Base Details

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Base Details is a war poem by the English war poet Siegfried Sassoon that takes place in the First World War. Sassoon wrote it in his diary entry for 4 March 1917.^[1] The poem is written about how the staff officers of the British Army (referred to as "scarlet majors") deploy soldiers to the war front to be killed, while they stay at the Base "guzzling and gulping in the best hotel" and sending "glum heroes up the line to death". Like Sassoon's many other poems, "Base Details" is bitterly sarcastic and derisive of the comfortable establishment that supported the continuation of the war while showing little concern for the people who suffered its consequences. It took place during World War I in France around 1914-1918.

The theme is anger and bitterness. It expresses anger to those who start wars and send their fellow men to their death. The main message is that army officers plan battles from safety of their base, and are usually not involved in the fighting, and therefore does not know the horrors that they are forcing soldiers to face. The first two quartiles are talking about the Majors, in a very sarcastic way, and the last couplet talks about how the war isn't actually a joke, that it is very serious.