Voices of Silence Page 10

  When the enemies clash by night.

  Some mourn the savagery of war,

  The shame and the waste of it all;

  And they pity the sinfulness of men

  Who heard not the Master’s call.

  They may be right, and they may be wrong,

  But what I’m going to sing

  Is not the glory of the war –

  But the weariness of the thing.

  For most of the time there’s nothing to do

  But to sit and think of the past;

  And one day comes and slowly dies –

  Exactly like the last.

  It’s the waiting – seldom talked about –

  Oh, it’s rarely ever told –

  That most of the bravery at the front –

  Is waiting in the cold.

  It’s not the dread of the shrapnel’s whine

  That sickens a fighting soul;

  But the beast in us comes out at times

  When we’re waiting in a hole.

  In a hole that’s damp and full of rats

  The poisoned thoughts will come;

  And there are thoughts of long dread days,

  Of love, and friends and home.

  Just sitting and waiting and thinking

  As the dreary days go by

  Takes a different kind of courage

  From marching out to die.

  Don White

  Tommy and Fritz

  He hides behind his sand-bag,

  And I stand back o’ mine;

  And sometimes he bellows, ‘Hullo, John Bull!’

  And I hollers, ‘German swine!’

  And sometimes we both lose our bloomin’ rag

  And blaze all along the line.

  Sometimes he whistles his ’Ymn of ’Ate,

  Or opens his mug to sing,

  And when he gives us ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’

  I give ’im ‘God Save the King’;

  And then – we ‘get up the wind’ again,

  And the bullets begin to ping –

  (If we’re in luck our machine gun nips

  A working squad on the wing.)

  Sometimes he shouts, ‘Tommy, come over!’

  And we fellers bawl out, ‘Fritz,

  If yer wants a good warm breakfast,

  Walk up and we’ll give you fits!’

  And sometimes our great guns begin to growl,

  And blows his front line to bits.

  And when our shrapnel has tore his wire,

  And his parapet shows a rent,

  We over and pays him a friendly call

  With a bayonet – but no harm meant.

  And he – well, when he’s resuscitate,

  He returns us the compliment!

  I stand behind my sand-bag,

  And he hides back o’ his’en;

  And, but for our bloomin’ uniforms,

  We might both be convicts in pris’n;

  And sometimes I loves him a little bit –

  And sometimes I ’ate like p’ison.

  For sometimes I mutters ‘Belgium’,

  Or ‘Lusitani–a’,

  And I slackens my bay’net in its sheath,

  And stiffens my lower jaw,

  And ‘An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth’,

  Is all I know of the Law.

  But sometimes when things is quiet,

  And the old kindly stars come out,

  I stand up behind my sand-bag,

  And think, ‘What’s it all about?’

  And – tho’ I’m a damned sight better nor him,

  Yet sometimes I have a doubt,

  That if you got under his hide you would see

  A bloke with a heart just the same’s you and me!

  Joseph Lee

  The Soldier’s Dog

  A little, vagrant cur,

  He had a noble heart;

  He met us on the road,

  And chose the better part.

  It may be Belgium’s wrongs

  Beneath his weskit burned;

  Or visions of a home

  The Huns had overturned.

  And so he sought our camp,

  And followed to the trench,

  For Englishmen to him

  Were much the same as French.

  The soldier’s dog, he shared

  The soldier’s daily bread,

  And howsoever short

  The rations, he was fed.

  And in return he warred

  Against the soldier’s pest,

  The vermin great and small

  Which rob them of their rest.

  Sometimes he would patrol

  Along the parapet,

  To scent the creeping guile

  Of Huns on mischief set.

  And had Hunny snake

  Through barbed fences crawled,

  He would have had his bags,

  And bit him till he bawled.

  Then why, oh why, when you

  Had made your footing sure

  Did you mistake the road,

  Or fall to alien lure?

  I cannot think that you

  Did willingly desert,

  Still less that to Kultur

  You were a base pervert.

  I fancy when the fight

  Is raging on the plain,

  Beside the old platoon

  You will be found again.

  Noon

  It is midday: the deep trench glares . . .

  A buzz and blaze of flies . . .

  The hot wind puffs the giddy airs . . .

  The great sun rakes the skies.

  No sound in all the stagnant trench

  Where forty standing men

  Endure the sweat and grit and stench,

  Like cattle in a pen.

  Sometimes a sniper’s bullet whirs

  Or twangs the whining wire;

  Sometimes a soldier sighs and stirs

  As in hell’s frying fire.

  From out a high cool cloud descends

  An aeroplane’s far moan . . .

  The sun strikes down, the thin cloud rends . . .

  The black speck travels on.

  And sweating, dizzied, isolate

  In the hot trench beneath,

  We bide the next shrewd move of fate

  Be it of life or death.

  Robert Nichols

  To a Choir of Birds

  Green are the trees, and green the summer grass,

  Beneath the sun, the tiniest leaf hangs still:

  The flowers in languor droop, and tired men pass

  All somnolent, while death whines loud and shrill.

  O fine, full-throated choir invisible,

  Whose sudden burst of rapture fills the ear!

  Are ye insensible to mortal fear,

  That such a stream of melody ye spill,

  While murk of battle drifts on Auber’s hill,

  And mankind dreams of slaughter? What wild glee

  Has filled your throbbing throats with sound, until

  Its strains are poured from every bush and tree,

  And sad hearts swell with hope, and fierce eyes fill?

  The world is stark with blood and hate – but ye –

  Sing on! Sing on! in careless ecstasy.

  E.F. Wilkinson

  Shelley in the Trenches

  Impressions are like winds; you feel their cool

  Swift kiss upon the brow, yet know not where

  They sprang to birth: so like a pool

  Rippled by winds from out their forest lair

  My soul was stir’d to life; its twilight fled;

  There passed across its solitude a dream

  That wing’d with supreme ecstasy did seem;

  That gave the kiss of life to long-lost dead.

  A lark trill’d in the blue: and suddenly

  Upon the wings of his immortal ode

  My soul rushed singing to the ether sky

  And found in visions, dreams, its r
eal abode –

  I fled with Shelley, with the lark afar,

  Unto the realms where the eternal are.

  John W. Streets

  Love and War

  In the line a soldier’s fancy

  Oft may turn to thoughts of love,

  But ’tis hard to dream of Nancy

  When the whizz-bangs sing above.

  In the midst of some sweet picture

  Vision of a love-swept mind,

  Bang! ‘A whizz-bang almost nicked yer!’

  ‘Duck, yer blighter, are yer blind?’

  Take the case of poor Bill ’Arris

  Deep in love with Rosy Greet,

  So forgot to grease his tootsies,

  Stayed outside and got ‘trench feet’.

  Then remember old Tom Stoner,

  Ponder of his awful fate.

  Always writing to his Donah,

  Lost his rum ’cos ’e was late.

  Then again there’s ’Arry ’Awkins,

  Stopped to dream at Gordon Farm.

  Got a ‘blightie’, found his Polly

  Walking out on Johnson’s arm.

  Plenty more of such examples

  I could give, had I but time.

  War on tender feelings tramples,

  H.E. breaks up thoughts sublime.

  ‘Don’t dream when you’re near machine guns!’

  Is a thing to bear in mind.

  Think of love when not between Huns,

  A sniper’s quick, and love is blind.

  To Minnie

  Dedicated to the P.B.I.

  In days gone by some aeons ago

  That name my youthful pulses stirred,

  I thrilled whene’er she whispered low,

  Ran to her when her voice I heard.

  Ah Minnie! how our feelings change,

  For now I hear your voice with dread,

  And hasten to get out of range

  Ere you me on the landscape spread.

  Your lightest whisper makes me thrill,

  Your presence makes me hide my head,

  Your voice can make me hasten still –

  But ’tis away from you instead.

  You fickle jade! you traitrous minx!

  We once exchanged love’s old sweet tales;

  Now where effulgent star-shell winks

  Your raucous screech my ear assails.

  No place is sacred, I declare,

  Your manners most immodest are,

  You force your blatant presence where

  Maidens should be particular.

  You uninvited do intrude,

  You force an entrance to my couch,

  Though if I’ve warning you’re about

  I’ll not be there, for that I’ll vouch.

  Name once most loved of all your sex,

  Now hated with a loathing great,

  When next my harassed soul you vex

  You’ll get some back at any rate.

  At Stand Down

  Above the trench I heard the night wind sigh,

  Across the tattered sandbags moonbeams lay,

  While Flanders stars shone overhead, and I

  Alone with thoughts of you at close of day.

  The cannon’s angry roar had died away

  And left the stillness of a Summer’s night

  For one sweet hour of peace that would not stay,

  And I could rest before the coming fight.

  And then I saw a star shoot in the West . . .

  I wonder if beyond the silver sea

  It found you somewhere in its loving quest –

  And pressed a kiss upon your lips from me?

  Raymond Heywood

  The Night Hawks

  Talk not to me of vain delights,

  Of Regent Street or Piccadilly.

  A newer London, rarer sights

  I visit nightly willy-nilly.

  When daylight wanes and dusk is falling

  We start out clad in gum boots thigh

  To wander through the gloom appalling,

  Through crump holes deep in mud knee-high.

  From Gordon Farm to Oxford Street

  (These duck-boards are the very devil.)

  Where strange concussions fill the air.

  (I wish they’d keep the – CENSORED – things level).

  Through Oxford Street we gaily slide,

  And call at Batt. H.Q. to see

  If there be aught that we can do

  For them. (Well, just a spot for me!)

  Then on through Regent Street, and thence

  To Zouave Wood, where plain to see

  That ‘Spring is Coming’, hence the change

  From winter’s gloom to verdancy.

  (For authority see D.R.O.)

  Here Foresters make nightly play,

  And in the mud hold revel high,

  Recalling fancy stunts performed

  At Shoreham, and at Bletchingley.

  Should you but care to journey on

  You’ll reach, by various tortuous ways,

  To Streets named Grafton, Conduit, Bond,

  Where memory ever fondly strays.

  And each in some peculiar way

  Has charms not easy to define.

  So thus the London which we knew

  Remembered is along the line.

  The Romance of Place-Names

  (‘Many of the names now given to places in the battle-area will survive the war’, Daily Paper. This should give a great chance to the Picardy Poet of the future.)

  The leafy glades of ‘Maida Vale’

  Are bright with bursting may,

  And daffodils and violets pale

  Bedew ‘The Milky Way;’

  There’s perfect peace in ‘Regent Street’,

  In ‘Holborn’ rural charm,

  But nowhere smells the Spring so sweet

  As down by ‘Stinking Farm’.

  And as I rode through ‘Dead Cow Lane’,

  Beneath the dungeon keep

  Of ‘Wobbly House’ that tops the plain,

  I saw a maiden peep;

  Her glance was like the dappled doe’s,

  She blushed with shy alarm,

  As pink as any Rambler-rose

  That climbs at ‘Stinking Farm’.

  O maiden, if it be my fate

  To win so great a boon,

  At ‘Hell-fire Corner’ I will wait

  Beneath the silver moon;

  I’ll swear no maid but thee I know

  As softly arm-in-arm

  Along the ‘Blarney Road’ we go

  That leads to ‘Stinking Farm’.

  And we will wander, O my Queen,

  By many a mossy nook,

  Where limpid waters flow between

  The banks of ‘Beery Brook’;

  In ‘Purgatory’ we will roam

  Where blow the breezes warm,

  If thou wilt come and make thy home,

  O sweet, at ‘Stinking Farm’.

  Edward de Stein

  Sounds by Night

  I hear the dull low thunder of the guns

  Beyond the hills that doze uneasily,

  A sullen doomful growl that ever runs

  From end to end of the heavy freighted sky:

  A friend of mine writes, squatted on the floor,

  And scrapes by yellow spluttering candle light.

  ‘Ah! hush!’ he breathes, and gazes at the door

  That creaks on rusty hinge, in pale affright.

  (No words spoke he, nor I, for well we knew

  What rueful things these sounds did tell.)

  A pause – I hear the trees sway sighing thro’

  The gloom, like dismal moan of hollow knell,

  Then out across the dark, and startling me

  Bursts forth a laugh, a shout of drunken glee!

  R. Watson Kerr

  The Song of the Reconnoitering Patrol

  Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

  When the birds have gone t
o roost;

  When the evening hate’s beginning,

  And Machine Guns do a boost;

  When you’re crawling on the ground,

  While the bullets flick around,

  Oh! it’s very jolly roaming in the gloaming.

  Just roaming in the gloaming

  When the flares drop on your head.

  And you wonder if your friends at home

  Will know that you are dead;

  When before your straining eyes

  Countless Huns appear to rise,

  It’s a merry business roaming in the gloaming.

  Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

  On an old decaying cow,

  When your head gets in its stomach

  And you’re mixed up anyhow;

  When enveloped by the smell,

  You can only whisper ‘H——’.

  It’s a weary business roaming in the gloaming.

  Just roaming in the gloaming

  When the rain begins to fall;

  When you feel convinced you’ve lost your way

  And won’t get home at all;

  When you shiver and perspire,

  And trip over German wire,

  Oh! it’s then you’re fond of roaming in the gloaming.

  Oh! it’s roaming in the gloaming

  When you’re safely back at last;

  When your sentries haven’t shot you,

  And the rum is flowing fast;

  When you write a grand report

  Saying more than all you ought,

  That’s quite the best of roaming in the gloaming.

  [I oft go out at night-time]

  I oft go out at night-time

  When all the sky’s a-flare

  And little lights of battle

  Are dancing in the air.

  I use my pick and shovel

  To dig a little hole,

  And there I sit till morning –

  A listening-patrol.

  A silly little sickle

  Of moon is hung above;

  Within a pond beside me

  The frogs are making love: