counter-Attack

Click on the link to the Oxford First World War Poetry unit on Sassoon’s “Counter-Attack” and work your way through as many of the poems/letters as you wish.

Explanatory Notes not covered in Oxford tutorials.

  • Lewis gun: A light machine gun, designed in 1911 by U.S. Army Col. Isaac Lewis, and widely used by British and Empire forces from 1915 onwards.
  • Sap: A covering over a trench; the extension of a trench from within the trench itself to a point beneath an enemy’s fortifications.
  • Allemands: Germans, from the French “Allemand,”; German: sometimes referred to as the “Alleyman.”
  • Five-nines: 5.9-calibre shells.
  • Fire-step: A board or ledge in a trench, upon which soldiers stand when firing.

 

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English Literature: Victorians and Moderns by James Sexton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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