Sassoon Journals : Journal, 15 Feb. 1917-2 June 1917 : 13r

Sassoon Journals

The volume is a ruled notebook entitled 'Journal and Notes' and mostly comprises diary entries and reflective passages written in France. Contents include:

Diary entries:

• 2r-3v. Sassoon's return to France
• 4r-6v. 'No.25 Stationary Hospital Rouen' where Sassoon was recuperating from German measles
• 30v-32r. at Amiens
• 27r. on joining the RWF Second Battalion at Corbie
• 32v. 'Dream Pictures' (on ideas for a book of 'Consolations for Homesick soldiers in the Field')
• 39r-42r. preparations for the attack at Arras

Drafts of poetry:

• 9v. 'The Lesson of War', later called 'The Smell'
• 10r. 'Life Belts (Southampton to Havre)'
• 11v. 'Victims'
• 14v-15r. 'The Lift'
• 16r. untitled, begins 'Brown as the pine stems high'
• 21v-22r. 'To an A.A.G. (Reinforcements)'
• 23v-24r. untitled, begins 'If I were stout and bald and short of breath' (early draft of 'Base Details')
• 24v-25r. 'In the Church of St. Ouen'
• 27v-28r. 'Return'
• 37r, 50v. 'Foot Inspection'
• 42r. 'Song (To an Old June). The Hawthorn Tree'
• 45r 'Supreme Sacrifice'
• 45v. untitled, begins 'O Lads I've Loved'
• 45v-46r. untitled, begins 'The battle and the sunlight'
• 46r. 'In an Underground Dressing-Station'
• 46v. 'A Quiet Walk'
• 47r-47v. 'The Toast of the Town', later called 'A War Widow'
• 48v. 'Death in the Garden'
• 50r. untitled, begins 'Lost in a Laurel Thicket', together with a sketch of a youth holding an arrow
• 52v. untitled, begins 'Give me the passion to re-build'

Sketches and doodles:

• 8v, 10v-11r. preparatory sketches for watercolours of gothic windows and stained glass in the abbey church of St Ouen
• 9r. a pine forest
• 50r. a youth holding an arrow, together with a verse beginning 'Lost in a Laurel Thicket'

Prose passages:

• 12r-14r. 'Reinforcements at Rouen'
• 16v-19r. 'In the Cathedral (Purple Passage)'
• 19v-21r. 'Lunch on Sunday in Rouen'
• 53r-55v. 'Points of View'
• 56r. 'Thoughts in a Cathedral'
• 56v-60r. 'Character sketches of Officers in Hospital at Rouen'

Quotations:

• 34v. R.J.C. Greaves 'How he Came'
• 61v. Thomas Hardy, 'Let me enjoy the earth no less'

Other:

• 1v. locations and dates of time spent at or near the Western Front
• 15v. notes entitled '3 reasons for teaching bayonet fighting'
• 43r-44v. preparatory notes and a draft of Sassoon's statement against the conduct of the war
• 34v. list of drinks and cocktails
• 40v. list of physical exercises
• 42v; 51r. lists of members of his battalion and section and their fates
• 51v-52r. copy of a letter from Ottoline Morrell
• 1v; 62r; 60v-61r. acquaintances' contact details
• 62r. list of books taken to France

N.B. Sassoon wrote from both ends of this notebook; from folio 43r entries resume from the opposite end. Enclosure is to be found in a separate envelope. The foliation is the archivist's.