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Anthem For Doomed Youth - Imperial War Museum
Story by Sue Burley

October 31, 2002 – April 27, 2003
"I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority … I have seen and endured the suffering of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe are evil and unjust."

So wrote Siegfried Sassoon (pictured below, right) to his commanding officer in 1917. The full statement was read out in the House of Commons and later printed in The Times on July 31.

A knowledge of the First World War and the work of the war poets does not quite prepare you for the pathos of this exhibition, displaying as it does a wide variety of original manuscripts, letters and photographs of 12 young men fighting in the trenches of the First World War.

When a friend asked the slightly older Edward Thomas if he knew what he would be fighting for, he picked up a pinch of earth and, crumbling it, said: "Literally, for this."

Th...