Suicide in the trenches

In Suicide in the trenches Sassoon recounts a young British soldier's depression and suicide on the Western Front. The poem expresses Sassoon's growing cynicism with the war and concludes with a pointed criticism of those who support the war without understanding the physical and emotional hardship endured by soldiers. Presented in three stanzas the poem uses rhyme and meter, typical of a nursery rhyme, to distance the reader from the horror of the event being narrated. Like Sassoon, Barrett uses a simple nursery-like motif of a falling leaf to convey the soldier's mental decline.