Voices of Silence

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE NEW ARMIES GO TO FRANCE

  Canadians, The ‘Country Life’ Anthology of Verse.

  To a Bad Correspondent in Camp, Punch, vol. 149, 1 December 1915.

  A Canadian to his Parents, ibid., vol. 149, 1 September 1915.

  The Catechism of the Kit, Blighty, no. 14, 29 August 1916. A ‘pull-through’ is a cord, with an oiled rag at one end and a weight at the other, that was pulled through a rifle barrel in order to clean it. A ‘hussif’ is a men’s sewing kit.

  The Inspection, Ballads of Field and Billet. ‘Soldier’s Friend’ was metal polish used for cleaning brass.

  Eye-wash, Punch, vol. 150, 26 April 1916.

  The Draft, Half-Hours at Helles. A ‘tyro’ is a recruit.

  Night Duty in the Station, The Menin Road.

  The Route March, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 2, 5 May 1915. Thomas Edward Brown (1830–97) was the author of the poem ‘My Garden’, with its opening line: ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!’

  A Halt on the March, The Chapman of Rhymes.

  The Squadron Takes the Ford, Ballads of Field and Billet.

  ‘In the Pink’ – A Letter, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 1, 12 April 1915.

  Sign Posts, ‘New Church’ Times, 22 May 1916.

  War, Wipers Times, vol. 1, no. 2, 26 February 1916.

  Macfarlane’s Dug-out, Ballads of Battle. At the end of stanza 6, Joseph Lee has made a note: ‘It may interest the reader to know that these lines are being written during a very considerable bombardment, in which one misses the friendly proximity of just such a dug-out as Macfarlane’s.’ At the end of the poem is a ‘Postscript. – In the trenches, as will be readily understood, one has no continual abiding place. Consequently the dug-out of the picture is not the dug-out of the poem, and when I last looked in upon Macfarlane, he was swinging contentedly in a hammock of his own construction. It unfortunately falls to me to add a postscript of sadder import. Since the Advance of 25th September [1915, the opening of the Battle of Loos], my comrade has been counted among the missing.’

  Music in a Dug-out, War Daubs.

  Rats, BEF Times, vol. 1, no. 2, 25 December 1916.

  The Chats’ Parade, Aussie, no. 3, 8 March 1918. The second line of stanza 4 ends in ‘bien’, an error overlooked in the makeshift circumstances of its original publication.

  The All-Powerful, Rising Sun, no. 13, 8 February 1917. The poem is signed ‘X.Y.Z.’. Number Nine was an aperient administered to the men, used also as a stock remedy for all doubtful ailments or ills caused by malingering.

  Stand-to!, Ballads of Battle.

  At Dawn in France, The Undying Splendour.

  To Those Who Wait, Beaumont Bull, no. 1, 11 February 1918.

  Tommy and Fritz, Ballads of Battle. Die Wacht am Rhein translates as ‘The line stands here’ and was the title of a popular German patriotic song whose chorus was ‘Land of our Fathers, have no fear. | Your watch is true, the line stands here’.

  The Soldier’s Dog, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 6, September 1915.

  Noon, Ardours and Endurances.

  To a Choir of Birds, More Songs by the Fighting Men.

  Shelley in the Trenches, The Undying Splendour. The poem is dated 2 May 1916.

  Love and War, Wipers Times, vol. 3, no. 2, 6 March 1916. Stanza 1, l. 3, has ‘too’ in place of ‘’tis’.

  To Minnie, Somme-Times, vol. 1, no. 1, 31 July 1916.

  At Stand Down, The Greater Love.

  The Night Hawks, Wipers Times, vol. 1, no. 1, 12 February 1916. The poem is signed ‘By a Pioneer’. ‘Foresters’ are The Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment).

  The Romance of Place-Names, Punch, vol. 155, 2 October 1918. Reprinted in The Poets in Picardy, where it is entitled ‘Stinking Farm: By a Picardy Poet of the Future’, and the subtitle is altered to read: ‘This may be rather embarrassing for the Picardy Poet of the future.’

  Sounds by Night, War Daubs. The poem is subscribed ‘France 1917’.

  The Song of the Reconnoitering Patrol, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 4, 12 July 1915.

  [I oft go out at night-time], Soldier Songs.

  A True Tale of the Listening Post, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 5, September 1915. R.E.K. was Raymond E. Knight, who died of wounds in July 1916.

  No Man’s Land, Spectator, vol. 116, no. 4580, 8 April 1916.

  On Patrol, The Greater Love.

  CHAPTER FIVE: OUT OF THE LINE

  The Dawn, Soldier Songs.

  Back in Billets, The Muse in Arms. The poem is dated February 1915. A Wolsey valise is a warm vest named after its well-known manufacturer.

  Gonnehem, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 5, August 1915. Reprinted in A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad.

  The Billet, Ballads of Battle. Joseph Lee has added the note to ‘Johnnie Cope’: ‘There is something slightly sardonic in the fact that the old Jacobite rant, “Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin’ yet?” which was used for the berousing and belabouring of the Whigs, should now do duty as Reveille to a Highland regiment. So, at least, it seems to one at seven o’clock of a cold winter’s morning!’ Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) wrote mystery and horror poems and short stories; Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914), described as the Master of the Macabre, was the author of The Devil’s Dictionary.

  The Camp in the Sands, Ballads of Field and Billet.

  Letters to Tommy, ibid.

  A Letter from Home, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 4, no. 23, December 1916.

  Letters Home, Rhymes of the Red Triangle.

  The Dilemma, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 7, October 1915.

  A Literary War Worker, Punch, vol. 149, 24 November 1915.

  The Sub., BEF Times, vol. 1, no. 5, 10 April 1917.

  [There was an old dame at La Bassée], The Dump, vol. 2, Christmas 1916.

  The Green Estaminet, Punch, vol. 154, 17 April 1918.

  The Penitent, Ballads of Battle. Noove Chapelle was Neuve Chapelle, a battle fought on the Western Front in March 1915; Lord Kitchener’s two commandments relate to a document given to all embarking troops, in which he said: ‘In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.’

  Concert, Rhymes of the Red Triangle. George Robey (1869–1954), described as the Prime Minister of Mirth, played in the hugely popular revue ‘The Bing Boys Are Here’, a show that contained the song ‘If you were the only girl in the world’.

  Going up the Line, New Statesman, vol. 14, no. 350, 20 December 1919.

  Back to the Trenches, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 5, August 1915.

  CHAPTER SIX: FLANDERS, GALLIPOLI AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

  Lines Written in a Fire-Trench, Easter at Ypres, 1915.

  Poison, The Poetical Works, sub-titled ‘Poems of War and Peace’.

  [There was a little Turk, and Baghdad was his home], BEF Times, vol. 1, no. 4, 5 March 1917.

  Y Beach, published in Alan Moorehead, Gallipoli, where he states that it appeared in an Army broadsheet.

  For the Gallipoli Peninsula, Summerdown Camp Journal, no. 16, 22 January 1916.

  Fighting Hard, My Army, O, My Army.

  Anzac Cove, Songs of a Campaign.

  Twitting the Turk, Punch, vol. 169, 1 September 1915. Reprinted in Half-Hours at Helles. Libby was a make of tinned dried milk.

  A Dug-out Lament, Rising Sun, no. 12, 5 February 1917. The poem is dated November 1915, and there is a note that it is from the Anzac Book MSS. ‘Keating’s powder does the trick | Kills all Bugs and Fleas off quick.’

  The Hospital Ship, The Muse in Arms.

  The Blizzard, Front Line Lyrics.

  The Unburied, The Anzac Book. The poem is signed ‘M.R., N.Z. Headquarters’.

  Evacuation of Gallipoli, taken from the collection of war poems, The Digger Poets of the 1st AIF, made by Kevin F. Tye for his Master’s Degree in Australian Literature, Uni
versity of Sydney, 1988; Australian War Memorial Archives, Canberra. Published in From Gallipoli to Gaza.

  Mudros after the Evacuation, Poems.

  The Graves of Gallipoli, The Anzac Book. The poem is signed ‘L.L.’.

  Gallipoli – In Memoriam, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 3, no. 15, March 1916.

  Mesopotamian Alphabet, BEF Times, 20 January 1917. Above the alphabet is the note: ‘The following has been sent us from the Indian Army by one of our old divisional friends.’ ‘S&T’ is probably Supply and Transport.

  Salonika in November, Youth’s Heritage.

  June in Egypt, 1916, Clouds and the Sun.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: CONSCRIPTION, PROTEST AND PRISONERS

  In the Morning, Soldier Songs. At Hulloch Copse the British broke through the German lines, but were unable to exploit their success.

  After Loos, ibid.

  Christmas Truce, Satire and Sentiment.

  A Soldier’s Testament, The Gutter and the Stars.

  The Cry. The poem is signed ‘W.K.S.’, and was copied into an autograph book belonging to Helen B. Woods of the Heytesbury Soldiers’ Club, by 513 J. Tilley of No. 5 Camp, Sutton Veny, on 10 November 1917. Tilley was part of the AIF. Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  To any Diplomatist, Poems Written during the Great War. Dated February 1916. Originally published in The Herald.

  From the Youth of all Nations, Oxford Poetry 1914–1916.

  Sonnet of a Son, The Gutter and the Stars. The poem is dated 1915.

  A Veteran’s View, The Night Sister.

  Socialist, Clouds and the Sun. The poem is dated 1915.

  The Pity of It, Punch, vol. 149, 8 September 1915.

  To the Nations, The Gutter and the Stars.

  Waste, The Unutterable Beauty. The poem is subscribed ‘Mudros, January 1916’.

  Wails to the Mail, ‘New Church’ Times, vol. 1, no. 4, 29 May 1916. The poem is dated 22 May 1916. Reprinted in Poems, where stanza 3, line 5, begins with ‘——ua’, completing the name ‘Joshua’. Lord Northcliffe (1865–1921) was the hugely influential publisher of The Times, Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. A fierce critic of Kitchener and Asquith, he supported David Lloyd George. Robert Blatchford (1851–1943) was a left-wing journalist who worked under the name of Nunquam. Sir Edward Grey (1862–1933) was British Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of the war and until December 1916. He spoke the famous words: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime’; Herbert Asquith (1852–1928) was British Prime Minister at the outbreak of war until his resignation in December 1916; Reginald McKenna (1863–1943) was moved from being Home Secretary to Chancellor of the Exchequer at the outbreak of war. He was opposed to conscription, and resigned from office when Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister in December 1916; ‘double L’s’ is David Lloyd George (1863–1945), who served with the Asquith administration, until he succeeded in ousting him from office in December 1916 and replacing him as Prime Minister; K.J. is probably Kennedy Jones, one of Northcliffe’s trusted employees, who oversaw the relaunch of the Mirror in 1903.

  The Only Way, Five Souls. The poem is dated June 1915. Henri Bergson (1859–1941), the noted French philosopher. Zoroaster (c. 630–c. 550 BC), the Persian philosopher otherwise known as Zarathustra. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra and famed for his phrase ‘God is dead’, which pointed to the impending crisis in European thought following the erosion of its traditional foundations.

  The Last Rally, A Treasury of War Poetry. Originally published in Century Magazine.

  Conscription and Conscience, New Statesman, vol. 5, no. 130, 2 October 1915. The poem is signed ‘S.’.

  Freedom on the Job!, The Tribunal, 4 October 1917. The poem is signed ‘Simple Simon’.

  Lieutenant Tattoon, M.C., Three Ballads (an Intermezzo in War-time). Reprinted in The Tribunal, 29 November 1917, where it was signed ‘E.C.’. Lieutenant Tattoon is Siegfried Sassoon, who had sent Carpenter a copy of his ‘Statement against the continuation of the war – 1917’, which said in part: ‘I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest . . . I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.’ Sassoon was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia, and sent to Craiglockhart Hospital, a move that helped to defuse the embarrassment caused by his protest.

  The Pacifist, The Ploughshare.

  To a Pacifist, The Survivors.

  To any Pacifist, Five Souls. The poem is dated December 1916.

  The True Pacifist, The Ploughshare, vol. 1, no. 6, July 1916.

  To the Followers of Christ among the Belligerent Nations, Evangelical Christendom, March– April 1915. Reprinted in Goodwill, vol. 2, no. 1, 1 January 1916. The sub-title comes from Romans 12: 5: ‘We are one body in Christ.’

  A New Hymn, News Sheet, no. 9.

  Song of the Friends Ambulance Unit, The Swallow, vol. 1, no. 4, June 1917. ‘Penn’ is William Penn (1644–1718). An early Quaker, he promoted the settlement of international differences by arbitration rather than by war. Richmond Hill is the site of the Star and Garter Home.

  C.O.s in Prison, The Tribunal, 25 October 1917. The poem purports to be ‘By the Mother of one of them’.

  I Lived a Year in London, Carols of a Convict. To be sung to the tune of ‘The Low-back’d Car’.

  A Call from Prison, The Tribunal, 22 November 1917.

  From Prison, New Crusader, 25 January 1918. Reprinted in The Tribunal, 14 March 1918.

  Compensation, Winchester Whisperer, Fortnightly from His Majesty’s Prison, Winchester, no. 6, 21 December 1918. Clandestine manuscript prison magazine, circulated among the prisoners. Library of Friends’ House.

  Prisoners of War, Country Life, vol. 44, no. 1126, 3 August 1918.

  Rastatt, Sonnets from a Prison Camp. The poem is subscribed ‘Rastatt, 7 May [1918]’. In the Foreword, Bowman says: ‘It is no mere poetical exaggeration to say that in the first days of captivity at least, the writing of the sonnets was a labour that “stood between my soul and madness” . . . I wish to express my indebtedness to Captain Hohnholz, Commandant of the Prison-Camp at Hesepe, to whose kindness I owe it that I am able to offer the sonnets as they stand for publication. Offizier-Gefangenenlager, Hesepe, 17 August 1918.’

  Loneliness, Gloucestershire Friends.

  Thoughts of Home, Sonnets from a Prison Camp. The poem is dated 21 May [1918].

  Requiescat, Ducks. ‘W.M.’ was shot while trying to escape. Harvey wrote of him: ‘He was one of the gentlest and bravest souls I ever knew’ (quoted in Anthony Boden, F.W. Harvey: Soldier, Poet (Sutton, 1988), p. 171).

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ROYAL NAVY

  The Sailing of the Fleet, A Naval Motley.

  The Four Sea Lords, Punch, vol. 147, 9 December 1914. Osborne is the Royal Naval College, Osborne, Isle of Wight. An ‘Astra Torres’ was a French-designed airship.

  Destroyers, Destroyers. Originally published in Yale Review.

  Mine Sweepers, Spectator, vol. 115, no. 4526, 27 March 1915. The poem is subscribed ‘Grimsby 8 March’.

  Submarines, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 1, no. 5, April 1915. Reprinted in Dies Heroica.

  You Never Can Tell, Songs from the Trenches.

  [Sing us a song of the Northern Seas], Aussie, no. 4, 4 April 1918.

  Low Visibility, Songs of the Submarine. The poem is signed ‘Klaxon’. William Edward Hall’s International Law (1880); Henry Halleck’s International Law, or, Rules Regulating the Intercourse of States in Peace of War (1861). Agag was the King of the Amalekites, whom Saul spared (1 Samuel 15: 8–9). The Rt Hon. Sir Samuel Evans (1859–1919) was Solicitor General 1908–10. A scramasax is a Frankish hunting knife.

  The Auxiliary Cruiser, A Treasury of War Poetry. Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1537–83), explorer and soldier. According to t
he ODNB: ‘about midnight on 9 September 1583, and having encountered a fierce storm around the Azores, the Squirrel, with Gilbert on board, was engulfed by sea . . . Gilbert was last seen standing on deck with a book in his hand. His final words, shouted over to the Golden Hind, were “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land”’.

  To Fritz, Songs of the Submarine. The poem is signed ‘Klaxon’.

  The Armed Liner, From Field & Hospital.

  The Lusitania, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 8, July 1915. Reprinted in Dies Heroica.

  Below, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 12, November 1915. Admiral David Beatty (1871– 1936) commanded the Grand Fleet’s Battle Cruiser Squadron from 1913, and took over as Commander of the Grand Fleet in November 1916 after Jellicoe was appointed First Sea Lord. He was the first to engage the Germans in the Battle of Jutland.

  Wet Ships, Songs of the Submarine. The poem is signed ‘Klaxon’.

  The Battle off Jutland, For the Sceptre of the Sea. Admiral Sir John Jellicoe (1859–1935) was appointed Commander of the Grand Fleet at the outbreak of war. He became First Sea Lord in November 1916.

  War Chant of the Harbour-Huns, Fifth Gloucester Gazette, no. 15, October 1916. The poem is signed ‘M.L.G.’.

  How Tirpitz Won the Battle Off Jutland, Kemmel Times, vol. 1, no. 1, 3 July 1916.

  A British Boy, Craigleith Hospital Chronicle, vol. 4, no. 19, August 1916.