THE friendship between the Great War poet soldiers Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen is well known.

They came together in a psychiatric hospital near Edinburgh where both men were being treated for neurasthenia (shell shock) and it was during their many meetings in the hospital garden that Sassoon encouraged his younger friend to persevere in his ambition to write better poetry.

A manuscript copy of Owen's Anthem For Doomed Youth, containing Sassoon's handwritten amendments, survives as testimony to the extent of his influence.

Other surviving documents demonstrate clearly the depth of Owen's admiration for the man who strongly condemned the Government's motives for "this war of aggression and conquest".

Sassoon, born at Matfield and educated at New Beacon School, Sevenoaks, before going on to Marlborough, had become a pacifist by 1917.

A letter to his commanding officer, entitled Finished With The War: A Soldier's Declaration, was seen by some as treasonous.

But Sassoon wasn't court martialled, as many expected.

He returned to active service and, after promotion to lieutenant, was wounded again.

By 1918, the 25-year-old Owen had exceeded Sassoon in fame.

His shocking, realistic war poetry on the horrors of trenches and gas warfare sat in stark contrast to both the public perception of war at the time, and to the confidently patriotic verse written earlier by war poets such as Rupert Brooke.

Following his release from Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital, he could have stayed on home-duty indefinitely but his decision to return to the Front was the result of Sassoon's head injury.

He saw it as a patriotic duty to take his friend's place.

Sassoon was violently opposed to the idea of Own returning to the trenches, threatening to "stab him in the leg" if he attempted it.

Aware of his feelings, Owen did not inform him of his action until he was once again in France and soon in the thick of action.

On October 10, 1918, after a bloody battle, he wrote to Sassoon: "I cannot say I suffered anything; having let my brain grow dull... My senses are charred."

By then Owen knew that the war was nearing its end.

The Germans were in full retreat.

The British soldiers were welcomed with joyful gratitude by the French, and he was really enjoying himself being part of a band of soldiers, billeted in a small house in the village of Ors.

On October 31, 1918 in a letter to his mother, Owen described the matey atmosphere in "the smoky cellar of Forester's House".

Conditions were so cramped that he could hardly write for pokes, nudges and jolts.

The room was dense with smoke.

His cook was chopping wood and an old soldier peeled potatoes and dropped them in a pot splashing Owen's hand as he did so.

It was a scene of perfect soldierly brotherhood.

Owen commented on his lack of sensitivity to danger: "It is a great life," he wrote.

"I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside, and the hollow crashing of the shells. . .

"Of this I am certain: you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here. Ever Wilfred x"

These were the last words he wrote.

At 5.45 on the morning of November 4, 1918, under a hail of machine gun fire, the Royal Engineers attempted to construct an instant bridge out of floats so that Owen's brigade could cross and engage the enemy on the other side of the Sambre and Oise Canal, just south of Ors.

Group after group of soldiers went forward and were killed or wounded.

Wilfred Owen, standing at the water's edge, was encouraging his men when he was hit and killed.

Seven days later the war was over. Church bells rang throughout the country.

As they were ringing in Shrewsbury, Susan and Tom Owen received the telegram announcing their son's death.

A few weeks ago I visited Ors to see the Forestry Commission house where the poet spent his last days and wrote what was to be his final letter to his beloved mother.

Encouraged by the Mayor, and the Wilfred Owen Society in France, an artistic project has been set up in the village and a museum will soon be opened. The village library bears his name.

Visitors will be encouraged to see the cellar in the Forester's House, the Bois Leveque wood nearby, the military cemetery and the canal where Owen fell on November 4, 1918.

The museum includes copies of the letters which passed between the two great poets.

To all intents and purposes, Sassoon became to Owen "Keats and Christ and Elijah".

To all the many societies and individuals from Sevenoaks and district who travel to France to visit the war cemeteries this is a must.

The official opening of the Forester's House will take place in the autumn of 2011.