Not About Heroes by Stephen MacDonald
The play looks at
friendship, love, courage, and poetic genius in the face of battle, by
considering the extraordinary meeting of the poets Siegfried Sassoon and
Wilfred Owen during World War One. Sassoon had published a public protest
against the war - and was committed to hospital on grounds of mental
impairment. Owen, one of the greatest British poets of all time, was killed
exactly one week before peace was declared. Their story is painful in its
relevance to the events of today in theatres of combat and war-torn communities
around the world.
A Note from the Author
When Wilfred Owen was sent to
The crucial event was the meeting
with Siegfried Sassoon. He was a well known, acclaimed poet and a soldier of
remarkable courage, who had achieved notoriety by publishing a protest against
the evil and unjust conduct of the war. He was sent to
The story of their friendship is
told almost entirely in my own words. The play is neither a compilation nor a
documentary. While I have not intentionally falsified any of the known facts,
the Letters and Memoirs leave considerable gaps which I have bridged with
scenes based on ideas suggested by the available sources. I have used phrases
from Owen's letters (and frequently links sections from several of them to form
a single letter) but there are no surviving letters from Sassoon to Owen. The
Sassoon letters in this play reflect his feelings and opinions at the time, but
they are not his words.
Sassoon's Diaries for 1915-1918 were published
after the play was written, but I have not found it necessary to revise the
play in the light of what they reveal. On the contrary, they have sometimes
confirmed conclusions I had drawn from other evidence (e.g. the death of David
Thomas in March 1916). But the diaries covering the period at Craiglockhart and
the last meeting seem, unfortunately, to have been lost.
Sassoon decided on several
occasions that he would write a memoir of Owen, but clearly found the prospect
too painful. I believe that the inevitable guilt of the survivor was something
he had to live with throughout his long life. He was a deeply reticent as well
as a turbulently emotional man, and I hope I have respected his reticence. My
motive was to try to understand how a relationship that remains at heart
mysterious, could leave such an indelible mark on the literature of their war -
and so on our understanding of war itself. My best hope is that Not About Heroes might refresh the memory
of who these men were and what it was they had to tell us.
Stephen MacDonald
31st March 1986
Siegfried Sassoon
(1886-1967)
With war on the horizon, a young
Englishman whose life had previously been consumed with the protocol of
fox-hunting, said goodbye to his idyllic life and rode off on his bicycle to
join the Army. Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the war
poets. John Hildebidle has called Sassoon the accidental hero. Born into a
wealthy Jewish family in 1886, Sassoon lived the pastoral life of a young
squire: fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses.
Being an innocent, Sassoon's
reaction to the realities of the war were all the more bitter and violent, both
his reaction through his poetry and his reaction on the battlefield. (where,
after the death of fellow officer David Thomas and his brother Hamo at
Gallipoli, Sassoon earned the nickname Mad Jack for his near-suicidal exploits
against the German lines in the early manifestation of his grief, when he still
believed that the Germans were entirely to blame). As Paul Fussell said: now he
unleashed a talent for irony and satire and contumely that had been sleeping
all during his pastoral youth. Sassoon also showed his innocence by going
public with his protest against the war (as he grew to see that insensitive
political leadership was the greater enemy than the Germans). Luckily, his
friend and fellow poet Robert Graves convinced the review board that Sassoon
was suffering from shell-shock and he was sent instead to the military hospital
at Craiglockhart where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen.
Sassoon is a key figure in the
study of the poetry of the Great War; he brought with him to the war the
idyllic pastoral background; he began by writing war poetry reminiscent of
Rupert Brooke; he mingled with such war poets as Robert Graves and Edmund
Blunden; he spoke out publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he
influenced and mentored the then unknown Wilfred Owen; he spent thirty years
reflecting on the war through his memoirs; and at last he found peace in his
religious faith. Some critics found his later poetry lacking in comparison to
his war poems. Sassoon, identifying with Herbert and Vaughan, recognized and
understood this; my development has been entirely consistent and in character
he answered, almost all of them have ignored the fact that I am a religious
poet.
Robert Means
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Owen was born on 18th March 1893
in Oswestry,
His education began at the
Birkenhead Institute, and then continued at the
During the latter part of 1914
and early 1915 Owen became increasingly aware of the magnitude of the War and
he returned to
1917 in many ways was the pivotal
year in his life, although it was to prove to be his penultimate. In January he
was posted to
Had Owen not arrived at the
hospital at that time one wonders what might have happened to his literary
career, for it was here that he met Siegfried Sassoon who was also a patient.
Sassoon already had a reputation as a poet and after an awkward introduction he
agreed to look over Owen's poems. As well as encouraging Owen to continue, he
introduced him to such literary figures as Robert Graves (a friend of
Sassoon's) which in turn, after his release from hospital, allowed Owen to mix
with such luminaries as Arnold Bennett and H. G. Wells.
The period in Craiglockhart, and
the early part of 1918, was in many ways his most creative, and he wrote many
of the poems for which he is remembered today. In June 1918 he rejoined his
regiment at Scarborough and then in August he returned to
Dr. Stuart Lee
1997