Voices of Silence Page 12
And those who have got none look on with sad eyes,
And envy the chaps who have captured a prize.
So while we do our bit to keep home fires burning,
Don’t forget it’s your letters for which we are yearning,
In billet or camp, and wherever we roam,
There’s nothing we prize like ‘a letter from home’.
Will Leslie
Letters Home
(This is Vers Libre, this is!)
Come, let me write to Melisande,
To Melisande whose moth-feet are even now
Passing, brogue-clad,
Over the valerian-coloured meadows . . .
The Postman will take the letter (with luck)
Up the street,
Up the little zig-zag village street,
Past old Ben’s, the Butchers,
Who owes me two-and-fourpence;
And past the ‘Yellow Unicorn’
Where Melisande is very probably
Getting off with that annoying fellow Bert.
P’raps I will write to Mother instead.
Hampden Gordon
The Dilemma
Verses on the Divers Charms of Two Young Wenches.
Erstwhile, in pedagogic garb,
I felt the urgings of the Muse,
But now I feel Love’s stinging barb,
And, loving, know not where to choose.
For Julia’s charms my heart entwine,
Alas! I own her kisses sweet –
Yet while I strive to make her mine,
Long for the arms of Marguerite.
Her unforgettable embrace
Makes throb my heart, my pulses beat,
Yet while I gaze on her fair face
I fly, in winged fancy fleet,
To where my Julia stands aglow
For me, her amorous dolt, to fly
From fettering wires and indents slow,
To lay me fettered to her eye.
Humble their birth, yet great their grace,
What though they thump the yeasty flour
When Julia lifts to me her face,
What man but envies me my hour?
And when, a-strolling at my ease,
I look to pass the time away,
At Marguerite a-shelling peas,
What dog but envies me my day?
Ah! pity me, poor luckless wight,
Thus envious envied, much bemused,
Yet, should I strive to set wrong right,
Who knows I were by one refused?
So deeply pledged to Marguerite,
So basely bound to Julia’s nod,
My only hope’s a shell to meet,
And hide my shame beneath the sod.
A Literary War Worker
(The favourite reading at the Front is, we are informed, the novelette of the more sentimental kind.)
In these days of stress and tumult, when the frightfulness of war
Readjusts the private notions which were prejudiced before,
It behoves the present critic to express his deep regrets
For his strictures on the makers of the nation’s novelettes.
He has sneered at them and found it far from easy to forgive
Their adeptness at the splitting of the frail infinitive;
He has sniggered at the love scenes, where, in sylvan spots apart,
Eva emptied over Ernest all the slop-pail of her heart.
But to-day the case is altered, now that somewhere that is French
’Tis the novelette brings comfort to the troops that man the trench;
Tommy, resting from his labours, is perusing with a zest
How Sir Blagdon hugged Belinda to his large expanse of breast.
Here’s a luck to such romancing; may ideas be never short
To the British novelettist of the sentimental sort!
May whatever gods inspire him keep his fancy free and fit,
For he’s Tommy’s favourite reading; so he does his little bit!
T. Hodgkinson
The Sub.
He loves the Merry ‘Tatler’, he adores the Saucy ‘Sketch’,
The ‘Bystander’ also fills him with delight;
But the pages that he revels in, the evil-minded wretch,
Are the adverts of those things in pink and white.
They are advertised in crêpe de chine, and trimmed with silk and lace;
The pictures fairly make him long for leave;
And while he gloats upon their frills, he cannot find the grace
To read the pars of PHRYNETTE, BLANCHE and EVE.
Before the war, he’d hardly heard of lace and lingerie;
He didn’t know the meaning of chemise,
But thanks to weekly papers, this astounding mystery
Has been solved by dainty VENN and dear LABISE.
Before the war, he only knew of corsets and of hats,
All other vogues invoked a ribald ‘what-ho’.
But the last decree of Fashion is a dinky nightie, that’s
Embroidered with his regimental motto.
It’s this war that is responsible for teaching simple youth
All sorts of naughty Continental tricks;
And already he’s decided, when it’s over, that, in truth,
He’ll buy mamma a pair of cami-knicks.
R[egimental] M[edical] O[fficer]
[There was an old dame at La Bassée]
There was an old dame at La Bassée
Who was quite undeniably passée
When they said ‘Mad’moiselle
Vous êtes encore très belle,’
She replied ‘Je suis très embarrassée.’
The Green Estaminet
The old men sit by the chimney-piece and drink the good red wine
And tell great tales of the Soixante-Dix to the men from the English line,
And Madame sits in her old arm-chair and sighs to herself all day –
So Madeleine serves the soldiers in the Green Estaminet.
For Madame wishes the War was won and speaks of a strange disease,
And Pierre is somewhere about Verdun, and Albert on the seas;
Le Patron, ’e is soldat too, but long time prisonnier –
So Madeleine serves the soldiers in the Green Estaminet.
She creeps downstairs when the black dawn scowls and helps at a neighbour’s plough,
She rakes the midden and feeds the fowls and milks the lonely cow,
She mends the holes in the Padre’s clothes and keeps his billet gay –
And she also serves the soldiers in the Green Estaminet.
The smoke grows thick and the wine flows free and the great round songs begin,
And Madeleine sings in her heart, maybe, and welcomes the whole world in;
But I know that life is a hard, hard thing and I know that her lips look gray,
Though she smiles as she serves the soldiers in the Green Estaminet.
But many a tired young English lad has learned his lesson there,
To smile and sing when the world looks bad, ‘for, Monsieur, c’est la guerre’,
Has drunk her honour and made his vow to fight in the same good way
That Madeleine serves the soldiers in the Green Estaminet.
A big shell came on a windy night, and half of the old house went,
But half of the old house stands upright, and Mademoiselle’s content;
The shells still fall in the Square sometimes, but Madeleine means to stay
So Madeleine serves the soldiers still in the Green Estaminet.
A.P. Herbert
The Penitent
As I lay in the trenches at Noove Chapelle,
Where the big guns barked like the Hounds o’ Hell,
Sez I to mysel’, sez I to mysel’ –
Billy, me boy, here’s the end o’ you –
But if, by good luck, ye should chance to slip thro’
Ye’ll bid all ye’r evil
companions adieu;
Keep the Lord’s ten Commands – and Lord Kitchener’s two –
Sez I to mysel’ – at Noove Chapelle.
No more women, and no more wine,
No more hedgin’ to get down the line,
No more hoggin’ around like a swine,
After Noove Chapelle – sez I to mysel’.
But only the good God in Heaven knows
The wayward way that a soldier goes,
And He must ha’ left me to walk by mysel’ –
For three times I’ve fell, since Noove Chapelle.
Once at Bethune and twice at Estaires,
The devil gripped hould o’ me unawares –
Yet often and often I’ve prayed me prayers,
Since I prayed by mysel’ at Noove Chapelle.
Well, the Lord above, who fashioned the French,
May bethink how bewitchin’ is wine and a wench
To a chap that’s been tied for three weeks to a trench,
Around Noove Chapelle – that black border o’ Hell.
And me throat was dry and the night was damp,
And the rum was raw – and red was the lamp! –
And – Billy, my boy, ye’r a bit o’ a scamp,
That’s the truth to tell – tho’ I sez it mysel’.
What’s worritin’ me isn’t fear that they’ll miss
Me out o’ the ranks in the realms o’ bliss;
It ain’t hope o’ Heaven, nor horror o’ Hell,
But just breakin’ the promise, ’twixt God and mysel’,
Made at Noove Chapelle.
Well, there’s always a way that is open to men
When they gets the knock-out – that’s get up again;
And, sure now, ould Satan ain’t yet counted ten!
I’m game for another good bout wi’ mysel’ –
As at Noove Chapelle.
Joseph Lee
Concert
Mark i, Easy, Free and
To-night it’s ‘Free and Easy’
And William’s going to sing
His repertoire’s as breezy
As Robey, Earl of Bing.
Oh, Censor, do be careful,
When we all shout for more,
What William may
Produce by way
Of his umpteenth encore.
Mark ii, Refined
(Shall I try that vers libre stunt again? Certainly.)
A Rest-Camp.
Somewhere . . . Sometime . . .
And the Y.M. tent crowded . . . crowded . . .
And again, crowded.
Silence.
The tense silence of dense masses of tens of
Tense men in tents . . .
Then a Voice . . .
Oh dear me, what a Voice!
And the hoarse applause of scores of paws on paws;
Because
Of the sweet politeness of them,
And the great good nature of them,
And also because a man can only die once . . .
Generally speaking.
Mark iii, Fluffy
And is She really coming –
The one with the long black tights?
‘Me and My Girl’ they are strumming –
’Minds me of Empire nights,
And Margate . . . and the Follies . . .
Lor lumme, can’t she dance!
It’s not all plum-and-apple
Out in France.
Hampden Gordon
Going up the Line
O consolation and refreshment breathed
From the young Spring with apple-blossom wreathed,
Whose certain coming blesses
All life with token of immortality,
And from the ripe beauty and human tendernesses
And reconcilement and tranquillity
Which are the spirit of all things grown old.
For now that I have seen
The curd-white hawthorn once again
Break out on the new green,
And through the iron gates in the long blank wall
Have viewed across a screen
Of rosy apple-blossom the grey spire
And low red roofs and humble chimney-stacks,
And stood in spacious courtyards of old farms,
And heard green virgin wheat sing to the breeze
And the drone of ancient worship rise and fall
In the dark church, and talked with simple folk
Of farm and village, dwelling near the earth,
Among earth’s ancient elemental things:
I can with heart made bold
Go back into the ways of ruin and death
With step unflagging and with quiet breath,
For drawn from the hidden Spirit’s deepest well
I carry in my soul a power to quell
All ills and terrors such as they can hold.
Martin Armstrong
Back to the Trenches
Unrest is in the trees
And billowy clouds drive by:
The curvèd moon rides high
Like a ship midst stormy seas.
Beneath her fitful light,
To the trench’s treachery
And all Fate may decree,
Fearless we march to-night.
The reflected life of man
’Neath the moon’s reflected light,
Riding its stormy night
To the end no eye may scan.
F.W. Harvey
SIX
Flanders, Gallipoli and the Mediterranean
The Second Battle of Ypres and first use of gas, Gallipoli, Salonika, Egypt
As spring came, military operations began once more. In March 1915 the British attempted to break through the German line at Neuve Chapelle towards Aubers Ridge and the important railhead at Lille. They captured the village but were unable to advance further. The following month the Germans attacked at Ypres, and the Canadians suffered heavy casualties from the German use of a new and lethal weapon for which the defending troops were ill prepared – poisonous gas. Its use was greeted with outrage. A veteran later wrote that with the introduction of gas warfare a ‘final stage seemed to be reached in the whole tendency of modern scientific warfare to depress and make of no effect individual bravery, enterprise, and skill’.
Meanwhile, Turkey had entered the war on the German side. In an attempt to break the stalemate on the Western Front, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a second front against the Turks in the Dardanelles, with the intention of drawing enemy troops away from France and Belgium while at the same time opening up the Black Sea to allow free movement of supplies to and from Russia.
The campaign was doomed from the start. The Cabinet gave it only half-hearted support, premature, ill-conceived naval bombardment alerted the Turks, and the plans were so freely talked about that no surprise was possible. On 25 April 1915 the British landed at Cape Helles on the southern tip of the Gallipoli peninsular and at the isolated, undefended and precipitous Y beach 4 miles up the western coast. The Australian and New Zealand troops were to come ashore at the sandy bay of Gaba Tepe further north, but in the darkness they were swept by strong currents to a steeply cliffed inlet, later known as Anzac Cove. As opportunities were missed, there began months of desperate warfare where the terrain and conditions were as much the enemy as were the Turkish defenders. Casualties were appalling, the heat overwhelming, flies multiplied and dysentery was endemic. In the narrow foothold that the Allies had secured, there were no back areas to which tired men could escape. A second landing further north at Suvla Bay in August was no more successful than the first, and in November there were terrible storms, with torrential rain followed by a blizzard and sub-zero temperatures with which the weakened men, in their cotton drill clothes, could ill cope. Many drowned and others froze to death.
Meanwhile, attacks had been launched against the Turks in Mesopotamia. The British landed in Basra and advanced towards Ba
ghdad, but there was inadequate strategic planning and a shortage of supplies. In November 1915 they were forced to retreat to Kut, where they were besieged for the next five months. Others serving in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean saw themselves as a forgotten army.
At the end of 1915 it was decided that Gallipoli should be evacuated. This began on 18 December and was completed on 8 January. After the failure of the landings it was brilliantly executed, for there was not a single loss of life – apart from the horses and mules, whose throats were cut so that they would not fall into Turkish hands. For many, the abandonment of the dead was the hardest part of the evacuation.
Despite its failure, the campaign saw the birth of independence of the antipodean nations, as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – the ANZACs – proved their courage and self-determination.
Lines Written in a Fire-Trench
’Tis midnight, and above the hollow trench,
Seen through a gaunt wood’s battle-blasted trunks
And the stark rafters of a shattered grange,
The quiet sky hangs huge and thick with stars.
And through the vast gloom, murdering its peace,
Guns bellow and their shells rush swishing ere
They burst in death and thunder, or they fling
Wild jangling spirals round the screaming air.
Bullets whine by, and Maxims drub like drums,
And through the heaped confusion of all sounds
One great gun drives its single vibrant ‘Broum’.
And scarce five score of paces from the wall
Of piled sand-bags and barb-toothed nets of wire,
(So near and yet what thousand leagues away)
The unseen foe both adds and listens to
The selfsame discord, eyed by the same stars.
Deep darkness hides the desolated land,
Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts
In whitest glare above the wilderness,
And for one instant lights with lurid pallor