The front was flying Eastward, and only left the dead.
And I thought ‘How long we lay there, and watched across the wire,
While the guns roared round the valley and set the skies afire’.
But now there are homes in Hamel, and tents in the Vale of Hell
And a camp at Suicide Corner, where half the Regiment fell.
The new troops follow after and tread the land we won;
To them it is so much hillside, re-wrested from the Hun.
To us ’tis almost sacred, this dreary mile of mud;
The shell holes hold our history and half of them our blood.
Here at the head of Peche Street ’twas death to show your face,
To me it seemed like magic to linger in the place.
To me how many spirits hung round the Kentish Caves.
But the new men see no spirits – they only see the graves.
I found the half dug ditches we fashioned for the fight.
We lost a score of men there – young James was killed that night.
I saw the star shells staring, I heard the bullets hail,
But the new men pass unheeding – they never heard the tale.
I crossed the blood-red ribbon that once was No-Man’s Land;
I saw a winter daybreak and a creeping minute hand:
And here the lads went over, and there was Harmsworth shot,
And here was William lying – but the new men knew them not.
And I said ‘There is still the river and still the stiff stark trees
To treasure here our story, but there are only these’.
But under the white wood crosses the dead men answered low
‘The new men know not Beaucourt, but we are here – we know’.
A.P. Herbert
Meditation in June, 1917
I
How can we reason still, how look afar,
Who, these three years now, are
Drifting, poor flotsam hugely heaved and hurled
In the birthday of a world,
Upon the waves of the creative sea?
How gain lucidity
Or even keep the faith wherewith at first
We met the storm that burst,
The singing hope of revolution’s prime?
For in that noble time
We saw the petty world dissolve away
And fade into a day
Where dwelt new spirits of a better growth,
Unchecked by spite and sloth.
We saw, and even now we seem to see,
In fitful revelry,
Like hills obscured and hid by earthly mist,
The hopes that first we kissed:
We see them, catch at them and lose again
In apathy and pain
What maybe was (though it once seemed ours to hold)
No more than fairy gold.
II
We pity those whom quick death overtakes,
Though they will never see
How hope dissolves and founded loyalty shakes
Traitorously, piteously.
They lose at most and death is voiceless still
Nor whispers in their ears
When they are lying on the deep-scarred hill
What our calm silence hears.
They lose all various life, they lose the day,
The clouds, the winds, the rain,
The blossoms down an English road astray
They will not see again;
Great is their loss but more tremendous things
To us at home are given,
Doubts, fears and greeds and shameful waverings
That hide the blood-red heaven.
They knew no doubt and fear was soon put by:
Freely their souls could move
In deeds that gave new life to loyalty
A sharper edge to love.
They are the conquerors, the happy dead,
Who gave their lives away,
And now amid the trenches where they bled,
Forgetful of the day,
Deaf, blind and unaware, sleep on and on,
Nor open eyes to weep,
Know nought of what is ended or what begun
But only and always sleep.
III
We said on the first day, we said and swore
That self should be no more,
That we were risen, that we would wholly be
For love and liberty;
And in the exhilaration of that oath
We cast off spite and sloth
And laboured for an hour, till we began,
Man after piteous man,
To lose the splendour, to forget the dream
And leave our noble theme.
To find again our lusts and villainies
This we have done and what is left undone
Cries out beneath the sun.
How glad a dawn fades thus in foggy night,
Where not a star shines bright!
IV
Is all then gone? That nobler morning mood
When pain appeared an honour and grief a gift
And what was difficult was also good?
Are all our wishes on the waves adrift?
The young, the eager-hearted, they are gone,
And we, the stay-at-homes, are tired and old,
Careless how carelessly our work is done,
Forgetful how that morning rose in gold
When all our hearts cried out in unison,
Triumphant in the new triumphal sun.
How dull a night succeeds! how dark and cold!
We will arise. Oh, not as then with singing,
But silence in our mouths and no word said,
Though wracks of that lost glory round us clinging
Shames us with broken oaths we swore the dead,
But steadfast in humility we rise,
Hoping no glory, having merited none,
Through the long night to toil with aching eyes
And pray that our humbler hearts may earn the sun.
Edward Shanks
In the Third Year of the War
‘Would that the war were over, and again
We walked together in a Wiltshire lane.
The West shrills keenly through the Hackpen thorn:
From that high, lonely wood by Winterborne
Wet leaves are whirled far out across the vale.
We should find comfort in the downland gale;
Its glorious blast, so wild, yet angerless,
Blows sorrow from the heart and bitterness.’
* * *
So, like some wandering child, we stretch our hands
To shining phantom faces, and far lands
Of heart’s desire.
O solace, vainly sought
To light the sad opacity of thought!
There is no charm in any outward thing
To ease the heart from smarting at the sting
Of friendship snapped, of dull frustrated days
Of hopes that perish in the desolate ways.
The wind of mirth and sympathy is spilled
Wherewith the vessel of our hearts was filled,
Lending bright influence to the wind and trees.
Our lives are empty now; and how for these
Can earth, that lives not, find reviving breath
To quicken the sterility of death?
The sun-rays still go wheeling o’er the hill;
But closed those eyes their passing used to fill
With sudden glory. Say! shall we return,
Where every sight can teach us but to mourn?
Shall we return, where every field and tree
Is radiant with the light of memory?
Here, by this hedgerow, Rupert musing lay:
This pool was Nigel’s haunt at morning grey:
Down that hill-side Ned ran so cheerily
The day he left, and turned to call good-bye.
&n
bsp; If once again we climb to Barbary,
None but the dead will keep us company:
Their printless feet will fall with ours, unseen;
And silent voices fill the listening dene.
‘Dear land of noon-day light’ we said before,
But now – ‘Dear land of ghosts!’ – for evermore.
* * *
The old, untroubled world is dead, where laughter
Was still more real than tears: and we, hereafter
Must live with grief for our reality.
We will return, then, not forgetfully,
To breathe an opiate in the upland wind,
And gain dull ease and vacant peace of mind.
We will return, but rather there to gain
More vital apprehension of our pain
In memory of the dead, and of our pride
In presence of the land for which they died:
Beyond the lonely wood once more to lie,
Where that remote green bastion fronts the sky;
To see beneath us plains and woodlands wide,
Encompassed round about and unified
In a great flood of light: once more to press
Our fingers in the turf’s soft friendliness,
Fragrant with flowerets of thyme: and thence
Shall pass into our hearts a keener sense
Of what could those great hearts so greatly move,
England, their hope, their faith, their passion of love.
E. Hilton Young
Proverbs of the Pessimists
It’s never ‘too late’ to mend:
The darkest hour is nearest the dawn,
And even this war must end.
SIXTEEN
Red Tape and Rivalry
Red tape, inter-corps rivalry, the Staff
Writers in trench magazines derived much fun from the endless red tape – particularly that involving the Quarter Master Sergeant or ‘Q’ – from inter-corps rivalry and from mocking the Staff. Meanwhile, the much put-upon PBI – the Poor Bloody Infantry – just grumbled.
Urgent or Ordinary
There was a time when first I donned the Khaki –
Oh, martial days in Brighton-by-the-Sea! –
When not the deepest draught of Omar’s Saki
Could fire my ardent soul like dixie tea.
I dreamed of bloody spurs and bloodier sabre,
Of mentions – not too modest – in despatches;
I threw my foes, as Scotchmen toss the caber,
And sent my prisoners home in wholesale batches;
Led my platoons to storm the Prussian trenches,
Galloped my guns to enfilade his flank;
Was it H.M.’s own royal hand, or French’s
That pinned the V.C. on my tunic? SWANK!
Those dreams are dead: now in my Wiper’s dug-out
I only dream of Kirchner’s naughtiest chromo;
The brazier smokes; no window lets the fug out;
And the Bosche shells; and ‘Q’ still issues bromo.
‘For information’ – ‘Urgent’ – ‘Confidential’ –
‘Secret’ – ‘For necessary action, please’ –
‘The G.O.C. considers it essential’ –
My soldier-soul must steel itself to these;
Must face, by dawn’s dim light, by night’s dull taper,
Disciplined, dour, gas-helmeted, and stern,
Brigades, battalions, batteries, of paper, –
The loud ‘report’, the treacherous ‘return’,
Division orders, billeting epistles,
Barbed ‘Zeppelin’ wires that baffle G.H.Q.,
And the dread ‘Summary’ whose blurred page bristles
With ‘facts’ no German general ever knew.
Let the Hun hate! We need no beer-roused passions
To keep our sword-blade bright, our powder dry,
The while we chase October’s o’erdrawn rations
And hunt that missing pair of ‘Gumboots, thigh’.
Gilbert Frankau
Requisitional
Or Hints to young Officers.
(We are still struggling with the final bits of red tape. A regiment now in training at a seaside place sent a requisition for 30 pickaxes. The official reply was that the proper way to requisition pickaxes was to call them ‘Axes (Pick)’. – Daily Chronicle.)
When sending requisitions it is well to have a care
That you’re absolutely right in your appeal;
‘Wheelbarrows’ must be written – if you only want a pair
‘Barrows (Wheel)’.
It’s a simple little process and, though puzzling for a bit,
It doesn’t take so very long to think
That an ‘inkstand’ should be designated when you order it –
‘Stand (Ink)’.
Suppose you want some paper and that ‘foolscap’ is the word
Which you want to write, remember that the rule’s
To reverse the whole expression and you’ll put – it sounds absurd
‘Cap (Fools).’
To rag the War Department you will not attempt, I hope,
Though I quite admit it would be tempting (very)
To ask for and to call the soldier’s friend, the periscope,
‘Scope (Peri).’
W. Hodgson Burnet
An Ode to Q.
Listen reader, while I tell you
Stirring deeds both old and new,
Tales of battles during which we
Chits received from Batt. H.Q.
Fought we had a losing battle
All the day and all the night;
All communications broken,
Never was there such a plight.
Now the Hun comes o’er the sandbags
In one long unbroken mass –
Just in time – the welcome message
‘Indent now for helmets gas.’
Shelled they’d been for three days solid
In a trench just two feet high;
Couldn’t get retaliation
Matter not how they might try.
Binks’s men had held the trenches,
(Binks is NOT his proper name),
Savagely he sent the message,
‘Can’t you stop their purple game?’
Anxiously they wait the answer,
What a brave but serried band.
Here it comes – Binks grabs the paper,
‘Deficiencies not yet to hand!’
Have you ever heard the tale, lad,
How we took the trench at A?
Said the good old 92nd,
Here we are, and here we’ll stay.
What a tale of awful trial,
Cut off was our food supply.
If we do not get some bully
– Bread or biscuits – we shall die.
The foe comes on in countless thousands
Bearing down with savage cry.
Jones receives a frantic message,
‘Indent now for gum boots thigh’.
Thus you see, O gentle reader,
Why the O.C. Coys are grey.
These and other kindred worries
Are their portion day by day.
Our Fighting Men
R.E.
We all admire the Sapper,
He is so full of brain;
He makes the most tremendous sumps
That keep out all the rain;
And happy should I be if I
Could find a dug-out half as dry.
He works both day and night
With fierce and furrowed brow –
Or, rather, watches others work
And tells them why and how;
And, with a muffled kind of sob,
Gives someone else the hardest job.
R.F.A.
The Gunner’s on a higher plane –
His hours are 10 to 3,
He takes a
day off when there’s rain,
Because he cannot see.
You find him seated on a knoll,
Dreaming of range and fuse,
And wishing that the Div. Amm. Col.
Were like the widow’s cruse.
He loves his little weekly hate,
And once he’s fairly set,
He rarely puts much more than eight
Rounds through the parapet.
Signals
The Signal man wears blue and white
Most gorgeous on his arm,
And causes heaps of fun at night
By spreading Gas Alarm.
He bags your wire – a thing I’d hate
To do behind your back,
And when you gently remonstrate
He murmurs, ‘A(c) A(c) A(c)’.
A.S.C.
Some men I know have billets fine
And motor cars galore,
They live – oh miles behind the line . . .
The Army Service Corps.
They often go to A——s
To pass the time away;
Their life must be one constant grind
To earn their extra pay.
Rhymes without Reason
By P.B.I.
Foreword
Arise, My MUSE, and from the muddied trench
Let us give utterance to malicious thought,
Shouting aloud the things we never ought
Even to dream of: come, you shameless Wench,
With tongue in cheek let us set out to strafe
Gunners and Sappers, and the Gilded Staff.
I
Gunners are a race apart,
Hard of head and hard of heart.
Like the gods they sit and view
All that other people do:
Like the Sisters Three of Fate,
They do not discriminate.
Our Support Line, or the Hun’s,
– What’s the difference to the Guns?
Retaliation do you seek?
Ring them up, and – wait a week!
They will certainly reply
In the distant by-and-bye.
Should a shell explode amiss
Each will swear it was not his:
For he’s never, never shot
Anywhere about that spot,
And, what’s more, his Guns could not.
II
Sappers are wonderfully clever by birth,
And though they’re not meek, they inherit the Earth.