CAMBRIDGE, England, July 22 (UPI) -- The private papers of British poet Siegfried Sassoon, including his World War I diary and his "Soldier's Declaration," are on public view for the first time.
The exhibit opened this week at Cambridge University, The Guardian reports. The university spent 1.25 million pounds ($1.9 million), raised from contributions, to buy the collection from Sassoon's family.
The diary covers Sassoon's experiences in the Battle of the Somme.
Another item is a small black notebook Sassoon used in 1917 to draft "Finished With The War: A Soldier's Declaration," which almost got him court-martialed for treason. He was instead sent to a mental hospital.
As an officer on the Western Front, Sassoon was known for his courage and decorated for exploits like capturing a German trench single-handed. But he turned against the war like his fellow officers, poets and friends Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen.
The exhibit includes a drawing Sassoon made during the Somme, when he expected to be killed, for his own heroic monument. It shows his horse jeering as he flourishes a sword.
Sassoon survived the war and died in 1967 at age 81.
