May Wedderburn Cannan was working in a government office in Paris when news of the Armistice broke. But not everyone had a reason to celebrate:
THE ARMISTICE
IN AN OFFICE, IN PARIS
The news came through over the telephone:
All the terms had been signed: the War was won:
And all the fighting and the agony,
And all the labour of the years were done.
One girl clicked sudden at her typewriter
And whispered, ‘Jerry’s safe’, and sat and stared:
One said, ‘It’s over, over, it’s the end:
The War is over: ended’: and a third,
‘I can’t remember life without the war.’
And one came in and said, ‘Look here, they say
We can all go at five to celebrate.
As long as two stay on, just for today.’
It was quite quiet in the big empty room
Among the typewriters and little piles
Of index cards: one said, ‘We’d better just
Finish the day’s reports and do the files.’
And said, ‘It’s awf’lly like *Recessional,
Now when the tumult has all died away.’
The other said, ‘Thank God we saw it through;
I wonder what they’ll do at home today.’
And said, ‘You know it will be quiet tonight
Up at the Front: first time in all these years.
And no one will be killed there any more,’
And stopped, to hide her tears.
She said, ‘I’ve told you; he was killed in June.’
The other said, ‘My dear, I know; I know …
It’s over for me too … My man was killed,
Wounded … and died … at Ypres … three years ago …
And he’s my Man, and I want him,’ she said,
And knew that peace could not give back her Dead.
May Wedderburn Cannan
[Editor: *‘Recessional’ a poem by Rudyard Kipling was very popular during the War.]
For bereaved women, the fact that their own loved one would not be coming home made the Peace celebrations particularly bitter:
ARMISTICE DAY
The crowds are dancing in the street below,
I hear their happy, dancing feet, I know
That Peace and Victory have come to-day.
But I – I cannot dance and sing as they,
For all my soul is darkened with despair,
And close beside the hearth I’ve dawn your chair.
The banners that bedeck my window-sill
Fly out like phantoms in the gas-lamp’s flicker,
Strange sounds and voices are about to-night
And eerie shadows make the heart beat quicker.
What if your feet, your eager, running feet,
Were running up my stair!
What if I suddenly turned my head
And in the doorway you were standing there!
* * * *
God! how the firelight flickers on the empty chair!
Marjorie Kane Smyth
American Florence Van Cleve is aware that far from women rejoicing together that the War was now finally over, the joy of those whose loved ones were returning would be a constant reminder to the bereaved of all that they had lost.
From MATER TRIUMPHANS
What can I say to you? I hide my joy
As though it were a crime; I would not be
So cruel as to flash the jewel-light
Of this my rapture on the saddened sight
Of your poor tear-dimmed eyes.
To me Peace means,
Blissful renewal of a love that lives,
Made dearer stronger, by the memories
Of absence, and by faith now justified;
But you!
To you it means a Golden Star*;
Eternal silence of the well-loved voice;
A shadowy presence hovering in the home
That once was his and yours to break your heart
With longing, and to salt your bread with tears.
What can I say to you? There is no way
For Rapture to communicate with grief;
I Have and you Have Not; and that is all!
How can you bear the tumult and acclaim
When come the great grey ships from overseas
Bringing his comrades to their waiting homes?
Has Heaven any solace for your soul?
Florence Van Cleeve
[Editor:* The US Government awarded war bereaved mothers a Gold Star, but not all found this a comforting or suitable recompense for their son – or daughter’s life.]
Margaret Sackville looks beyond the grief of those whose loved one will not return. She anticipates how bereaved mothers, women who had suffered at the hands of enemy soldiery, and those who had worked for the war effort would become an embarrassment to a world eager to move on. In peacetime they would become inconvenient reminders of dislocated years.
VICTORY
Who are ye that come with eyes red and weeping,
In a long, long line and silent every one?
See overhead the flag of triumphant sweeping –
“We are the mothers and each has lost a son.”
Cries of the crowd who greet their god of glory!
What of these who crouch there silent in the street?
“We are outraged women – ’tis a common story,
Quietly we lie beneath your armies’ feet.”
Red flags of conquest, banners great and golden! –
Who are these silent ones upon our track?
“We in our thousands, perished unbeholden,
We are the women; pray you, look not back.”
Margaret Sackville
Personal and Public Memorialization
As early as 1915, a Graves Registration Commission had been established to ensure that the burial places of those killed in action were duly recorded. Under the inspired leadership of Sir Fabian Ware, this commission would become the Imperial, subsequently Commonwealth War Graves Commission, whose dedicated work continues to this day.
Many women, however, wanted to create a different, more personal kind of memorial to their loved one, and verse was their chosen medium:
I WILL A TOMB UPRAISE
(Written on learning that my boy’s body was left unburied on the field of battle near Gaza)
I will a tomb upraise to thee, my son,
A tomb to weather every earthly storm,
Whereon no stone shall crack nor rust may form,
A tomb that shall defy the years that run.
Yea though thy bones may rot – all that was spun
Upon the web and loom of thy young life,
Thy flesh and beauteous form, features that knife
Of Fate carved fine which were at birth begun –
Still on that sacred soil thy tomb shall rise;
I pile it up for thee in loving verse,
O may it be eternal as the skies.
Though thy dear dust doth everywhere disperse,
Still, still may mother-love with fire divine,
Cleave more than marble for the hallowed shrine.
Mrs Tyrrell-Green
Although in time, bereaved, ‘superfluous’ women did become, as Margaret Sackville had anticipated, if not an embarrassment then at least an inconvenience, initially, women and especially mothers were given priority in the rituals which marked the end of hostilities and commemorated the dead. On 11 November 1920, an unusual and elaborate ceremony took place in London’s Westminster Abbey, the burial of the Unknown Warrior. According to The Times, official invitations were extended to one thousand of the mothers and widows who had applied to attend. Their ‘seats of honour paid for in grief’, these women were considered guardians of the nation’s sorrow.
The elaborate staging and ritual resembled nineteenth century state funerals, yet this was the burial of an unknown soldier – n
ot necessarily an officer, perhaps even a private. The man’s anonymity and this symbolic act of committal were intended to comfort those mourning the 704,803 British personnel who had perished in this Great War for Civilisation. For many, this burial did indeed provide comfort, even closure. A leap of the imagination allowed the bereaved to imagine that maybe, just maybe, their own soldier now rested amongst kings, poets and statesmen.
THE NAMELESS DEAD
(Armistice Day 1920)
In the packed streets the women’s eyes are red, -
Those hungry eyes of starvèd mother-love,
That strive to pierce the coffin lid above
The nameless envoy of the nameless dead.
“Missing so long!” young widowed memories cry, -
O those unending nights of lonely tears!
Those tortured hopes. These furtive ambushed fears!
Is it for my beloved the people sigh?
Whose shattered body they have brought from far, -
From blood-soaked trench and love-untended grave,
To crown with honour in that honoured nave –
Victim at once and victor of the war.
Muriel Elsie Graham
Not all women were convinced that the Abbey, with its splendour and grandeur, was the appropriate final resting-place for ‘their’ beloved.
REMEMBRANCE DAY IN THE DALES
It’s a fine kind thought! And yet – I know
The Abbey’s not where our Jack should lie,
With his sturdy love of a rolling sky;
As a tiny child
He loved a sea that was grand and wild.
God knows best!
Near-by the sea our Jack should rest.
And Willie – Willie our youngest born –
I fear he might be lonesome, laid
Where the echoing, deep-voiced prayers are said, -
And yet the deep-voiced praying words
Reach God’s heart too with the hymns of the birds.
In His keep
On the edge of a wood our Will should sleep.
God knows best!
But the years are long since the lads went west.
Dorothy Una Ratcliffe
Other mourners had nearly a decade to wait before they could attain some form of closure. On 24 July 1927, the Menin Gate, the great memorial to the Missing of the Ypres Salient, was finally unveiled in the presence of largely, but not exclusively, generals, diplomats, royalty and other worthies. This gate in Ypres was chosen, as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission explains, ‘because of the hundreds of thousands of men who passed through it on their way to the battlefields’. The names carved on the panels of Portland Stone are those of circa 57,895 officers and men of this salient, whose bodies were either never found or could not be identified.
Amongst those who attended the unveiling were 700 pilgrims drawn from society’s poorest bereaved, their presence paid for by the charitable St Barnabas Society. These contemporary bereaved who kissed or ran their fingers across their loved ones’ names, and indeed the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who have since gazed in awe at the names reaching up as far as the eye can see, may know the answer to the question VAD Carola Oman posed when, soon after the Armistice, she stood on the Menin Road.
THE MENIN ROAD, MARCH 1919
Over the flat dim land I see you moving
Methodically; under a dark wide sky
Full of low clouds. You are gone from our loving.
No fret of ours or grief can touch you now.
The road speaks nothing to our longing now.
The winds are dumb to us and pass us by.
The nameless tracks, the faded grass
Spread out as far as we can see.
The homeless shadows glance and pass
By shattered wood and naked tree.
Splintered and stark they rise alone
Against so wonderful a blue
Of distance – an intensity
At once so steadfast and so true.
I wonder are you wholly gone?
Carola Oman
Conclusion: ‘Shall I ever forget you …?’
From the War’s earliest days sorrows were given words. Words that still speak to us from a previous century, give a glimpse of how a generation ill-prepared for death and destruction on such a monumental scale found an outlet for grief in verse.
Some women, be they black-gowned or with faces falsely ‘gay’, gained solace from imagining their loved one’s internment, surrounded by brothers-in-arms paying their dignified, final respects. Others accepted that, far from the comforting rites of the Anglican burial service, shell and shrapnel had been the audible backdrop to the Padre’s hurried words.
A generation of parents found themselves awaiting an old age bereft of their beloved child and his progeny. Many mothers found comfort in retreating to precious memories of a son’s boyhood, taking pride in his manly sacrifice. This helped to alleviate the inevitable guilt and grief at not having been with him when he died. Inexplicably, grief for sons was easily and widely poeticized, silence surrounds the mourning of those bereaved of a daughter or daughters.
Siblings’ poetry shows how deeply many mourned their lost brothers or indeed their ‘sisters-in-arms’. Sibling grief transcended generations, those approaching middle-age were robbed of the dearly-loved keeper of shared memories, whilst other women who now anticipated remaining single mourned the loss of unborn children.
Not all the bereaved had official status nor even the right to grieve openly. Poignant words hint at how disenfranchised mourners were excluded from the community, both real or imagined, of the bereaved. Many accepted their marginalization, others longed for recognition of their share in his memory.
Women’s writings also give an insight into the anguish of sacrificing their sexual fulfilment. Contrary to contemporary mores, some women openly declared passionate, unashamed love, rejecting chaste idealization and celebrating, or at least dreaming of, intoxicating physical love. If all that remained were memories of shared passion, they would cling to these.
Throughout this long and bloody conflict, the bereaved sought many forms of comfort, some found this in actions, others in art, many in words. Some used conventional versification and High Diction to poeticize their resignation to the Divine Will, their belief in the chivalry of the modern Crusaders, their acceptance that, in wartime, women must weep. For others, these were merely outdated platitudes; they sought a poetic outlet for their grief, passion and anguish but nineteenth century poesy proved inadequate to these demands.
Traditionalist or modernist, these poems takes us to the heart of women’s war, women’s sacrifice, women’s grief.
Conclusion:
‘Whose the harder part?’
Writing in the Daily Mail on 24 September 1916, Galloway Kyle, Managing Director of Erskine Macdonald and Honorary Director of the Poetry Society, praised ‘the rare quality and beauty of [women’s] war verse’. He was far from alone in making such comments.
Fifteen years later, on 4 November 1933 the Hastings and St Leonard Observer reported how at a recent public lecture entitled ‘Some Modern Women Poets’, the speaker had argued convincingly that ‘women poets were bound to look upon things from a different point of view but in sincerity, technique and beauty, the poems of women were not below those of men’. The lecturer singled out for praise a number of the ‘war poetesses’, tacitly recognising that although the shibboleth of sex had prevented women from bearing arms, that shibboleth had not prevented them from wielding their poetic pens.
Six days later, the Derby Daily Telegraph reported that speaking at Derby Guildhall, politician and lecturer on literature David Rennie Hardman had roundly refuted a claim made by the post-war generation of poets that Great War poetry had been ‘purely sentimental’. He maintained that the Great War poets wrote ‘from experience’ and, as far as he was concerned, a woman’s experience of wartime was as valid as a man’s. These and many other critics
, reviewers and lecturers both during and in the decades immediately following the War, accepted that irrespective of whether they were soldier or civilians, male or female, war poets were, from the outset, ‘all in it together’.
But with the passing of time, the story of the Great European War for Civilisation became increasingly told – or listened to – through the voices of those dubbed ‘soldier poets’. Those whose gender had made it possible for them to have been at the Front were increasingly automatically assumed to have been there. The term ‘War Poet’ became slowly and misleadingly synonymous with those presumed, rightly or wrongly, to have experienced front line action. The works of poets like Wilfred Gibson, who had rarely soldiered closer to a foreign field than Sydenham in Kent, appear in collections of poems penned by those deemed to have been ‘up the line to death’.
Yet, poets such as Celia Congreve, who was within sight and sound of the guns from September 1914 to beyond the Armistice, were never included. If masculinity could blur the distinction between those who fought and those who did not, femininity worked the opposite way. The very fact of being female meant that a woman could not bear arms, ergo she was not a ‘soldier poet’. Her poetry, or so this logic went, had nothing to say about war. Gradually, Great War poetry became a male preserve and the voices of women poets were silenced for decades.
The publication of Catherine Reilly’s anthology Scars Upon My Heart: Women’s Poetry and Verse of the First World War (1981), Nosheen Khan’s critical appraisal Women’s Poetry of the First World War (1988), the early 1990s work of feminist historians and my own PhD thesis Songs of Wartime Lives: Women’s Poetry of the First World War (2004) alerted a new generation of critics to the existence of the considerable corpus of women’s poetry. But these studies still barely lifted the curtain on the women’s poetic war.
As stated in the Introduction, not all the poets who feature in this anthology were skilled – although a number were. The poems were chosen not on grounds of literary merit but to enhance and provide a different understanding of women’s lives during those tumultuous years. Ranging from the confident, disturbing, modernist voice of Vassar-educated Mary Borden to the grief-stricken lines penned by bereaved mother and shipyard-labourer’s widow Sarah Toye, these poems all tell a story.
Tumult and Tears Page 16