Attitudes, themes and ideas

Base Details is a satirical attack on the senior officers who hurried

young soldiers to their deaths in the war without risking their own lives.
The title is itself a pun that reveals this: your "detail" was your
assignment in war. The Majors were detailed to work at base, but the
word "base" can also have a meaning of low and dishonourable.
The poem presents a scathing image of the senior soldiers who sent
young men to their deaths while indulging themselves with food and
drink. There is no sense that the Majors have earned their position of
power – Sassoon highlights the characteristics that would make him
eligible in the first line, and they are physical characteristics that
suggest an old and unfit man. Despite this they have control over the
young men’s lives, sending them "up the line".
Sassoon is challenging the understanding of conflict by those who are
not directly involved. The young soldiers themselves, who will end up
dead, understand, as demonstrated by their mood. But the Majors do
not show any understanding, undermining the seriousness of the war by
their activities and their description of the conflict.
Subject Matter
Base Details is a satirical poem on the attitudes of the senior officers
who live at the base. The speaker imagines himself in the position of a
Major, and lists the ways in which he would spend his time, eating and
drinking. The poem is about the way in which those who send the young
soldiers to their deaths are not directly affected by the war
themselves.
Form and Structure
Base Details is a very brief poem of just ten lines, with lines of
alternating rhyme finishing in a rhyming couplet: ABABCDCDEE. It is a
first person monologue, but instead of describing reality it describes a
hypothetical imagined situation. The final rhyming couplet provides a
sense of finality and emphasises what is almost a punch line to the
satire of the poem.
Language and Imagery
Imagery
The vibrant image of the "scarlet Majors" contains both the colour of
the coats they wear and gives the impression of red faces, an effect of
their lifestyle of overeating and drinking. Scarlet is the colour of dress
uniforms – uniforms worn for best, and emphasises the fact that the
Majors are not required to fight. The "puffy" faces seem red by
association.
There is a sense of impatience in these Majors to be indulging their
greed, in the way they "speed" the soldiers "up the line to death". The
line is a reference to the train-line to the front, but it now has
connotations of a production line, which suggests the callousness of the
Majors. The contrast between the "glum heroes"going to their deaths
and the Majors’ destination of the "best hotel" is poignant.
The callousness of the Majors is emphasised again by the use of direct
speech. Sassoon undermines the sympathy of the Major with his
declaration that he’d known the father of the "poor young chap" –
suggesting this is the reason that he feels sorry for him. The use of
the first person pronoun "we" provides a sense of irony, since it is clear
that the Major and the soldiers are involved in very different lives.
This irony is picked up in descriptions such as "glum heroes", a phrase
that seems paradoxical.
Sound
The alliteration of "guzzling and gulping" emphasises the Majors’ greed
and lack of care about what happens to the soldiers at the front while
they are eating and drinking. Similarly the alliteration in "puffy
petulant" helps to emphasise the ridiculousness of the Majors.
Attitudes, themes and ideas
Base Details is a satirical attack on the senior officers who hurried
young soldiers to their deaths in the war without risking their own lives.
The title is itself a pun that reveals this: your "detail" was your
assignment in war. The Majors were detailed to work at base, but the
word "base" can also have a meaning of low and dishonourable.
The poem presents a scathing image of the senior soldiers who sent
young men to their deaths while indulging themselves with food and
drink. There is no sense that the Majors have earned their position of
power – Sassoon highlights the characteristics that would make him
eligible in the first line, and they are physical characteristics that
suggest an old and unfit man. Despite this they have control over the
young men’s lives, sending them "up the line".
Sassoon is challenging the understanding of conflict by those who are
not directly involved. The young soldiers themselves, who will end up
dead, understand, as demonstrated by their mood. But the Majors do
not show any understanding, undermining the seriousness of the war by
their activities and their description of the conflict.
Sample task
Examine how Shakespeare presents the theme of control and power
in Henry V.
Examine how this theme is revealed in poetry, for example in
Sassoon’s Base Details and/or Hardy’s Drummer Hodge. Refer to other
poems from the poetry selection in your response.
What is your response to the pieces of literature you have read?
Make links between the ways the writers have considered and
presented the theme.

The theme of control and power is explored throughout Henry V,

particularly through means of the military context in which the whole
play is set, and the characteristics of the central character, the king
himself. As a king, Henry has absolute power over the army which he is
leading in France; and this is demonstrated through a number of
disciplinary decisions which Henry has to make about his own men, as
well as military decisions on how to treat the French, such as the
massacre of children at Harfleur. Similarly in Sassoon’s Base Details,
the commanders have the power of life and death over the common
soldiers, in terms of sending them to the battle, while staying out of
the line of fire themselves, remaining at "the Base". However, here the
similarity ends, as Henry goes with his men into battle, and indeed
spends the night among the common soldiers in Act IV, the night before
the main battle of the play. His speeches show that he considers
himself to have the common touch: he will refuse to be "ransomed" so
he is in as much danger as all his soldiers, in contrast to the "scarlet
Majors" of Sassoon’s poem, who are busy "guzzling and gulping"while the
young men fight. Part of the contrast is in the age of the commanders.
Sassoon’s "puffy petulant" officers are ready to "toddle safely home
and die – in bed." Henry, on the other hand, is a young and energetic
man, who is denied power by the French because, as they tell him "you
savour too much of your youth" – something which he soon disproves.
However, despite Henry’s willingness to fight alongside his men, and
to "quarrel"with them while disguised as a "common man", there is still a
clear distinction of rank between them, as Henry shows when he avoids
fighting Williams after the battle, sending Fluellen with the glove as
symbol of the challenge instead. He can control the situation because of
his rank, and thus avoid inconvenience to himself, although he is aware
that there may be "harm" as a result of his actions.
In both Base Details and Henry V there is an element of mockery which
goes along with the depiction of power. In Base Details the Majors are
caricatured as red-faced, fat and lacking in self-awareness as they
claim "we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap", the understatement
of "scrap" indicating their lack of understanding of what battle is really
like. The dramatic irony of the soldiers telling the disguised Henry what
they really think of him provides in one sense a mockery, but also a
slight danger, in that we know the king has the power to execute them
(and has executed some of his own force already). The common soldiers
are not elevated in the play, however, which they are in Sassoon’s poem,
by virtue of their sacrifice and the contrast with the Majors, and in
other war poetry, such as Hardy’s Drummer Hodge, where
the "homely" drummer becomes part of the "constellations".