Nightmare 24-7

Trench Duty - Siegfried Sassoon

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,

Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,

I blunder though the splashing mirk, and then

Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men

Crouching in cabins candle-chnked with light.

Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right

Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare

Of flickering horror in the sectors where

We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,

Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.

'What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?'

Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:

Why did he do it? ... Starlight overhead-

Blank stars. I'm wide-awkae; and some chap's dead.

Sassoon's Trench Duty describes a dream where a soldier goes on for trench duty, falls asleep, and wakes up to find someone dead. Living near the border, the soldier experiences the nightmare of invading the enemy's territory. The soldier then wakes up to find that he's woken up to pretty much the same nightmare. I believe this poem is one that talks of the horror of World War I, showing that the nightmares that everyone may or may not have are a reality for the soldiers. This tone of fear is created with alliteration, harsh and violent diction, and the simplicity of the sentences.

The alliteration creates the mood of the war- noisy and dangerous. The sounds from the beginning to the end parallel those of the war: "Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake" contains a lot of "s" sounds, and there are many other sounds such as "muttering voices of the men", as well as the line, "crouching in the cabins candle-chinked with light". This is followed by words such as: "big bombardment", "rumbling and bumping". These repeated sounds recreated war noises- the "b", "mp", m", "s" along with many others are auditory images of bombs, rockets, guns, all the war weapons used. Thus, the alliteration makes the poem seem harsh, much like a nightmare.

The diction creates imagery of chaos and violence. Here are some words: "splashing mirk", "blunder", "gruff", "crouching", "the dark's a glare of flickering horror in the sectors", "stiff and chilled"... The list goes on. So these words work as visual imagery to show the chaos of war. And it is important to remember that these words are while the soldier is in a nightmare. So when the soldier wakes up, he wakes up to a nightmare and the same images that he had dreamt of. These words create a tone of fear which the soldier portrays. The sentences also rhyme, in the pattern: aabbccddefefgg, which make the poem run faster and thus more chaotic and non-stop: much like the war.

Then, there are the sentences. They are very simplistic, that is to say, the dialogue at the end where he wakes up. His questions resemble his confusion and fear: "'What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?'". The quickness of it is represented in his short sentences: "Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire", "Starlight overhead- / Blank stars". His nightmare, of confusion, is both in his dreams and in the physical world.

The poem ends with "I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead", which shows the blur of the dream world and the real world, making the reader wonder if it was a dream at all. Also, the question, "Why did he do it? ...." makes me think that the soldier who died may have killed himself- at night, where the nightmare exists both day and night.

So, I believe that Trench Duty by Siegfried Sassoon works to detail how the soldiers felt during the war, and what they went through.