A handwritten poem by Siegfried Sassoon is to go on display for the first time in an anti-war protest exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London.
The manuscript of one of Sassoon’s most famous war poems, The General, will be displayed at IWM London as part of the People Power: Fighting for Peace exhibition.
More than 300 exhibits from paintings to posters, banners and music stretching from the first world war to the present day will explore anti-war protest and the creativity used to campaign against conflict, the IWM said.
The General was written in April 1917 from Sassoon’s hospital bed in London, where he was recovering from a shoulder wound received while he was leading a bombing assault.
The manuscript in the exhibition is a later handwritten version dated 7 February 1919, and is angrier than the one published in his second poetry collection, Counter-Attack and Other Poems, in 1918.
In this version of the poem, which contrasts the common soldiers and the incompetent military leaders who sent them to their deaths, he changes the last line from “did for them” to “murdered them”.
Sassoon enlisted at the start of the first world war but became increasingly opposed to the conflict following his experiences of trench warfare, and the deaths of his brother at Gallipoli and a close friend in March 1916.
While he was serving on the western front, his men called him Mad Jack for his reckless bravery, and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry bringing back wounded and dying comrades during a raid on enemy trenches in 1916.
After recovering from his wound in 1917, he refused to return to duty.
He wrote to his commanding officer, enclosing a statement claiming “the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it”, which was later read out in parliament.
But rather than court martial a national hero, the authorities sent Sassoon to Craiglockhart hospital near Edinburgh to be treated for shellshock. He later returned to the front.
His poetry and postwar autobiographical novels have been important in influencing perceptions of the first world war.
Anthony Richards, head of documents and sound at IWM, said: “Sassoon served as a junior officer in the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
“His experiences of the harsh conditions on the western front, coupled with the deaths of close friends and family, had an enormous effect on his attitude to the war.
“The anger and despair instilled in Sassoon led him to become increasingly unconcerned with personal welfare, and his poems were marked by their use of sardonic humour and irony to deliver an angry condemnation of the war.”
Other items going on display range from a handwritten letter by Winnie-the-Pooh author AA Milne on struggling to reconcile his pacifism with the rise of Adolf Hitler to original sketches of the nuclear disarmament symbol.