The Soldier by Rupert Brooke | Poetry of the First World War

The famous First World War poet Rupert Brooke wrote The Soldier after facing fighting against the German advance in 1914, as a part of the British Expeditionary Force, BEF.

The poem was a piece of the moment capturing the national mood but, has been criticised since for idealising fighting during that war.

In this narration we deliberately sought to change the pace of the poem and imagine how Brooke would have read the poem to the troops he travelled to Gallipoli with in 1915.

By spring 1915 the First World War was still less than a year old. Fighting on the Western Front was intensifying but still had to reach the levels of destruction and loss of life which followed.

In an attempt to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war and to take pressure off the Russian southern flank, the Allies launched an ambitious attack and campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula.

Onboard the troopship, the SS Grantully Castle were members of the Royal Navy’s Hood Division, the ground forces of the Royal Navy, which were to play an active part in fighting during the campaign. The division was one of the most unconventional forces to be involved in the campaign being a force of barely trained troops with next to no artillery support. It had been formed by Winston Churchill, who at the time was the First Lord of the Admiralty, as a means of employing the large number of naval reservists and volunteers.

Among the Hood Division’s officers was the poet, Rupert Brooke. Brooke was already a well-known and esteemed poet having volunteered for active service at the outbreak of war in August 1914. With the help of Churchill, he had gained a commission in the Royal Naval Division and, was part of the British Expeditionary Force which attempted to check the German advance on Antwerp at the start of hostilities.

After this first shocking experience of war he wrote five sonnets which at the time were lauded for their eloquent patriotism. The most well known of these was “The Soldier”.

For a nation desperate to turn the senseless loss of its soldiers into something that could be coped with, even celebrated, Brooke’s poem became a cornerstone of the remembrance process and is still in heavy use today. It has been accused, not without merit, of idealizing and romanticizing war but it served to capture the mood of a particular moment and, had he survived he would have written differently as his experiences of the war grew.

En route to Gallipoli a mosquito bite on his lip became infected and Brooke died of blood poisoning. He died on 23rd April, St George’s Day, two days before the landings, already one of the most famous First World War poets and is buried on the island of Skyros, Greece.

The poem is narrated by Charlie Collicutt in a deliberately more upbeat, Henry the V style, imagining how it would be delivered to troops before going into conflict rather than as a romantic poem for which it is best known.

[thefusiliermuseum]

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke is one of the First World War's iconic poems. The act of writing poetry was, at that time, a far more common thing to do and we will be seeking to bring more of it to life through our Museum's channel.
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