The war ended in 1918, but Sassoon continued to publish works about the war. He went on to write a few semi-autobiographical works that became a hit with the public.
Here is a poem published in 1919 called "The Aftermath":
Have you forgotten yet?... For the world's events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked a while at the crossing of city ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same—and War's a bloody game...
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget. Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz—
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench—
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, 'Is it all going to happen again?'
Do you remember that hour of din before the attack—
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads—those ashen-gray
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?...
Look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!
Analysis:Speaker--perhaps a veteran of the war, perhaps someone who has been personally affected by the war (the loss of a loved one, etc.). Probably safe to say that the speaker is Sassoon himself. Though this is a very personal poem, these experiences could be applicable to probably any soldier who served during the war.
Audience--Society, future generations.
Uses "you" a lot ("Do
you remember?"). This you can be addressed to a specific person or to a whole group of people.
"haunted gap in your mind"-->the "your" can be directed towards society in general, whose "gap" is due to a lack of young men (millions of men perished in the war, leaving a lack of men, a "gap" in society), but who have since "filled" that said gap.
Tone--Bitter, angry, incredulous at the world's willingness to forget the past.
"Have you forgotten yet?.... / And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow / Like clouds in the lit heavens of life; and you're a man reprieved to go, / Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare"
Language--compares the present mindset of the public to the trenches on the front so as to further emphasize his point that the events of the war should always remain ingrained in one's mind:
"And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow / Like clouds"
--> the "haunted gap" can be inferred as the trenches themselves or as No Man's Land on the front. The person to whom the narrator addresses this poem says his mind has a "haunted gap," which implies that the memory of the war has left his mind (his growth) stunted with the image of all of the atrocities of the war; the war is still buried at the bottom of this person's thoughts, but is now covered with "thoughts that flow" in order to overcome the unbearable images. What was once a permanent scar on this person's mind of WWI has now been covered over.
"Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you'll never forget"
-->"look down" at the ground, which is a euphemism for the graves of all of the fallen soldiers. Even something as simple and common place as "the ground" holds such meaning for the narrator of this poem. The mundane now suddenly has a whole new meaning, one that is inextricably related to the war. Does this so that everything people now look at will hold the marks of the war, so that it may never be forgotten.
"stench," "rotting," "hopeless"
-->all used to convey an image of a typical day in the trenches to the audience who, if we choose to interpret the audience as the general public, may not have been very aware of the realities of the conditions on the front. More of an "in your face" shift in the tone of the poem.
Emotional Skeleton--The poem starts out with a lighter tone, still accusatory, but not at all as explicit and graphic as the next few stanzas. It is as though the speaker wishes to ease the audience (whom he attempts to guilt trip throughout the poem for "forgetting" WWI). As the poem progresses, the tone becomes angrier and the images much more explicit, much more personal to the speaker.
Though there are resentment and anger towards his audience who has already "moved on" from the war and though the speaker wants everyone to remember the events that took place, the last line of the poem indicates that the speaker does not want society to feel remorse, but rather a sense of respect and honor for the fallen. The contrast between "dark months" and the graphic images with the ending imperative, " look up, and swear by the slain of the war that you'll never forget!"
-->"look
up" where before the speaker has said "look
down" implies a sense of hopefulness and resolution.
