Before the First World War, Sassoon enjoyed life as a gentleman of independent means dividing his time between literary London and his country estate. Awarded the Military Cross for valour, Sassoon's brutal experiences in the trenches turned him against the military top brass. Convinced that the authorities were prolonging the conflict and exploiting the men, in 1917 (the year in which his first collection was published) he threw away his medal and launched a one-man campaign to halt the war. Sent to a hospital to recuperate from shell shock, he met Wilfred Owen whose poetic endeavours he greatly encouraged. Sassoon's own wartime verse savaged the patriotic cant of the generals. Bitter, shocking and incisively satiric, it is underpinned by a deep compassion for the plight of the ordinary soldier. Later in life he turned to devotional poetry, and was received into the Catholic Church in 1957. He also wrote a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels, The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston.