They whom Death, saluting, called upon to die.
Bugles, ghostly bugles, whispering down the wind –
Dreams too soon are over, gardens left behind.
Only shadows linger, for love does not forget –
Pierrot goes forward – but what of Pierrette?
Gabrielle Elliot
‘And we wept and watched you go’: Saying Good-bye
In August 1914, Great Britain had a standing army of under a million men. Battalions on home service, supplemented by reservists, were rapidly mustered, forming the vanguard of the British Expeditionary Force. Several poets recorded their thoughts as they watched Britain’s first soldiers march off to war.
Katharine Tynan was an eyewitness to the West Kent Regiment’s August departure from Dublin. In this poem, she captures the excited public mood as the men left the safety of home shores and headed for the Western Front.
JOINING THE COLOURS
(West Kents, Dublin, August 1914)
There they go marching all in step so gay!
Smooth-cheeked and golden, food for shells and guns.
Blithely they go as to a wedding day,
The mothers’ sons.
The drab street stares to see them row on row
On the high tram-tops, singing like the lark.
Too careless-gay for courage, singing they go
Into the dark.
With tin whistles, mouth-organs, any noise,
They pipe the way to glory and the grave;
Foolish and young, the gay and golden boys
Love cannot save.
High heart! High courage! The poor girls they kissed
Run with them: they shall kiss no more, alas!
Out of the mist they stepped-into the mist
Singing they pass.
Katharine Tynan
Another poet who may also have witnessed the departure of the West Kents or one of the other regiments stationed in Dublin, was Winifred Letts. This, one of the earliest war poems published by a woman, appeared on 15 August 1914 in the Saturday Westminster Gazette. The narrator sees the heartbreak and helplessness of the women left behind.
THE CALL TO ARMS IN OUR STREET
There’s a woman sobs her heart out,
With her head against the door,
For the man that’s called to leave her,
— God have pity on the poor!
But it’s beat, drums, beat,
While the lads march down the street,
And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,
Keep your tears until they go.
There’s a crowd of little children
That march along and shout,
For it’s fine to play at soldiers
Now their fathers are called out.
So it’s beat, drums, beat;
But who’ll find them food to eat?
And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,
Ah! the children little know.
There’s a mother who stands watching
For the last look of her son,
A worn poor widow woman,
And he her only one.
But it’s beat, drums, beat,
Though God knows when we shall meet;
And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,
We must smile and cheer them so.
There’s a young girl who stands laughing,
For she thinks a war is grand,
And it’s fine to see the lads pass,
And it’s fine to hear the band.
So it’s beat, drums, beat,
To the fall of many feet;
And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,
God go with you where you go
To the war.
Winifred Letts
In this poem Letts observes those who were watching their men depart. For many women, their initial contact with the disruption and the heartache of war was bidding an agonising farewell to loved ones who were flocking to the colours. This agony lasted throughout the War and poems relating to farewells occur from the opening days.
One of the thousands of women who knew intimately the anguish involved in saying good-bye was Alexandra Grantham. Both her eldest son and her husband were serving officers.
SONNET XIX
War is a time of sacrifice and parting,
Of hard-fought victory o’er mothers’ tears,
That when their sons towards far fights are starting,
By the loud train be mirth not moan of fears.
Good wishes, agony of farewell kisses,
As they together for the last time stand –
The green flag waves, the white steam hisses,
Love’s last fond greetings waved with trembling hands.
War is a time of death and long good-bye
To home and all its peaceful blessedness;
A time when our travail’s dear children lie
Killed or maimed on alien soil; when wickedness
Hate-maddened Christians goads on blood-drenched plain
To mock and crucify their God again.
Alexandra Grantham
However infrequently it may have occurred, men serving on the Western Front did get some home leave, with officers allocated substantially more than other ranks. Inevitably, each period of leave came to an end, with the trauma of saying goodbye needing to be re-negotiated. Evelyn Tollemache, whose two brothers served (and survived), raises an unanswerable question: who suffers most during the final goodbye?
THE LEAVE TRAIN VICTORIA STATION
In the dim morning through vague archways grey
– Where fitful lamplight struggles with the day –
They gather slowly – all too swift have sped
The precious hours of leave. Still must be said
The sad goodbyes, with lips that may not fail –
With smiling eyes – though not a man but dreads
These last few moments more than any hail
Of shrapnel bullets raining overhead.
’Neath the dim arches close in little bands,
Sad wives and mothers with their loved ones stand.
Daring but trivial parting words – may be
“Come back safely again” or “Write to me.”
White lipped, dry eyed, they wait and glance above
To where the great clock points its fateful hand,
Half longing, yet with dread to see it move,
These bravest men and women in the land.
Whose names are blazoned not on any Scroll
Of Glorious Victories, nor in any Roll
Of Battle Honours – yet on platforms grey
In early London mornings every day
Are bitterest battles fought and victories gained.
But whether They that go, or Those who stay –
Lips smiling while their hearts break – have attained
The Greater Triumph, God alone can say.
Evelyn Tollemache
Journalist, social historian and household management author Mrs Peel noted that more than one young girl of the time remembered, ‘It used to be hateful if one went to see them off by that horrid leave train.’ Another who had become engaged during the War, stated, ‘I knew what misery was: one was always waiting, and one almost dreaded the “leaves” because of that awful going back again.’ The memory of bidding her fiancé farewell, for what would be the last time, remained with Australian-born, Oxford resident Marian Allen, as it did with countless bereaved women.
CHARING CROSS
I went along the river-side today,
Under the railway bridge at Charing Cross,
Where many such as you are swept away
And we are left to wonder at your loss.
The station echoes with your ghostly feet;
Your laughing voices cling about each wall;
You entered gaily from the sunlit street
To pass into the sun again and fall.
The train slid out under the April sky
And Lond
on’s throbbing heart was left behind;
And many more will follow you to die,
Crossing the silent river, there to find
Host upon host, their comrades glorified,
Saluting them upon the other side.
Marian Allen
It was not only adults who accompanied soldiers to railway stations, countless children did too. Decades later, many who had lived through these moments recalled the agony of waiting for the final whistle to blow and seeing their father disappear, maybe for ever.
TRAIN
Will the train never start?
God, make the train start.
She cannot bear it, keeping up so long;
and he, he no more tries to laugh at her.
He is going.
She holds his two hands now.
Now, she has touch of him and sight of him.
And then he will be gone.
He will be gone.
They are so young.
She stands under the window of his carriage,
and he stands in the window.
They hold each other’s hands
across the window ledge.
And look and look,
and know that they may never look again.
The great clock of the station-
how strange it is.
Terrible that the minutes go,
terrible that the minutes never go.
They had walked the platform for so long,
up and down, and up and down-
the platform, in the rainy morning,
up and down, and up and down.
The guard came by, calling,
“Take your places, take your places.”
She stands under the window of his carriage,
and he stands in the window.
God, make the train start!
Before they cannot bear it,
make the train start!
God, make the train start!
The three children, there,
in black, with the old nurse,
standing together, and looking, and looking,
up at their father in the carriage window,
they are so forlorn and silent.
The little girl will not cry,
but her chin trembles.
She throws back her head, with its stiff little braid,
and will not cry.
Her father leans down,
out over the ledge of the window,
and kisses her, and kisses her.
She must be like her mother,
and it must be the mother who is dead.
The nurse lifts up the smallest boy,
and his father kisses him,
leaning through the carriage window.
The big boy stands very straight,
and looks at his father,
and looks, and never takes his eyes from him,
And knows that he may never look again.
Will the train never start?
God, make the train start!
The father reaches his hand down from the window,
and grips the boy’s hand,
and does not speak at all.
Will the train never start?
He lets the boy’s hand go.
Will the train never start?
He takes the boy’s chin in his hand,
leaning out through the window,
and lifts the face that is so young, to his.
They look and look,
and know that they may never look again.
Will the train never start?
God, make the train start!
Helen Mackay
For some, saying goodbye in the very public space of a station was too much to bear, even for the wife of a regular army officer who was used to such painful events.
THE FAREWELL
Oh, not tonight beloved - not now, to-night, bid me farewell
Wait, wait, till dawn uprising into sight breaks the dear spell!
There is no night when love’s great altar stands bare and reproved,
Just darkness where in each our distant lands we sleep, beloved.
Shall we not gather then one more tomorrow? Ah no, in vain,
Duty, however reckless, may not borrow from Time’s domain,
And though I bid you stay I’d have you go, oh heart, my heart!
I need not tell you, you already know. Proudly we part,
Proudly we add our piteous tiny mite to all the grief
Staggering the world for this huge cause of right and high belief,
Though all unknown the meaning of the lust let loose on earth,
Before whose power rises out of dust a world’s rebirth.
Perchance we walked too blithely with our peace, reckoned too sure
That all the snares which made for ill should cease, ourselves secure.
We let the Past slip by us without care; we heard in vain
Far echoing sobs of women and the prayer of captive men.
We let our faith turn rotten on the bough; disdained its seed,
Our guilt is measured by the strength of vow made in our need.
But oh, for other ways than by those gates, opening on death,
While Hope in utter silence sits and waits, catching her breath.
By other ways than through that fierce domain of flame and fire,
Where Hell itself sees nothing more to gain or to desire.
All that we dreamed in linking mate with mate, all bliss and love
Tossed to the crucible of warring fate, its strength to prove,
All that we dreamed and planned and haply sought, all smiles and tears,
All loyalty and vows and trust unsought and woman’s fears,
Crushed in the Juggernaut of tyranny, of wrath and death,
And Battle’s proud and long-drawn agony and simple faith.
Oh I had strength and now I have no more, now you must go,
Nay, do not check me, let my heart be sore, let my tears flow,
Let me be me and not the heroine that others are,
So shall our memory make sure to win and hold one star,
Not ice-bound with the courage of despair, but near and true,
Sobbing out softly all that I may dare from me to you
For neither in the rush of fretting time beating his wings
In vain against the eternal law sublime of ordered things,
Nor yet in silence of the upturned flowers Death sadly reaps,
Constrained to fill the overburdened hours while mercy weeps,
Shall I forget, so you remember there where flaming pure,
Faith’s spirit rises through the tortured air, strong to endure.
Only I ask you, bid me not goodbye, here’s no such word,
Put your arms round me so, in that last sigh our prayer is heard;
Guard that prayer ever, dearest one, nor grieve, holding our love,
But kiss me long, ere yet you take your leave, night still above:
So shall I keep you enduringly, be with you still,
Climb with you to that topmost destiny, yours to fulfil.
Aimée Byng Scott
Elinor Jenkins captures the agony of the final countdown before bidding farewell, both for he who left and those who remained. Her beloved, near contemporary uncle, Harry (whom this poem is almost certainly about), and her eldest brother, Arthur, would both pass into what she calls ‘the silence and the night’; Harry in 1915 and Arthur in 1917.
THE LAST EVENING
ROUND a bright isle, set in a sea of gloom,
We sat together, dining,
And spoke and laughed even as in better times
Though each one knew no other might misdoubt
The doom that marched moment by moment nigher,
Whose couriers knocked on every heart like death,
And changed all things familiar to our sight
Into strange shapes and grieving ghosts that wept.
The crimson-sha
ded light
Shed in the garden roses of red fire
That burned and bloomed on the decorous limes.
The hungry night that lay in wait without
Made blind, blue eyes against the silver’s shining
And waked the affrighted candles with its breath
Out of their steady sleep, while round the room
The shadows crouched and crept.
Among the legions of beleaguering fears,
Still we sat on and kept them still at bay,
A little while, a little longer yet,
And wooed the hurrying moments to forget
What we remembered well,
—Till the hour struck— then desperately we sought
And found no further respite— only tears
We would not shed, and words we might not say.
We needs must know that now the time was come
Yet still against the strangling foe we fought,
And some of us were brave and some
Borrowed a bubble courage nigh to breaking,
And he that went, perforce went speedily
And stayed not for leave-taking.
But even in going, as he would dispel
The bitterness of incomplete good-byes,
He paused within the circle of dim light,
And turned to us a face, lit seemingly
Less by the lamp than by his shining eyes.
So, in the radiance of his mastered fate,
A moment stood our soldier by the gate
And laughed his long farewell —
Then passed into the silence and the night.
Elinor Jenkins
‘Check the thoughts that cluster thick’: Knitting poems
Having exchanged farewells, many women would wander back to empty homes and try to pick up the semblance of normality, needing above all else to keep their thoughts and fears at bay. It very quickly became apparent that British Army quartermasters were unable to cope with equipping the hundreds of thousands of volunteers that the recruitment drive was bringing forward. Backed by Queen Mary, an appeal was made to the women of England to knit 300,000 pairs of socks by Christmas. They responded.
Soon the country resounded to the click of knitting needles and, like every aspect of the women’s war, knitting soon became the stuff of poetry. For many women, knitting – now much mocked but at the time vital to the war effort – was one way of controlling those ‘thoughts that cluster thick’.
Knitting poems range from the light-hearted, some penned by children (for children as young as three and four knitted face cloths and simple scarves) to include with the gifts that they sent to the Front, to parodies and sophisticated polished works that use knitting as a metaphor for love, anxiety and grief. This is perhaps best summed up by one young woman who realised as she watched her mother’s hands darting along the lines, that ‘it’s not a sock she’s knitting, it’s a web of love for him’.
Tumult and Tears Page 2