Voices of Silence Read online

  VOICES OF

  SILENCE

  VOICES OF

  SILENCE

  THE ALTERNATIVE BOOK OF

  FIRST WORLD WAR POETRY

  VIVIEN NOAKES

  First published in 2006

  The History Press

  The Mill, Brimscombe Port

  Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

  www.thehistorypress.co.uk

  Copyright selection and editorial matter © Vivien Noakes, 2006, 2013

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  All rights reserved

  © Acknowledgements on pages ix and x are a continuation of this copyright statement., 2013

  Vivien Noakes has asserted the moral right to be identified as the editor of this work.

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9610 8

  Original typesetting by The History Press

  In memory of my uncle

  2nd Lt Richard Langley,

  13th Bttn, Alexandra, Princess of Wales’s Own Yorkshire Regiment,

  The Green Howards.

  Reported wounded and missing, 27 September 1916.

  Reported missing believed killed, 25 October 1916.

  His name appeared on a German list of prisoners of war,

  8 December 1916.

  He died as a consequence of his wounds, 16 July 1935.

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  How it Began

  1. The Outbreak of War

  Belgium and the Kaiser, ‘Call to Arms’, early training, the BEF leaves for France

  2. Early Months

  Retreat from Mons, Kaiser’s ‘Scrap of Paper’, spy mania, Kaiser’s ambition to invade Britain, the First Battle of Ypres, the Christmas truce

  3. Autumn 1914 in England

  The role of women, flag days, Zeppelin raids

  4. The New Armies go to France

  The Canadians, the New Armies begin to leave for France, trench life

  5. Out of the Line

  Billets, letters from home, estaminets and concerts

  6. Flanders, Gallipoli and the Mediterranean

  The Second Battle of Ypres and first use of gas, Gallipoli, Salonika, Egypt

  7. Conscription, Protest and Prisoners

  Loos, Christmas 1915, protests at home and abroad, the Derby Scheme, conscription and conscientious objection, prisoners of war

  8. The Royal Navy

  Life at sea, sinking of the Lusitania, the Battle of Jutland

  9. The Royal Flying Corps

  Life, death and chivalry in the air

  10. Verdun, the Battle of the Somme Begins

  The opening of the ‘Big Push’

  11. Casualties of the Somme

  The first wounded, the dead and the casualty lists, grief at home

  12. The Wounded in England

  Military hospitals, VADs, convalescence

  13. Autumn and Winter 1916–1917

  The end of the Battle of the Somme, winter 1916–1917, the maintenance of morale in the line, Winston Churchill

  14. Leave

  Days in ‘Blighty’

  15. Spring and Early Summer 1917

  Calls for peace, the Battle of Arras, the retreat to the Hindenberg Line, the old battlefields

  16. Red Tape and Rivalry

  Red tape, inter-corps rivalry, the Staff

  17. Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele)

  The missing and the dead, burials and the horrors of no man’s land, rain, winter 1917, fatigues and carrying parties, horses and mules, bombing behind the lines, the end of the Battle of Passchendaele

  18. America Joins the War

  Another ‘Call to Arms’, ‘Somewhere in France’

  19. The Final Year

  England in 1918, hardships, the German assault of 21 March 1918, near defeat and anxiety, the reversal, thoughts on post-war, the Kaiser abdicates

  20. Armistice and the Price of War

  Joy and sadness, the survivors, reconciliation and hatred, the return of the dead and the grief of the living, victory celebrations, the Peace Treaty, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, war memorials, In Memoriam

  21. The Return to France

  Searching for graves, the next war

  22. L’Envoi

  Notes

  Glossary

  List of Authors and Illustrators

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  For any anthologist, the first and greatest thanks must go to the writers whose work makes up the collection. The last survivor, Geoffrey Dearmer, died aged 103 in 1996; it was my great privilege to be at his hundredth birthday celebration at the Imperial War Museum in 1993. But for these men and women, there would be no Voices of Silence.

  Catherine Riley’s Bibliography of First World War Poetry is indispensable to anyone searching for poems of the Great War. For their generous help I am grateful to: Colin Badcock; Emily Bird of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Anthony Boden; Mark Brown; Adrian Gregory; Jill, Duchess of Hamilton; Sally Harrower of the National Library of Scotland; William Hetherington of the Peace Pledge Union; Dominic Hibberd; Nigel Jaques; Colin Johnston, Principal Archivist of the Bath and North East Somerset Council; Michael Meredith; Joe Mulholland; Allen Packwood of the Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge; Andrew Partridge; Robert Pike; Ann Riker; Nigel Steel; Dr David Sutton, Director of Research Projects at Reading University Library; Bill Turner; and Kevin Tye.

  The staff of the following libraries have been most courteous and helpful: the British Library; the Newspaper Library, Collindale; Friends’ House; the Imperial War Museum Department of Documents and Library; the London Library; the Royal Air Force Museum.

  For permission to use material that is still in copyright I would like to thank: Blackwell Publishing Ltd for ‘A Song of the Air’, ‘Reconnaissance’ and ‘Two Pictures’ by Gordon Alchin, ‘From the Youth of all Nations’ by Henry Cecil Harwood and ‘The Draft’ by A.P. Herbert; Mrs Anne Charlton for ‘Noon’ by Robert Nichols; Mrs Peregrine Spencer Churchill for ‘Y Beach’; Jonathan Cutbill for ‘Lieutenant Tattoon, M.C.’ by Edward Carpenter; Lord Elton for ‘The War Memorial’ by Godfrey Elton; Samuel French Ltd on behalf of the estate of John Drinkwater for ‘England to Belgium’ by John Drinkwater; Michael Gibson and Pan Macmillan for ‘Bacchanal’, ‘Between the Lines’, ‘Mad,’ ‘Ragtime’ and ‘The Messages’ by Wilfrid Gibson; Duff Hart-Davis for ‘The Song of the Mud’ by Mary Borden; Patrick W.H. Harvey for ‘A True Tale of the Listening Post’, ‘At Afternoon Tea’, ‘Back to the Trenches’, ‘Ballad of Army Pay’, ‘Gonnehem’, ‘Loneliness’, ‘Peace – The Dead Speak’, ‘Requiescat’, ‘The Route March’, ‘To Certain Persons’ and ‘To the Kaiser – Confidentially’ by F.W. Harvey; David Higham for ‘Tears’ by Osbert Sitwell; Mrs John Hills for ‘Valete’ by William Box; The Earl of Home for ‘The School at War – 1914’ by C.A. Alington; Jarrold & Sons Ltd for ‘For a Horse Flag Day’ by Jessie Anderson and ‘Dumb Heroes’ by T.A. Girling; the estate of Richard and Roger Lancelyn Green for ‘All Souls, 1914’ by Gordon Bottomley; Macmillan for ‘A Flemish Village’ by Herbert Asquith, ‘Meditation in June, 1917’, ‘On Trek’ and ‘The Old Soldiers’ by Edward Shanks and ‘In the Third Year of the War’ and ‘Return’ by E.
Hilton Young; Mary Claire O’Donnell for ‘After Loos’, ‘I oft go out at night-time’, ‘In the Morning’ and ‘The Dawn’ by Patrick MacGill; Punch for ‘Oxford Revisited’ by Cyril Bretherton, ‘Requisitional’ by W. Hodgson Burnet, ‘The Infantryman’ by E.F. Clarke, ‘On Christmas Leave’ by W.W. Blair Fish, ‘Missing’ by Geraldine Robertson Glasgow, ‘Beasts and Superbeasts’, ‘The Freedom of the Press’, ‘The Missing Leader’ and ‘Winston’s Last Phase’ by Charles Graves, ‘Literary War Worker’ by T. Hodgkinson, ‘The Four Sea Lords’ by Richard Keigwin, ‘Mufti Once More’ by Edmund Knox, ‘The General’ by George Menzies, ‘From a Full Heart’ and ‘Gold Braid’ by A.A. Milne, ‘The Widow’ by C.M. Mitchell, ‘Verdun’ by F.W. Platt, ‘A Canadian to his Parents’, ‘My American Cousins’, ‘Raids’, ‘More Peace-Talk in Berlin’, ‘“Punch” in the Enemy Trenches’ and ‘The Soul of a Nation’ by C. Conway Plumbe, ‘Deportment for Women’ by Jessie Pope, ‘Another “Scrap of Paper”’ and ‘Model Dialogues for Air-raids’ by Owen Seamen, ‘A Vision of Blighty’ by J. Shirley, ‘To a Bad Correspondent in Camp’ by F.C. Walker; Stephen Rhys for ‘Lost in France’ by Ernest Rhys; John Shakespeare for ‘The Refugees’ and ‘Ypres Cathedral’ by William G. Shakespeare; Major James Cannan Slater for ‘English Leave’, ‘For a Girl’, ‘ Perfect Epilogue’ and ‘The Armistice’ by May Cannan; Sir Roy Strong for ‘Night Duty in the Station’, ‘The Menin Road’, ‘March 1919’ and ‘Unloading Ambulance Train’ by Carola Oman; A.P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Timothy d’Arch Smith for ‘Eyes in the Air’, ‘Gun-Teams’, Headquarters’, ‘Only an Officer’, ‘Poison’, ‘The Other Side’, ‘The Reason’, ‘Unknown’, ‘Urgent or Ordinary’ and ‘Wails to the Mail’ by Gilbert Frankau; Revd Juliet Woollcombe for ‘Gommecourt’ and ‘Mudros, After the Evacuation’ by Geoffrey Dearmer. ‘A Halt on the March’ by J.B. Priestley (Copyright © Estate of J.B. Priestly 1918) is reproduced by permission of PFD (www.pfd.co.uk) on behalf of the Estate of J.B. Priestley. I would also like to acknowledge the many anonymous authors whom it has been impossible to identify.

  Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

  It has been a joy to work with the staff at Sutton Publishing, particularly Christopher Feeney, Hilary Walford, Jane Entrican, Martin Latham, Mary Critchley, Yvette Cowles and Felicity Teague. Lastly, thank you to my husband, Michael Noakes, for his continued support.

  Introduction

  No war in history has produced as much poetry as did the First World War, and with no other war has poetry so much influenced popular perception and understanding of the conflict.

  Most anthologies in which we find this poetry have based their selection primarily on literary quality, creating what is now an accepted canon of Great War poetry. This centres on the work of a few important writers whom we think of as the First World War Poets – such men as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon and Edward Thomas. Yet these represent only a small part of the nation’s poetic response to the events of those years, and many survivors regretted that the emphasis placed on this work meant that other very different – less literary but, in their view, often more characteristic – responses to the war had been largely ignored. These were the work of less gifted writers who spoke for their own time but in a different way.

  A number of excellent general anthologies in recent years have broadened our understanding by including work by these little-known writers – in particular Dominic Hibberd and John Onion’s Poetry of the Great War: An Anthology, Martin Stephen’s Never Such Innocence: Poems of the First World War and George Walter’s In Flanders Fields: Poetry of the First World War. None, however, has concentrated almost exclusively on these poets. It was a wish to redress this imbalance that was the starting point for this book.

  My first thought was that perhaps this poetry – much of which could more accurately be described as verse – had been passed over because it was not worth reviving. I soon discovered how wrong I was. Of course, it does not pretend to aspire in quality to the great poetry of the war – to ‘Dead Man’s Dump’ or ‘Strange Meeting’ or ‘At the Team’s Head-Brass’, for example – but what I discovered was a body of rich, exciting, often deeply moving work that complements the established literary canon; the two should be read side by side. Much of the poetry here is the work of men and women who would not normally have considered themselves poets at all, and it is precisely because it does not have to answer to high literary demands that it is often a more immediate, less poetically self-conscious, response to war. Indeed, many of these poems have an even greater immediacy than letters, for they express what was felt without caution or reserve, offering a true insight into the minds of the fighting men.

  Typical of this is the characteristic, important and recurring feature that has been little represented in earlier anthologies, and that is humour. Hundreds of comic and comico-tragic poems were written by soldiers to raise the spirits of their comrades and make more bearable the shared tragedy of their suffering. This often juvenile jollity – which, incidentally, reminds us how young so many of these men were – has nothing to do with the much-derided ‘smiling Tommy’ of the newsreels. These verses were not composed to reassure the people at home. They were written by the men for the men. For an outsider, anyone who had not known the full horror of war, to attempt a humorous interpretation of its experience would have been a grotesque insult. For the men themselves, however, such humour was a lifeline, but one established on their own terms. In his poem ‘Apologia pro poemate meo’, Wilfred Owen examines the complexity of this dichotomy, and in its final lines he points to the exclusivity of the soldiers’ brotherhood: ‘These men are worth | Your tears. You are not worth their merriment.’

  Sometimes the humour is deeply black, but more often it reflects a determination to make the best of appalling situations. ‘One has to [. . .] hang on to one’s humour like grim death,’ wrote a young officer in August 1915, ‘otherwise I think you are bound to crack.’1 Often it is a defence against what Edmund Blunden described as ‘socket-eyed despair’.2 Those who refused to see what humour could be found, who dragged others down by looking only on the dark side of things, were despised and castigated for lowering morale. It was an approach that soldiers wished to extend beyond the front: ‘the greatest thing you can do for me is to remain cheerful,’ wrote a soldier to his mother.3 Absurdities of military organisation, farcical situations that erupted even in the midst of battle, are picked up and mocked in a way that any soldier, even today, would immediately recognise. It is, perhaps, the poetical equivalent of Bairnsfather’s Old Bill.

  This response to often unspeakable hardship was both a broad characteristic of the British turn of mind of the time and also a particular product of the war itself. Edward de Stein, author of four poems included here, spoke in 1919 of ‘that wonderful spirit of light-heartedness, that perpetual sense of the ridiculous which, even under the most appalling conditions, never seemed to desert the men with whom I was privileged to serve and which indeed seemed to flourish more freely in the mud and rain of the front-line trenches than in the comparative comfort of billets or “cushy jobs”’.4 It is a tribute we find expressed over and over again in contemporary writings; many wondered if it would survive the break-up of the camaraderie that is such an important characteristic of any war.

  It is tempting, in a more cynical age, to regard such humour as blind folly, a way of white-washing the truth, something akin to Karl Marx’s opium of the people. But that is to misinterpret its nature. These men knew and understood the reality. They did not take the experience of war lightly. But those who employed humour – and many did not – found in it an almost instinctive mechanism for spiritual and emotional survival. Often it masked fear. Captain, later Lieutenant-Colonel, F.J. Roberts, MC, founding editor of the most famous trench newspaper, the Wipers Times, cautioned that the ‘hilarity was
more often hysterical than natural’.5 For all its apparent absurdity, it reached into the deep tragedy of war, throwing powerful light on our understanding of how they were able to endure.

  Beyond the humour, there are here many expressions of the suffering the men both witnessed and experienced, and of the deep anger many of them felt. By and large, the general disillusionment that we now associate with the First World War was a product of the peace rather than of the war, of broken promises and a sense of betrayal, of a growing realisation of incompetence and of the empty futility of so much of the sacrifice. Many people now find this difficult to understand, but most of those who have worked through contemporary documents – particularly personal documents such as letters and diaries – will endorse this view, as do many modern historians. As I searched through poems written during the war, I found much mockery of the Staff with their insensitive remoteness from the line, but little criticism of the actual military conduct of the war – even Sassoon was careful to exclude this from his protest.6 And there is overwhelming evidence that most men, even as late as 1918, felt that they were fighting for something worthwhile, a cause in which they still believed.

  But there was anger that war, with all its suffering, should be accepted as a means of settling international dispute, and against those whose follies and vanities had led to this particular war. And there was a sense of bitterness against those at home who were responsible for its prolongation, who profited from the rich business opportunities it offered and were so often unwilling even to try to understand what they were asking of the serving man and the price that the ordinary soldier was paying for these follies. There was much resentment, too, of conscientious objectors, the despised ‘conshies’ who refused to kill their fellow men and who were seen by many of the soldiers as contemptible shirkers who would live to enjoy freedoms that others had died to achieve. A group of poems in this book is the work of these pacifists, explaining their beliefs and their punishment.