Siegfried Sassoon, an English Soldier Poet of WW I

choi

Alan Cowell, A Soldier Poet, Baring His Soul; Notes bearing traces of battlefield mud. New York Times, Aug 2, 2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/books ... ailable-online.html

Note:
(a) “As of Friday [Aug 1], three days before the centenary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany at the beginning of World War I, those musings have become public and made available online as part of a remarkable archive of 4,100 handwritten pages digitized by the Cambridge University Library Project. * * * Until Friday, the full range of the documents — 23 journals and two notebooks of poetry — had been accessible only to Max Egremont, Sassoon’s official biographer”
(i) This paragraph explains why the NYTimes talks about Mr Sassoon in “TheArts” section. The subtitle online (but not in print) of this critique is: Siegfried Sassoon’s World War I diaries are published online.
(ii) UK declared war on Germany on Aug 4, 1914.

(b)  “Born in 1886 to a Jewish father and a Roman Catholic mother”

Siegfried Sassoon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
(1886-1967; English)
(i) Siegfried
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried
(ii) The Jewish (Sephardic) surnames Sassoon/Sasson: “from the Hebrew personal name Sason, meaning ‘joy’”

(c) Sassoon was “befriending and mentoring Wilfred Owen, a battlefield poet who died days before the end of the war in 1918, but who achieved wide renown.”
(i) Wilfred Owen
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Owen
(1893-1918; Among his best-known works – most of which were published posthumously – are "Dulce et Decorum est"/ section 3 Death)
(ii) Wilfred (given name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_(given_name)

(d) “in 1917 he [Sassoon] was hit by a sniper’s bullet at the Battle of Arras”
(i) Battle of Arras
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arras
(refers to a number of battles which took place near the town of Arras in Artois, France)
(ii) Arras
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arras,_France