Voices of Silence

  With love to praise Love’s sweetest Son . . .

  Will ye forget?

  F.W. Harvey

  The Survivors

  We who come back,

  Nerveless and maimed, from the wild sacrifice

  Of the World’s youth, stretch’d quivering on the rack

  Of Nature pitiless to all its pain,

  Will never look again

  With the old gay, uncomprehending eyes

  Upon the former founts of our delight,

  Morning and eve and night,

  Sunshine and shadow, melody, love and mirth.

  War tutored us too well. We know their worth,

  We who come back!

  These will recall

  Our martyred Innocence, the indelible stain

  Of blood on our hands. Tho’ leaves of coronal

  Be heap’d upon our brows, ’twill not redress

  The eternal bitterness

  That surges with the memory of our slain,

  Our brothers by the bond of suffering.

  And tho’ the Spring

  Lights with new loves the eyes that once were wet

  For loss of them, WE never shall forget,

  We who come back!

  Geoffrey F. Fyson

  Who Won the War?

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said the Politician.

  ‘I made a mess of ammunition,

  And of the Dardanelles Expedition.

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said the Conscientious Objector.

  ‘I didn’t give a damn for England, and would like to have wrecked her.

  Now I’ll be released before the man that’s been my protector.

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said the Profiteer.

  ‘I made everything dear.

  I want to send Armies to Russia and keep it up at least another year.

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said the American President.

  ‘To raise a colossal Army I meant;

  But I hadn’t time to complete the experiment.

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said the A.S.C.

  ‘I stuck to my lorry or my gee,

  And always had a loaf in two, when the troops were lucky to get one in three.

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  ‘I’, said Marshall Foch.

  ‘I stood no kind of josh.

  Apply to me for information on how to carry out the order ‘At the Boche, slosh!’

  I won the war.’

  Who won the war?

  Said the Tommy, ‘I thought I won it,

  But all these ’ere gents seem to ha’ done it.

  So I s’pose I must be wrong again.

  ’Owever, let me get ’ome and put these damn clothes on the fire,

  And they can keep their old war!’

  All the Tricksters and the Schemers fell a-scheming and a-tricking,

  When they thought from the war they had got their last fat picking;

  But when Tommy gets back home they will get a good sound ——

  And that will be the end of a Perfect War!

  W. Clifford Poulten

  The Offside Leader

  This is the wish, as he told it to me,

  Of Driver Macpherson of Battery B.

  I want no praise, nor ribbons to wear.

  I’ve done my bit and I’ve had my share

  Of filth and fighting and blood and tears

  And doubt and death in the last four years.

  My team and I were among the first

  Contemptible few when the war-clouds burst.

  We sweated our gun through the dust and heat,

  We hauled her back in the Big Retreat

  With weary horses and short of shell,

  Turning our back on them. That was Hell.

  That was at Mons; but we came back there

  With shine on the horses and shells to spare!

  And much I’ve suffered and much I’ve seen

  From Mons to Mons on the miles between,

  But I want no praise nor ribbons to wear –

  All I ask for my fighting share

  Is this: that England should give to me

  My offside leader in Battery B.

  She was a round-ribbed blaze-faced brown,

  Shy as a country girl in town,

  Scared of the gangway and scared on the quay,

  Lathered in sweat at a sight of the sea,

  But brave as a lion and strong as a bull

  With the mud at the hub in an uphill pull.

  She learned her job as the best ones do,

  And we hadn’t been over a week or two

  Before she would stand like a rooted oak

  While the bullets whined and the shrapnel broke

  And a mile of the ridges rocked in glee

  As the shells went over from Battery B.

  One by one our team went down

  But the gods were good to the blaze-faced brown.

  We swayed with the battles back and forth,

  Lugging the limbers south and north.

  Round us the world was red with flame

  As we gained or gave in the changing game;

  And, forward and backward, losses or gains,

  There were empty saddles and idle chains,

  For Death took some on the galloping track

  And beckoned some from the bivouac,

  Till at last were left but my mare and me

  Of all that went over with Battery B.

  My mates have gone and left me alone;

  Their horses are heaps of ash and bone;

  Of all that went out in courage and speed

  There is left but the little brown mare in the lead,

  The little brown mare with the blaze on her face

  That would die of shame at a slack in her trace,

  That would swing the team at the least command,

  That would charge a house at the slap of a hand,

  That would turn from a shell to nuzzle my knee –

  The offside leader of Battery B.

  I look for no praise, and no ribbons to wear.

  If I’ve done my bit it was only my share,

  For a man has his pride and the strength of his Cause

  And the love of his home – they are unwritten laws.

  But what of the horses that served at our side,

  That in faith as of children fought with us and died?

  If I, through it all have been true to my task

  I ask for no honours; this only I ask:

  The gift of one gunner. I know of a place

  Where I’d leave a brown mare with a blaze on her face –

  ’Mid low leafy limetrees in cocksfoot and clover

  To dream with the dragon-flies glistening over.

  Will H. Ogilvie

  To my Mate

  Old comrade, are you living; do you hear me, can you see?

  If they print this stuff in Blighty, will you guess it comes from me?

  I was just a wee bit balmy, don’t you reckon, all the while?

  And perhaps the life in Flanders didn’t help to fix that tile.

  As the R.S.M. expressed it, ‘Who’s the freak in Number Nine

  That looks as if his wits were umpteen kilos from the Line?’

  So the Regimental copped it at the Cambrai do, I hear,

  And the freak is safe in civvies with a pension, like a peer.

  And for all his dud deportment and the Regimental’s scorn

  He could work his blooming ticket with the smartest soldier born.

  I never wrote, I own it, and I’ve not so much as tried

  To find if you’re in England yet or on the other side;

  But I never knew your number and I lost your home address

  W
ith my pack and all inside it, when they marked me C.C.S.

  But I haven’t quite forgot you, and my only souvenir

  That I wouldn’t sell for sixpence is the thought of you, old dear.

  We were mates to some good purpose in a world of boundless bad,

  And to scheme each other’s welfare was the one good thing we had.

  We were some queer brace of partners; Fate was surely on the spree

  When she yoked in double harness such a pair as you and me.

  You’d a craze for searching bodies – I could never stick the smell;

  You’d a deep respect for Scripture and for words you couldn’t spell.

  You were gentler than a woman when you dressed a wounded limb,

  And at grab – an old cat-mother isn’t half so quick and slim.

  I think I see you sitting in our dug-out at Bapaume

  Where you found your German wrist-watch – did you ever get that home? –

  With a sandbag on your napper and your feet inside a pair

  While I punched a tin of ‘Sweetened’ that you’d raised from God knows where.

  I see you sternly frowning with my glasses on your nose

  While you proved from Revelation when the war was bound to close,

  Till you smelt the old pot cooking and your brows relaxed their frown,

  And you sat and purred with pleasure as you spooned the custard down.

  Well, it’s over now and ended; we shall never tramp again

  Down the slimy, sodden mule-track in the darkness and the rain;

  You would always come behind me on the duckboards, if you could,

  To help me, if I stumbled with my load of wire or wood.

  I can hear you in the darkness, when you saw that I was done –

  ‘There’s a tin of strawberry pozzy in my pack – step up, old son!’

  I’ve got the same old billet, in the same old office chair,

  And France seems just as wild a dream as Blighty seemed out there.

  But I don’t get on with civvies – they know too much for me;

  They’ve read the war-news twice a day, not once a month, like we.

  They’ll swallow bags of bunkum and let it down, like pie,

  But they think you daft, or shell-shocked, if you speak what ain’t a lie.

  They love you if you spruce ’em well and give ’em lots of buck –

  Of the Prussian Guards you’ve strangled, and the squealing Huns you’ve stuck;

  They ar’n’t half sweet on bayonet-scraps and blood and all that tosh,

  And they’d earn a D.C. Medal-mint at shouting down the Bosche.

  But they’ve never heard the rat-tat of the gun that can’t be seen,

  They’ve never watched the sheaves go down, and walked behind to glean;

  They’ve made their ‘Great Advances’ with pins on paper maps,

  They’ve made their ‘Splendid Pushes’ with the ‘latest’ on their laps.

  But it ain’t worth while to tell ’em; you might talk till all was blue,

  But you’d never make ’em compree what a bloke out there goes through.

  George Willis

  Reconciliation

  When all the stress and all the toil is over,

  And my lover lies sleeping by your lover,

  With alien earth on hands and brows and feet,

  Then we may meet.

  Moving sorrowfully with uneven paces,

  The bright sun shining on our ravaged faces,

  There, very quietly, without sound or speech,

  Each shall greet each.

  We who are bound by the same grief for ever,

  When all our sons are dead may talk together,

  Each asking pardon from the other one

  For her dead son.

  With such low, tender words the heart may fashion,

  Broken and few, of pity and compassion,

  Knowing that we disturb at every tread

  Our mutual dead.

  Margaret Sackville

  The Reason

  (2nd November 1918)

  You ask me why I loathe these German beasts

  So much that I have dedicated self –

  Brains, heart, and soul – to one black creed of hate,

  Now and hereafter, both in war and peace.

  You say I had a sense of humour once,

  And kindliness, and Christian charity . . .

  Perhaps I had – before my pal came back.

  To-night he sleeps (thank God for morphia!)

  And I shan’t wake to hear him screaming out,

  ‘Don’t! I will work. Don’t tie me up again.

  Gilbert, for Christ’s sake, keep these fiends away.’

  I don’t know all the things they did to him.

  I only know that when I saw him last –

  Helping a wounded Boche in Guillemont,

  The day the Ulstermen took Lousy Wood –

  He was a husky, cheerful, six-foot man,

  (One of those glorious fools who didn’t wait

  To get commissions; but just joined the ranks);

  That now, he’s like some tortured starveling cat,

  Who crawls about my house on twisted limbs,

  Looking at me with one lack-lustre eye,

  (His wound was in the knee-cap, not the head),

  Twitching and tongue-tied; nothing like a man.

  I don’t know half the things they did to him.

  But I have listened to his screams; and learned

  Too much for man to know this side of Hell.

  You see, he wouldn’t work – the glorious fool:

  Although their surgeons cut the bullet out –

  (‘Chloroform? Dummes Luder! Strap him down.

  I don’t waste chloroform on English pigs.’) –

  And did their Prussian best to patch him up

  For service in munitions or the mines . . .

  He wouldn’t make munitions; said he knew

  The Hague Convention, International Law . . .

  They triced him by the thumbs for that – eight hours,

  Hands to the roof-beam, toes just off the ground;

  And when they cut him down, he couldn’t speak.

  So – as he lay – they kicked him in the face . . .

  I think that’s how he lost his other eye.

  I don’t know where to find them on the map,

  Those mines he sees o’ nights. But there is snow,

  Snow and black fir-trees. If a chap won’t work –

  (Remember, first he said he wouldn’t work;

  But Hunger and the Horsewhip soon cured that!) –

  They make him take his clothes off; tie him up

  Close to the red-hot stove, until the sweat

  Pours off his body; then they hack him out,

  Naked and bleeding. It is very cold

  Up there among the fir-trees and the snow . . .

  Sometimes I wish they hadn’t sent him back,

  Sometimes I feel he would be happier dead –

  Cold-butchered by some Unteroffizier

  In those latrines which they call prison-camps.

  But he’s come back; and I’ve learnt how to hate.

  Hate! Not an individual loathing felt

  For this one gaoler or the Kommandant

  (With pardon and trade orders for the rest)

  But absolute revulsion, merciless,

  Inexorable, reasoned, and approved –

  A plain man’s hatred of the Unclean Folk.

  Poor Jack – he’s moaning – I must go to him.

  Gilbert Frankau

  Peace

  June 28th 1919

  From the tennis lawn you can hear the guns going,

  Twenty miles away,

  Telling the people of the home counties

  That the peace was signed to-day.

  To-night there’ll be feasting in the city;

  They will drink deep and eat –

  Keep
peace the way you planned you would keep it

  (If we got the Boche beat).

  Oh, your plan and your word, they are broken,

  For you neither dine nor dance;

  And there’s no peace so quiet, so lasting,

  As the peace you keep in France.

  You’ll be needing no Covenant of Nations

  To hold your peace intact.

  It does not hang on the close guarding

  Of a frail and wordy pact.

  When ours screams, shattered and driven,

  Dust down the storming years,

  Yours will stand stark, like a grey fortress,

  Blind to the storm’s tears.

  Our peace . . . your peace . . . I see neither.

  They are a dream, and a dream.

  I only see you laughing on the tennis lawn;

  And brown and alive you seem,

  As you stoop over the tall red foxglove,

  (It flowers again this year)

  And imprison within a freckled bell

  A bee, wild with fear . . .

  * * *

  Oh, you cannot hear the noisy guns going:

  You sleep too far away.

  It is nothing to you, who have your own peace,

  That our peace was signed to-day.

  Rose Macaulay

  Return

  This was the way that, when the war was over,

  we were to pass together. You, its lover,

  would make my love your land, you said, no less,

  its shining levels and their loneliness,

  the reedy windings of the silent stream,

  your boyhood’s playmate, and your childhood’s dream.

  The war is over now: and we can pass

  this way together. Every blade of grass

  is you: you are the ripples on the river:

  you are the breeze in which they leap and quiver.

  I find you in the evening shadows falling

  athwart the fen, you in the wildfowl calling:

  and all the immanent vision cannot save

  my thoughts from wandering to your unknown grave.

  St Ives, 1919

  E. Hilton Young

  The Victory March

  By batteries and battalions the slow line swings along:

  Come out and shout with heartfelt joy,

  Come out and make a Song

  That nothing ever shall destroy.