The Horrors of Warfare
In this poem, Sassoon emphasizes the panic, chaos, and fear of warfare, offering realistic descriptions of the trenches. The speaker describes the smoldering air of the battlefield, the barbed wire, and the tanks, alongside objects of violence such as bombs and guns. As well as this, Sassoon focuses on the fear the men experience as they go over the top of the trench.
Nature
The poem begins with a beautiful description of dawn, with the wild purple sunlight (Line 2). But the beauty is tinged with violence: the sunlight is "glow'ring," and the slope is menacing and scarred (Lines 2 and 4). The beauty of the natural world is interrupted by the smoke of the battlefield, the tanks, and the wire. We might see this as representing the intrusion of warfare into the natural world, altering and scarring the landscape.
Anonymity
In many of his poems, Sassoon emphasizes how everyday soldiers were treated like cannon-fodder. He illustrates this point in the poem "Attack" by describing the men as "Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear," which suggests that their fear and their status as soldiers in combat erases their individuality (Line 9). Millions died during World War I, and many went missing, meaning that lives and legacies were obliterated into anonymity.
