Voices of Silence Read online

  Initially, reports reaching England suggested that the day had gone well and that advances were significant. Gradually, however, it became clear that this was not so. As the casualty lists published in newspapers grew longer and longer, and as War Office telegrams began to arrive at the homes of those who had died, the scale of the tragedy began to become apparent.

  Walking Wounded

  Still I see them coming, coming

  In their broken ragged line,

  Walking wounded in the sunlight,

  Clothed in majesty divine.

  For the fairest of the lilies

  That God’s summer ever sees

  Ne’er was robed in royal beauty

  Such as decks the least of these;

  Tattered, torn and bloody khaki,

  Gleams of white flesh in the sun,

  Robes symbolic of their glory

  And the great deeds they have done:

  Purple robes and snowy linen

  Have for earthly kings sufficed,

  But these bloody, sweaty tatters

  Were the robes of Jesus Christ.

  T.D. Studdert Kennedy

  The Messages

  I cannot quite remember . . . There were five

  Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

  Whispered their dying messages to me . . .

  Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,

  Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,

  He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:

  I cannot quite remember . . . There were five

  Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

  Whispered their dying messages to me . . .

  Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive –

  Waiting a word in silence patiently . . .

  But what they said, or who their friends may be

  I cannot quite remember . . . There were five

  Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

  Whispered their dying messages to me . . .

  Wilfrid W. Gibson

  Unloading Ambulance Train

  Into the siding very wearily

  She comes again:

  Singing her endless song so drearily,

  The midnight winds sink down to drift the rain.

  So she comes home once more.

  Is it an ancient chanty

  Won from some classic shore?

  The stretcher-bearers stand

  Two on either hand.

  They bend and lift and raise

  Where the doors open wide

  With yellow light ablaze.

  Into the dark outside

  Each stretcher passes. Here

  (As if each on his bier

  With sorrow they were bringing)

  Is peace, and a low singing.

  The ambulances load,

  Move on and take the road.

  Under the stars alone

  Each stretcher passes out.

  And the ambulances’ moan

  And the checker’s distant shout

  All round to the old sound

  Of the lost chanty singing.

  And the dark seamen swinging.

  Far off some classic shore . . .

  So she comes home once more.

  Wimereux

  Carola Oman

  The Casualty Clearing Station

  A bowl of daffodils,

  A crimson-quilted bed,

  Sheets and pillows white as snow –

  White and gold and red –

  And sisters moving to and fro,

  With soft and silent tread.

  So all my spirit fills

  With pleasure infinite,

  And all the feathered wings of rest

  Seem flocking from the radiant West

  To bear me thro’ the night.

  Gilbert Waterhouse

  Quantum Mutatus

  Cover him up! My nerve hath not the steel,

  Doctor, of yours! – And so you tended him?

  Your fingers dress’d each torn and shatter’d limb?

  You swath’d that ruin’d face? Ye Gods! I feel,

  Did we but know, we lesser men would kneel

  In reverence for the hands no terrors grim

  Can shake, the eye no horror can make dim.

  – This lad hath taught me what it means to heal!

  So young! So far from home! – Alas! ’twas best!

  Rejoice, poor boy, for that dividing sea,

  And think thee in thy lonely death thrice blest!

  So shall a mourning mother-heart be free

  To see thee still the baby at her breast,

  The pretty child that danc’d upon her knee.

  E. Armine Wodehouse

  The Casualty List

  ‘Killed – Wounded – Missing. Officers and men,

  So many hundreds.’ Numbers leave us cold.

  But when next day the tale again is told

  In serried lines of printed names – Ah then!

  The tragic meaning of it all grows plain.

  We know them not; yet picture in each one

  Some woman’s husband, some fond mother’s son,

  Some maiden’s lover, some child’s father – slain!

  The cost of war looms large before our eyes;

  Our hearts beat quicker, tears unbidden rise.

  Then thoughts fly upward, shape themselves in prayer.

  ‘God of our fathers, for the stricken care!

  The wounded do Thou heal, the lost restore;

  Bind broken hearts, bid mourners weep no more;

  Loved ones in peril guard by day and night;

  And speed, O Lord, the triumph of the Right!’

  [There are tear-dimmed eyes in the town today]

  There are tear-dimmed eyes in the town today,

  There are lips to be no more kissed,

  There are bosoms that swell with an aching heart

  When they think of a dear one missed.

  But time will assuage their heartfelt grief;

  Of their sons they will proudly tell

  How in gallant charge in this world-wide war,

  As ‘Pals’ they fought and fell!

  T. Clayton

  Broken Bodies

  Not for the broken bodies,

  When the War is over and done,

  For the miserable eyes that never

  Again shall see the sun;

  Not for the broken bodies

  Crawling over the land,

  The patchwork limbs, the shoddies,

  Not for the broken bodies,

  Dear Lord, we crave your hand.

  Not for the broken bodies,

  We pray your dearest aid,

  When the ghost of War for ever

  Is levelled at last and laid;

  Not for the broken bodies

  That wrought their sorrowful parts

  Our chiefest need of God is,

  Not for the broken bodies,

  Dear Lord – the broken hearts!

  Louis Golding

  The Widow

  My heart is numb with sorrow;

  The long days dawn and wane;

  To me no sweet to-morrow

  Will bring my man again.

  Yet must my grief be hidden –

  Life makes insistent claim,

  And women, anguish-ridden,

  Their rebel hearts must tame.

  For while, my vigil keeping,

  I face the eternal law,

  Here on my breast lies sleeping

  The son he never saw.

  C.M. Mitchell

  A Little War Tragedy

  I must not bewail,

  Falter or grow pale,

  Say I’m ill or sit wrapped in a shawl:

  He was not my brother,

  Nor acknowledged lover –

  No one knew I cared for him at all.

  Just by chance they said,

  ‘Have you heard he’s dead?’

&n
bsp; As they handed me a cup of tea:

  One among so many,

  Guess they had not any –

  He was just the whole wide world to me.

  Life must still go on,

  Work is to be done –

  These things happen every day I know:

  I was nothing to him

  Have no right to rue him,

  Save the right of having loved him so.

  To A.M.

  (Killed in Flanders)

  Now you are dead, I dare not read

  That letter that you sent to me

  Before you went: my heart would bleed

  If I that writing now should see.

  For I should dream how, long ago,

  We walked those careless Oxford ways,

  When Cherwell’s banks were all aglow

  With hawthorn and with reddening mays.

  And see, as once I used to see,

  St Mary’s spire against the sky:

  And hear you laugh and call to me

  As I came slowly up the High.

  H. Rex Freston

  Lost in France

  He had the ploughman’s strength

  In the grasp of his hand.

  He could see a crow

  Three mile away.

  And the trout beneath the stone.

  He could hear the green oats growing,

  And the sou’-west making rain;

  And the wheel upon the hill

  When it left the level road.

  He could make a gate, and dig a pit,

  And plow as straight as stone can fall.

  And he is dead.

  Ernest Rhys

  Telling the Bees

  (An old Gloucestershire superstition)

  They dug no grave for our soldier lad, who fought and who died out there:

  Bugle and drum for him were dumb, and the padre said no prayer;

  The passing bell gave never a peal to warn that a soul was fled,

  And we laid him not in the quiet spot where cluster his kin that are dead.

  But I hear a foot on the pathway, above the low hum of the hive,

  That at edge of dark, with the song of the lark, tells that the world is alive:

  The master starts on his errand, his tread is heavy and slow,

  Yet he cannot choose but tell the news – the bees have a right to know.

  Bound by the ties of a happier day, they are one with us now in our worst;

  On the very morn that my boy was born they were told the tidings the first:

  With what pride they will hear of the end he made, and the ordeal that he trod –

  Of the scream of shell, and the venom of hell, and the flame of the sword of God.

  Wise little heralds, tell of my boy; in your golden tabard coats

  Tell the bank where he slept, and the stream he leapt, where the spangled lily floats:

  The tree he climbed shall lift her head, and the torrent he swam shall thrill,

  And the tempest that bore his shouts before shall cry his message still.

  G.E. Rees

  To a Dog

  Past happiness dissolves. It fades away,

  Ghost-like, in that dim attic of the mind

  To which the dreams of childhood are consigned.

  Here, withered garlands hang in slow decay,

  And trophies glimmer in the dying ray

  Of stars that once with heavenly glory shined.

  But you, old friend, are you still left behind

  To tell the nearness of life’s yesterday?

  Ah, boon companion of my vanished boy,

  For you he lives; in every sylvan walk

  He waits; and you expect him everywhere.

  How would you stir, what cries, what bounds of joy,

  If but his voice were heard in casual talk,

  If but his footstep sounded on the stair!

  John Jay Chapman

  The Dead Hero

  I know where I can find him. I shall look

  In every whispering glade and laughing brook,

  In every passing wind I’ll hear his sigh

  And feel his tears fall on me from the sky

  In drops the foolish living call the rain,

  And in the sun I’ll see his smile again,

  And on the roses blowing in the South

  I’ll feel once more the soft touch of his mouth.

  Elsie P. Cranmer

  TWELVE

  The Wounded in England

  Military hospitals, VADs, convalescence

  The more seriously wounded from the Somme fighting were brought back to England. They crossed by boat, some coming into Southampton, others to Dover from where they were taken by train through the Kent countryside to London. At Charing Cross station crowds gathered in the forecourt to see them arrive, and the wounded were then driven by ambulance to their destinations.

  For many the war was over; their wounds were too serious for them to go back. Their initial response was often one of relief for, however serious their injuries, they were at least alive.

  In the hospitals they were looked after by professional nurses, and by VADs, volunteer nurses who made up a substantial part of the nursing force. Some went to Roehampton Hospital, the centre for limbless servicemen.

  For those whose injuries were less severe, their time in England came to an end. When they had been passed fit, they returned once more to France.

  Ex Umbra

  Morning.

  A khaki line – a drizzling rain,

  The thunder of big guns pealing;

  The shriek of shell – a cry of pain,

  And dark o’er my senses stealing.

  Evening.

  A salt sea breeze – a city’s roar,

  The sense of a journey ending;

  A shaded lamp in a corridor,

  And a sweet face o’er me bending.

  J. Bourke

  Evening – Kent

  Sheep, like woolly clouds dropt from the sky,

  Drift through the quiet meads.

  From over the seas, a little cry,

  — Europe bleeds!

  Clouds, like woolly sheep, hardly stirr’d,

  Drift through the quiet skies.

  From over the seas, a little word,

  — Europe dies!

  Louis Golding

  Charing Cross

  The incoming tide beats up the river,

  With a breeze from the main,

  And people await, with hearts a-quiver,

  The incoming train!

  Day in, day out, through the grimy portals,

  The pale patients of Pain

  Pass ’mid the tears and smiles of the mortals

  They gaze on again!

  In War’s red tide they were tossed and broken –

  Never shattered in vain!

  They faced Death in Life’s eyes in unspoken

  But noble disdain!

  Now they are home, and hundreds await

  The incoming train;

  Pride in the heroes their hearts doth elate

  Like a breeze from the main!

  A Sister in a Military Hospital

  Blue dress, blue tippet, trimmed with red,

  White veil, coif-like about her head.

  Starched apron, cuffs, and cool, kind hands,

  Trained servants to her quick commands.

  Swift feet that lag not to obey

  In diligent service day by day.

  A face that would have brought delight

  To some pure-souled pre-Raphaelite;

  Madonna of a moment, caught

  Unwary in the toils of thought,

  Stilled in her tireless energy,

  Dark-eyed and hushed with sympathy.

  Warm, eager as the south-west wind,

  Straight as a larch and gaily kind

  As pinewood fires on winter eves,

  Wholesome and young as April leaves,

  Four seasons blent in rare accord

  – Y
ou have the Sister of our ward.

  Winifred M. Letts

  To a V.A.D. from a V.A.D.

  When you start by oversleeping, and the bath is bagged three deep,

  When you stagger to the window ’neath the blind to take a peep,

  When you find the snow is snowing, and it’s murky overhead,

  When your room-mate has a day off, and lies snugly tucked in bed,

  When your cap falls in the coal-box and you lose your collar stud,

  When it’s time to start, and then you find your shoes are thick in mud,

  When you scramble in to breakfast, just too late to drink your tea –

  Don’t grouse, my dear; remember you’re a ‘War-time V.A.D.’.

  When you start to scrub the lockers and the bowl falls on the floor,

  When you finish them and then you find that they were done before,

  When you haven’t got a hanky and you want to blow your nose,

  When the patients shriek with laughter ’cos a bed drops on your toes,

  When you use the last Sapolio and can’t get any more,

  When you’ve lost the key belonging to the Linen Cupboard door,

  When your head is fairly splitting, and you’re feeling up a tree –

  Don’t grouse, my dear; remember you’re a ‘War-time V.A.D.’.

  When the Doctor comes into the ward, and each stands to his bed,

  When he asks you for a probe and you hand him gauze instead,

  When the Sister ‘strafes’ you soundly ’cos Brown’s kit is incomplete,

  When you take a man some dinner, and upset it on the sheet,

  When you make the beds and sweep the ward and rush with all your might,

  When you stagger off duty and the wretched fire won’t light,

  When you think of those at home and long for luxury and ease –

  Don’t grouse, my dears; remember you’re the ‘War-time V.A.D.s’.

  When your name’s read out for night shift and they leave you on your own,