JACK DORGAN was a sergeant in the 7th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers. The following is taken from the Sound Archive of the Imperial War Museum, also reproduced in Forgotten Voices of the Great War.
During the attack on St Julien on the 26th of April a shell dropped right in amongst us, and when I pulled myself together I found myself lying in a shell-hole. There was one other soldier who, like me, was unhurt, but two more were heavily wounded, so we shouted for stretch-bearers.
Then the other uninjured chap said to me, ‘We’re not all here, Jack,’ so I climbed out of the shell-hole and found two more of our comrades lying just a few yards from the shell-hole.
They had had their legs blown off. All I could see when I got up to them was their thigh bones. I will always remember their white thigh bones, the rest of their legs were gone. Private Jackie Oliver was one of them, and he was unconscious. I shouted back to the fellows behind me, ‘Tell Reedy Oliver his brother’s been wounded.’ So Reedy came along and stood looking at his brother, lying there with no legs, and a few minutes later he watched him die. But the other fellow, Private Bob Young, was conscious right to the last. I lay alongside of him and said, ‘Can I do anything for you, Bob?’ He said, ‘Straighten my legs, Jack,’ but he had no legs. I touched the bones and that satisfied him. Then he said, ‘Get my wife’s photograph out of my breast pocket.’ I took the photograph out and put it in his hands. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t lift a hand, he couldn’t lift a finger, but somehow he held his wife’s photograph on his chest. And that’s how Bob Young died.
IVOR GURNEY (1890–1937) writes ‘I might be a good soldier could I forget music and books’, at the end of the second letter below. It was sent to Marion Scott, a musicologist and a close friend of Gurney’s from their first meeting in 1912 (he was then at the Royal College of Music). Gurney was a poet and composer, born in Gloucester. He enlisted as a private in 1915, and was injured by a bullet and gas in 1917. He suffered from mental illness (showing symptoms before the war, although his experiences may have intensified them) and died in the City of London Mental Hospital in 1937.
To Catherine Abercrombie
Somewhere in France
June 1916
[…]
Once we were standing outside our dugout cleaning mess tins, when a cuckoo sounded its call from the shattered wood at the back. What could I think of but Framilode, Minsterworth, Cranham, and the old haunts of home.
This Welshman turned to me passionately. ‘Listen to that damned bird,’ he said. ‘All through that bombardment in the pauses I could hear that infernal silly “Cuckoo, Cuckoo” sounding while Owen was lying in my arms covered with blood. How shall I ever listen again…’! He broke off, and I became aware of shame at the unholy joy that had filled my artist’s mind. And what a thin keen face he had, and what a voice – for speaking I mean. Gibson may have had this same thought as he listened to the cuckoo this spring. Shakespeare also maybe –
O word of fear
Unpleasing to a soldier’s ear.
But I can hardly write a coherent letter as you may guess. Never did I have such material, and never, O never was writing paper so dear; 1 franc 50 for this. A veritable horror of war!
[…]
To Marion Scott
21? June 1916
Ideal Parcel would contain matches.
Dear Miss Scott
Thank you for the amount of general interest in your letter, your pretty verses and the news about my songs, which has given me great pleasure. Of course you can use them. The Piano accompaniment is quite adequate, but as to the sacrilege of ever having a piano instead of a harp – well, I think it would be an admirable substitute. I never thought at all about the harp quality save in one or two places, but merely the getting of a background for tunes or counterpoint. Well…
I like your grey Mayday altogether – save only ‘invisible like Fate’, which is out of the picture. And people under counterpanes do not naturally enough suggest the labour of climbing the sky at all. Apparently he dived under the bed clothes and started work – an unusual proceeding. But I like this sonnett.
As for the other
Line 3 Verse one seems to me awkward. Why not ‘on’ for across?
(On and run I suppose.)
Line 3 Verse 2 don’t suit me at all.
But do let’s have some more. (Have just received letter thank you.)
There is a gentleman in Mark Twain, who used poetry, statistics, pathos, bathos, blasphemy etc to prove his case; and won it. Write letters of this sort – anyhow letters. Run wild letters. Cockeyed and topsy turvy letters. Anything but the ordinary polite correspondence. For which I have no polite uses.
I hope this poetic outburst means that you are on the mend, and likely to be able to do more according to your desires before long. This has been a vile washout of a Spring, whateffer, look you! Today has been fine, but the sunset is closing with stormy looking clouds and cold breezes. High up in the air like harmless gnats British aeroplanes are sailing – but No Germans – and ever and again as they come round in their circles lovely little balls of white fleece, or dark fleece or occasionally ruddy, gather in their track and up above and below. But they take about as much notice as of so many peas. They go round and come back to the accompaniment of thumps like a soft tap on the bass drum when distant, or a loud tap on timpani when near.
Being in first line trenches in a soft part of the line is easily the best thing that falls to our lot out here. But lately, I have had a very soft time, being newly made (6 weeks?) a signaller, and being on an out of the way Post with two others. ‘Cushy’ is le mot juste. It is like Heaven to be away from our sergeant major, who, I am glad to note is not quite such a Prussian in the trenches. Give me signalling, first last and all the time. Had I but known before, O the drudgery I should have escaped!
What Ho, for the Russians! Surely that means the war is highly likely to finish soon, even quite soon? It is the Great Test, and Mr Garvin is tying himself into knots to swallow all his pessimism in time to be there first. Hey for Hilaire, who has Faith and doesn’t emit noisome darkness like a squid – ‘but in the first does always see the last.’
Stap me, but it’s cold!
The naval news is great. I could wish no more. We had to force them into action somehow, and did it by sacrificing the cat squadron. Bien! There are men like them – proud of them – ready to do the same. Only Fritz will find some difficulty even in coming out for a bolt back.
The books I mean to lend you will arrive someday.
Songs of Joy (if it can be found)
Nature Poems
Farewell to Poesy
and
Foliage
All very good Davies, especially the first. There are some more too, if I can remember them. Yeats’ later plays. Masefield’s book on Shakespeare. One or two more also.
Madam, I distinctly remember that months ago you offered to send me a parcel, if the need arose. Well it – well has arisen. They give us quarter of a loaf in the trenches, where men may stay (1st line and reserve) a fortnight. This deserves pity – for there is no means of getting any but by taking it up, and they do not, if they can help it, allow us to carry extras. (Some day you shall hear my candid opinion of the British Officer.)
To speak very personally now –
My feelings about my being connected with the whole affair are
(1) It is a weird queer war – this, against unseen enemies.
(2) That I have really no part in it. I wake up with a start from my dreams of books and music and home, and find I am – here, in this!
(3) That I have as little fear as anyone I have seen around me. Partly because I am more or less fatalistic; partly because my training in self-control not yet finished, has been hard enough. Partly because I possess an ingrained sense of humour. (A whizzbang missed me by inches over my head and exploded ten yards from me – and the impression it gave and gives me now is chiefly of the comic.)
(
4) The conviction that prayer is no use to me.
(5) The fineness of the men. (The officers may develop.)
(6) My increasing love of music.
(7) An absolute belief (not so very old) that once out of the Army I can make myself fit. (Trench mortar starts.) (But does not stop the Cuckoo, which cannot be far from the battery.) and so on.
(Queer! it is a deuced queer thing.)
(8) The conviction, also, that in hand to hand fight I shall be damned dangerous to tackle. A useful one to have; but I hope to God that He has a nice blighty ready for me and that there will be no need of such vulgar brawling – greatly against my taste as it is.
And now here’s the end of my letter (Bang! Bang! – Phutt! Phutt!) and here’s to the end of the war – now I must believe not very far off. (Shell goes down the chromatic scale from
Good bye,
Yours very sincerely,
Ivor Gurney.
Letter 2
Your book – my book has just arrived, and it is finished. Only to increasing certainty that Davies was once an exquisite poet – of which time he has now but occasional memories, and that he knows himself to be failing in power and is bitter at the knowledge. I happen to know it is true, from private information, but anyone who knows his earlier work must feel sad. He is now – merely a ‘boom’ ‘Tramp-poet’. And yet – ‘April’s Charms’, ‘The White Cascade’, ‘The One Singer’, ‘Come Thou sweet Wonder’… These are bon, but alas, after Foliage he is practically Na pooh. Thank you very much for so charming a present.
Thank you also for sending the Times Literary Supplement, but I have one sent already. However both are passed on, and read with enthusiasm by one and another.
Tonight an aeroplane has been sailing high up in the blue – right over the German lines, and occasionally leaving at his back a flock of tiny white clouds; looking so innocent as they unfold, that unless one has caught the tiny flash of the explosion it is perfectly impossible to think that these are anything but the tiny clouds of Summer W H D loves to sing of. I might be a good soldier could I forget music and books. Indeed I try to fill my still-sick mind with thoughts of these. Which makes a strange combination, as you may imagine.
A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers – or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.
I. B. G.
[P.S.] If you will send me a parcel, will you please send it when you receive a PC with ‘telegram’ untouched, a sign that we are either going or have gone out to trenches?
ERNEST SWINTON (1868–1951) was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1888 and served in the Boer War. He was appointed official war correspondent in the First World War by Lord Kitchener. His alarm at loss of life in the infantry made him one of the principal proponents of the tank, a prototype of which came into service in late 1916. Swinton was knighted in 1923 and was Professor of Military History at Oxford University from 1925 to 1939. The following is taken from Twenty Years After (1938).
It was one of the many last evenings before going again up the line. The sergeant-major came to say that a piano had been found and that for a small fee the owner was willing to let us take it to the orchard for the evening provided we kept a tarpaulin over it to keep out the damp. Would the officer come and would the adjutant play the piano? We assembled in the orchard in the dusk, 150 men lying about on the trodden grass, talking and smoking. A thin haze of tobacco smoke hung as pale blue shadow against the darkening sky, and two candles in the piano sconces gave a round blur of yellow light. The air was still and in the distance the rumble of far-off shellfire served as an echo to the thunder of the limber wagons passing along the road. We sang a chorus or two somewhat untidily to weld us into a unity of mood. Some forms had been lashed together to make a precarious platform and on this the sergeant-major, by virtue of his office the president, stood to announce that Corporal Jackson would oblige with a song. Jackson walked across to the piano. ‘Music?’ asked the adjutant with a smile. ‘No, sir, got no music.’ ‘What are you going to sing?’ ‘Don’t stop me, sir.’ ‘I won’t, but what’s the tune?’ Jackson bent down and hummed into the adjutant’s ear. ‘Right you are, Corporal. Carry on.’ Jackson walked to the centre of the stage and gave an expert shuffle with his feet to test its stability. ‘Mind them boots, Corporal. The quarter’s looking,’ shouted someone. The words and the tune were old even in those days. ‘Don’t stop me. Don’t stop me. I’ve got a job to do. T’was advertised in ninety-eight. If I’m not there I’ll be too late.’ Then Private Walton hunched his shoulders and adjusted the weight of his body carefully from one leg to the other until he found a position of equilibrium. From his pocket he pulled out a mouth-organ, wiped it carefully on the underside of his sleeve, shook it, knocked it gently against his palm to remove any crumbs or tobacco or biscuit then suddenly burst into harmony. He blew and tapped his foot and swayed until he made his audience sing to his tune. And then another tune forced itself onto the surface of his mind, breaking through the years and silence to remind me that Signaller Downes also stood up to sing. It was the long-drawn-out sequence of Gertie Gitana’s ‘Nev-vah-mind’, a song which declined in speed as it grew in sentiment. The moon rose in the blue sky, grey now, mellowing the darkness and deepening the shadows under the trees. Over the subdued chatter of many voices and the noise of the occasional lighting of a match came the silvery splay of notes from the piano. The adjutant was playing quietly to himself, meditating in music. The talk ceased and men turned away from their comrades to listen until there was dead silence under the trees to make a background for the ripple of the piano. The silence broke in upon the player and he removed his hands from the keyboard for an instant. The world plunged into a deep pool of stillness, rising again to hear a supple cascade of showering notes as he played one of Debussy’s arabesques. When he had finished, there was a pause for a second or two before the applause began – enough of a gap to show that the listeners had been travelling with him into a foreign land.
EDWARD THOMAS (1878–1917) was a poet born in London to Welsh parents and married to the writer, Helen Thomas. His Collected Poems were published in 1920. In July 1915 he joined the Artists’ Rifles and was killed by a shell at the Battle of Arras on 9 April two years later. The following are extracts from the Faber edition of his war diary.
23 [February 1917]. Chaffinch sang once. Another dull cold day. Inspected stables, checked inventory of new billet for men in Rue Jeanne d’Arc, went with Colonel round 244, 141 and 234 positions and O.P. in Achicourt. Afternoon maps. Partridges twanging in fields. Flooded fields by stream between the 2 sides of Achicourt. Ruined churches, churchyard and railway. Sordid ruin of Estaminet with carpenter’s shop over it in Rue de Jeanne d’Arc – wet, mortar, litter, almanacs, bottles, broken glass, damp beds, dirty paper, knife, crucifix, statuette, old chairs. Our cat moves with the Group wherever it goes, but inspects new house inside and out, windows, fireplace etc. Paid the Pool gunners (scrapings from several batteries doing odd jobs here). 2 owls in the garden at 6. The shelling must have slaughtered many jackdaws but has made home for many more. Finished Frost’s ‘Mountain Interval’. Wrote to Frost. A quiet still evening. Rubin brought over letters from Helen and Oscar.
[…]
14 [March 1917]. Ronville O.P. Looking out towards No Man’s Land what I thought first was a piece of burnt paper or something turned out to be a bat shaken at last by shells from one of the last sheds in Ronville. A dull cold morning, with some shelling of Arras and St. Sauveur and just 3 for us. Talking to Birt and Randall about Glostershire [sic] and Wiltshire, particularly Painswick and Marlborough. A still evening – blackbirds singing far off – a spatter of our machine guns – the spit of one enemy bullet – a little rain – no wind – only far-off artillery.
[…]
8 [April 1917]. A bright warm Easter day but Achicourt shelled at 12.39 and then at 2.15 so that we all retired to cellar. I had to go over to
battery at 3 for a practice barrage, skirting the danger zone, but we were twice interrupted. A 5.9 fell 2 yards from me as I stood by the f/c post. One burst down the back of the office and a piece of dust scratched my neck. No firing from 2-4. Rubin left for a course.
On the last pages of the diary are these notes:
The light of the new moon and every star
And no more singing for the bird…
I never understood quite what was meant by God.
The morning chill and clear hurts my skin while it delights my mind. Neuville in early morning with its flat straight crest with trees and houses – the beauty of this silent empty scene of no inhabitants and hid troops, but don’t know why I could have cried and didn’t.
Loose inside the diary, strangely creased by shell-blast like the diary, is a photograph of Helen and an army pass to Loughton/Lydd dated 3.12.16. Also a slip of paper with the addresses of S. N. Jones of Newport, H. K. Vernon of Oxford, J. N. Benson of Upper Tooting, Lewis John of Upminster, his brother Julian Thomas in Tooting. On the reverse of this in pencil is written:
Where any turn may lead to Heaven
Or any corner may hide Hell
Roads shining like river up hill after rain.
PAUL KLEE (1879–1940), one of the greatest Modernist painters, was born in Switzerland to a Swiss mother and a German father. He studied painting in Munich and was called up for military service in 1916. The following are excerpts from his diary.
[1916]
1021. 11.10. Guard duty on Sunday, beginning at noon; I shall have to be back at 9 a.m. Today, had to help clean up the wrecked airplane in which two flyers lost their lives day before yesterday. Badly damaged motor, etc.; really inspiring work. I told Poschenrieder that I am often called on to help Section Two. He promises to stand by me. At least I shall have had the experience of the crashed plane.
A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War Page 7