Siegfried Sassoon was a British writer and poet whose work challenged common patriotic conceptions about World War One. "The Rear-Guard," published in Sassoon's 1918 collection Counter-Attack and Other Poems, follows a soldier making his way along an underground tunnel while a war wages overhead. The poem was written while Sassoon spent time recovering in a hospital in France after sustaining a wound in the battle of Arras in April 1916.
In the poem, a soldier slowly navigates a dark tunnel fifty feet below the ground of a raging battle. Eventually, the soldier comes across a man he presumes to be sleeping, but who turns out to be dead. Dazed, the soldier keeps moving until he finds an entrance to the world above.
Counter-Attack and Other Poems was well-received. It was Sassoon's second poetry collection that focused on World War I, and the poems protest the war from different angles. Some readers were shocked by Sassoon's focus on the grotesque brutality of war and by his sharp and uncompromising tone. The collection is laden with critiques of whichever forces and individuals perpetuate the myth of a "good war." The title of the collection itself indicates Sassoon's criticism of the British military establishment as well as the home front.
