Voices of Silence
Page 39
A vale of crosses wavering in the mist
A thousand years ago. – Or was it yesterday?
1933
William Box
TWENTY-TWO
L’Envoi
The Other Side
Being a letter from Major Average of the Royal Field Artillery in Flanders, acknowledging a presentation copy of a book of war-verse, written by a former subaltern of his battery – now in England.
Just got your letter and the poems. Thanks.
You always were a brainy sort of chap:
Though pretty useless as a subaltern –
Too much imagination, not enough
Of that rare quality, sound common-sense.
And so you’ve managed to get on the Staff:
Influence, I suppose: a Captain, too!
How do tabs suit you? Are they blue or green?
About your book. I’ve read it carefully,
So has Macfaddyen; (you remember him,
The light-haired chap who joined us after Loos?);
And candidly, we don’t think much of it.
The piece about the horses isn’t bad;
But all the rest, excuse the word, are tripe –
The same old tripe we’ve read a thousand times.
My grief, but we’re fed up to the back teeth
With war-books, war-verse, all the eye-wash stuff
That seems to please the idiots at home.
You know the kind of thing, or used to know:
‘Heroes who laugh while Fritz is strafing them’ –
(I don’t remember that you found it fun,
The day they shelled us out of Blauwport Farm!)
‘After the fight. Our cheery wounded. Note
The smile of victory: it won’t come off’ –
(Of course they smile; so’d you, if you’d escaped,
And saw three months of hospital ahead . . .
They don’t smile, much, when they’re shipped back to France!)
‘Out for the Great Adventure’ – (twenty-five
Fat, smirking wasters in some O.T.C.,
Who just avoided the Conscription Act!)
‘A strenuous woman-worker for the Cause’ –
(Miss Trixie Toogood of the Gaiety,
Who helped to pauperise a few Belgiques
In the great cause of self-advertisement!) . . .
Lord knows, the newspapers are bad enough;
But they’ve got some excuse – the censorship –
Helping to keep their readers’ spirits up –
Giving the public what it wants: (besides,
One mustn’t blame the press, the press has done
More than its share to help us win this war –
More than some other people I could name):
But what’s the good of war-books, if they fail
To give civilian-readers an idea
Of what life is like in the firing-line . . .
You might have done that much; from you, at least,
I thought we’d get an inkling of the truth.
But no; you rant and rattle, beat your drum,
And blow your two-penny trumpet like the rest:
‘Red battle’s glory’, ‘Honour’s utmost task’,
‘Gay jesting faces of undaunted boys’, . . .
The same old Boy’s-Own-Paper balderdash!
Mind you, I don’t deny that they exist,
These abstract virtues that you gas about –
(We shouldn’t stop out here long, otherwise!) –
Honour and humour, and that sort of thing;
(Though heaven knows where you found the glory touch,
Unless you picked it up at G.H.Q.);
But if you’d common-sense, you’d understand
That humour’s just the Saxon cloak for fear,
Our English substitute for ‘Vive la France!’
Or else a trick to keep the folk at home
From being scared to death – as we are scared;
That honour . . . damn it, honour’s the one thing
No soldier yaps about, except of course
A soldier-poet – three-and-sixpence net.
Honest to God, it makes me sick and tired
To think that you, who lived a year with us,
Should be content to write such tommy-rot.
I feel as though I’d sent a runner back
With news that we were being strafed like Hell . . .
And he’d reported: ‘Everything OK.’
Something’s the matter: either you can’t see,
Or else you see, and cannot write. That’s worse.
Hang it, you can’t have clean forgotten things
You went to bed with, woke with, smelt and felt,
All those long months of boredom streaked with fear:
Mud, cold, fatigue, sweat, nerve-strain, sleeplessness,
The men’s excreta viscid in the rain,
And stiff-legged horses lying by the road,
Their bloated bellies shimmering, green with flies . . .
Have you forgotten? you who dine to-night
In comfort at the Carlton or Savoy.
(Lord, but I’d like a dart at that myself –
Oysters, crème something, sole vin blanc, a bird,
And one cold bottle of the very best –
A girl to share it: afterwards, a show –
Lee White and Alfred Lester, Nelson Keys;
Supper to follow.
Our Brigade’s in rest –
The usual farm. I’ve got the only bed.
The men are fairly comfy – three good barns.
Thank God, they didn’t have to bivouac
After this last month in the Salient) . . .
You have forgotten; or you couldn’t write
This sort of stuff – all cant, no guts in it,
Hardly a single picture true to life.
Well, here’s a picture for you: Montauban –
Last year – the flattened village on our left –
On our right flank, the razed Briqueterie,
Their five-nines pounding bits to dustier bits –
Behind, a cratered slope, with batteries
Crashing and flashing, violet in the dusk,
And prematuring every now and then –
In front, the ragged Bois de Bernafay,
Boche whizz-bangs bursting white among its trees.
You had been doing F.O.O. that day;
(The Staff knows why we had an F.O.O.:
One couldn’t flag-wag through Trônes Wood; the wires
Went down as fast as one could put them up
And messages by runner took three hours.)
I’d got the wind up rather; you were late,
And they’d been shelling like the very deuce.
However, back you came. I see you now,
Staggering into ‘mess’ – a broken trench,
Two chalk-walls roofed with corrugated iron,
And, round the traverse, Driver Noakes’s stove
Stinking and smoking while we ate our grub.
Your face was blue-white, streaked with dirt; your eyes
Had shrunk into your head, as though afraid
To watch more horrors; you were sodden-wet
With greasy coal-black mud – and other things.
Sweating and shivering, speechless, there you stood.
I gave you whisky, made you talk. You said:
‘Major, another signaller’s been killed.’
‘Who?’
‘Gunner Andrews, blast them. O my Christ!
His head – split open – when his brains oozed out,
They looked like bloody sweetbreads, in the muck.’
And you’re the chap who writes this clap-trap verse!
Lord, if I’d half your brains, I’d write a book:
None of your sentimental platitudes,
But something real, vital; that should strip
The glamour fr
om this outrage we call war,
Showing it naked, hideous, stupid, vile –
One vast abomination. So that they
Who, coming after, till the ransomed fields
Where our lean corpses rotted in the ooze,
Reading my written words, should understand
This stark stupendous horror, visualise
The unutterable foulness of it all . . .
I’d show them, not your glamorous ‘glorious game’,
Which men play ‘jesting’ ‘for their honour’s sake’ –
(A kind of Military Tournament,
With just a hint of danger – bound in cloth!)
But War, – as war is now, and always was:
A dirty, loathsome, servile murder-job: –
Men, lousy, sleepless, ulcerous, afraid,
Toiling their hearts out in the pulling slime
That wrenches gum-boot down from bleeding heel
And cakes in itching arm-pits, navel, ears:
Men stunned to brainlessness, and gibbering:
Men driving men to death and worse than death:
Men maimed and blinded: men against machines –
Flesh versus iron, concrete, flame and wire:
Men choking out their souls in poison-gas:
Men squelched into the slime by trampling feet:
Men, disembowelled by guns five miles away,
Cursing, with their last breath, the living God
Because He made them, in His image, men . . .
So – were your talent mine – I’d write of war
For those who, coming after, know it not.
And if posterity should ask of me
What high, what base emotions keyed weak flesh
To face such torments, I would answer: ‘You!’
Not for themselves, O daughter, grandsons, sons,
Your tortured forebears wrought this miracle;
Not for themselves, accomplished utterly
This loathliest task of murderous servitude;
But just because they realised that thus,
And only thus, by sacrifice, might they
Secure a world worth living in – for you.’
Good-night, my soldier poet. Dormez bien!
Gilbert Frankau
Notes
CHAPTER ONE: THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
The Kaiser and Belgium, Daily Chronicle, 8 August 1914.
England to Belgium, Swords and Ploughshares.
The Old Soldiers, Collected Poems.
March up to the Colours, Accrington Observer and Times, 19 September 1914.
The Skunk, The War Men-agerie.
The Sloth, ibid.
Cricket Field or Battle Field?, Daily Chronicle, 1 September 1914.
First Week in the Army, Peeko Journal, no. 16 [May 1916]. The poem is signed ‘Nemo’.
Pro Patria, The Spires of Oxford.
The Volunteers, Punch, vol. 148, 3 February 1915. The poem is signed ‘R.C.L.’.
[A subaltern known as Colquhoun], Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 5, August 1915. The limerick is signed ‘H.S.K.’.
The Barrack Room, Ballads of Field and Billet.
[Have you seen the Pals, sir?] Written in an autograph book belonging to Miss Alice Holliday of 42 Primrose Street, Accrington, the girlfriend of Pte Percy Martin of the Accrington Pals. The original manuscript disappeared some years ago; a line appears to have been omitted from the final stanza when it was transcribed.
The Call to Arms, Saturday Westminster Gazette, vol. 44, no. 6612, 15 August 1914. Reprinted in The Spires of Oxford with the title ‘The Call to Arms in Our Street’.
On Trek, Collected Poems.
The House by the Highway, Poems.
The Last Evening, ibid.
CHAPTER TWO: EARLY MONTHS
[There was a strange Man of Coblenz], The Book of William.
Retreat, The Night Sister. Lars Porsena of Clusium was an Etruscan king who ruled central Italy c. 500 BC. The last Roman king, Lucius Tarquinius, had been deposed and Rome declared a republic; Tarquinius appealed to Porsena to help overthrow the revolutionaries and restore the throne. The story was the subject of a popular poem, ‘Horatio’ by Thomas Babington Macaulay, from which Charles T. Foxcroft quotes.
The Mouth-Organ, Ballads of Battle. As a note to the name Jimmy Morgan, Joseph Lee writes: ‘Though for obvious reasons of rhyme I have here ventured to appropriate the classic name “Jimmy Morgan”, nevertheless the best mouth-organist in D Company, if not in the battalion, is 2203 Private William Brough. He informs me that his present instrument is something the worse for wear.’ ‘Unter den Linden’ is the best-known and most elegant street in Berlin, named from the linden or lime trees that line the roadway. ‘Highland laddie, Highland laddie; whar hae you been a’ the day?’ is the regimental march of the Black Watch.
Singing ‘Tipperary’, Ballads of Field and Billet.
Another ‘Scrap of Paper’, Punch, vol. 147, 7 October 1914.
The Freedom of the Press, ibid., vol. 147, 9 December 1914. Joseph Joffre (1852–1931) was Chief of the French General Staff until December 1916.
News from the Front, Dead Horse Corner Gazette, no. 3, June 1916. The poem was reprinted in a number of other trench magazines, e.g. Kamp Knews, no. 22, Christmas 1917.
[There once was a Man, Kaiser Will], The Book of William.
Where are the Russians?, Accrington Observer and Times, 19 September 1914.
The German Herr, The War Men-agerie.
The Traitor, Punch, vol. 147, 14 October 1914.
Ten Little Germans, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 9, August 1915. The poem is signed ‘H.R.’.
[There once was a Ruler enraged], The Book of William.
Kaiser Bill, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 1, no. 3, February 1915. The poem is signed ‘Stop Gap’. Alexander Von Kluck (1846–1934) commanded the German First Army and led the German attack through Belgium in 1914; Field Marshal Sir John French (1852–1925) commanded the BEF during the early part of the war until he was replaced by Douglas Haig in December 1915; Grand Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz (1849–1930) oversaw the building of the German naval fleet before the war, and was responsible for the German policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare. The Kiel Canal, built 1887–95, allowed German naval movement from their Baltic bases to the open sea; its widening in the years before the war was seen as an act of bellicosity. Davy Jones was a sailor’s term for the sea, here the sea as a grave. Admiral Sir Frederick Sturdee (1859–1925) commanded the force that destroyed the German naval squadron commanded by Admiral Von Spee in the Battle of the Falklands in December 1914.
Ypres Cathedral, New Statesman, vol. 5, no. 128, 18 September 1915. Reprinted in Ypres and Other Poems.
Ypres, Contemporary Review. The poem is subscribed ‘Ypres, October 1915’.
The Refugees, Ypres and Other Poems.
To the Kaiser – Confidentially, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 10, 12 March 1916. Reprinted in A Gloucestershire Lad, where Harvey put ‘Sir’ into lower case, apart from the final ‘Sir Kaiser’. All Souls, 1914, An Annual of New Poetry: 1917.
The School at War – 1914, Eton Lyrics. 1,031 Etonians were killed or died of wounds in the First World War.
‘Punch’ in the Enemy’s Trenches, Punch, vol. 148, 13 January 1915.
CHAPTER THREE: AUTUMN 1914 IN ENGLAND
The Women, The Lady, 3 September 1914.
Deportment for Women, Punch, vol. 148, 20 January 1916. For ‘The Day’ see Glossary under Der Tag. The Nut was a fop or dandy.
Khaki, Ripples from the Ranks of the QMAAC.
Leave your Change, Accrington Observer and Times, 3 October 1914, repeated on 10 October. The newspaper has the headline: ‘LEAVE YOUR CHANGE FOR THE NATIONAL FUND.’
Britain’s Daughters, Trampled Clay.
Munition Girls, Glasgow Herald, 29 February 1916. The poem is signed ‘W.W.’.
The Deserters, Punch, vol. 154, 9 January 1918. Reprinted in The Bomber Gipsy wi
th changes. A Sam Browne was the belt and cross-strap worn by officers.
The War Baby, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 5, no. 29, June 1917.
[Pansy ran a Knitting Party], Our Girls in Wartime.
The Song of a Sock, Rising Sun, no. 9, 25 January 1917. The poem is signed ‘Leongatha’, which is a town south-east of Melbourne.
[The Flag-Day Girl is dressed in white], Our Girls in Wartime.
For a Horse Flag Day, A Book of Poems for The Blue Cross Fund.
The Everlasting Flag, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 5, no. 30, September 1917. The poem is signed ‘M.J.B.’. Christiaan Rudolph de Wet (1854–1922) was Commander in Chief of the Orange Free State forces during the Boer War, famed for the development of guerrila tactics. Bantams were battalions of volunteers below the regulation height of 5*3(. Many of the men were later integrated into regular battalions, and the Bantam battalions made up to strength with ordinary soldiers.
[The Women’s Volunteer Reserve], Our Girls in Wartime. The Women’s Volunteer Reserve, or WVR, was formed in March 1915 to assist other women’s organisations, and for miscellaneous tasks such as canteen work and hospital gardening.
Route March Sentiments, Ripples from the Ranks of the QMAAC.
His ‘Bit’, The Lady, vol. 66, no. 1699, 6 September 1917. The poem is signed ‘Q.S-H.’.
These Little Ones!, ibid., vol. 66, no. 1690, 5 July 1917.
National Service Lyrics. Unidentified newspaper cutting in private scrapbook.
How It Takes You, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 4, no. 23, December 1916. The poem is signed ‘Edgar’.
[I know a blithe blossom in Blighty], The Moonraker.
Model Dialogues for Air-Raids, Punch, vol. 153, 10 October 1917, reprinted in From the Home Front.
Beasts and Superbeasts, Punch, vol. 148, 3 February 1915. Frederich von Bernhardi (1849– 1930) was the author of Germany and the Next War (1914); Heinrich von Treitschkei (1834–96) was the author of a popular multi-volume history of nineteenth-century Germany. Writing in 1916 in My London Mission, Prince Karl Max Lichnowsky, Kaiser Wilhelm’s Ambassador to London at the outbreak of war, criticised his country for its responsibility in bringing about the war, and spoke of ‘the spirit of Treitschkei and Bernhardi, which glorifies war as an end in itself and does not loathe it as an evil’ (see Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War, pp. 20, 22); General Alexander von Kluck commanded the German First Army that invaded Belgium in 1914; Ernst Lissauer was the author of the poem ‘Hasslied’, or ‘Hymn of Hate’, originally published in Jugend in 1914. In this he said that Germany’s real enemy was neither France nor Russia, but England: ‘He crouches behind the dark grey flood, | Full of envy, of rage, or craft, of gall, | Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood . . . | We will never forego our hate, | We have but one single hate, | We love as one, we hate as one, | We have one foe, and one alone – ENGLAND!’ (trans. Barbara Henderson in the New York Times. See Charles F. Horne, ed., Source Records of the Great War, vol. 1, National Alumni, Indianapolis, 1923). Wilhelm is the Kaiser; Punch carried on a prolonged, but generally amiable, vendetta against the playwright George Bernard Shaw.