suicide in the trenches

Throughout the poem, Suicide in the trenches, Sassoon effectivley brings through the message of how terrible war really was. We see this through numerous parts of his poem, an example is in the first stanza when he calls the soldier a boy. This shows that he believed that many of the men were too young at the time and that war  was not the place for them.  Sassoon uses rhyming couplets and from reading just the first stanza, people may even assume this was a happy poem- however nothing prepares the reader for stanza 2. These two stanzas create a strong message of just how bad war was- so bad that even one of the happiest people felt the need to kill their self. Contrast is also used between stanza 1 and 2, to show the difference between war and home, this is when he uses the whistling and lark in the first stanza, and then crumps and lice in the second. Throughout the third stanza he begins judging the crowd, blaming them for sending men to war. I think this poem is very effective as it brings out the message, and is very stark and straight to the point.