Charles Sorley

Charles Sorley (1895 - October 13, 1915) was a British poet of World War I. Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, he was educated, like Siegfried Sassoon, at Marlborough College. Having won a scholarship to University College, Oxford at the beginning of the war, he instead joined the Suffolk Regiment and quickly rose to the rank of Captain at the age of only twenty. He was killed in the Battle of Loos on October 13, 1915.

Sorley's work may be seen as a forerunner of Sassoon's and Owen's. His most famous lines include:-

When you see millions of the mouthless dead

Across your dreams in pale battalions go...

The writer Robert Goddard took the title of his novel In Pale Battalions from these lines.

Sorley is regarded by some as the greatest loss of all the poets killed during the war.