Voices of Silence Page 4

  At every window stands a child, early waking,

  To see what road the company is taking.

  Edward Shanks

  The House by the Highway

  All night, from the quiet street

  Comes the sound, without pause or break,

  Of the marching legions’ feet

  To listeners lying awake.

  Their faces may none descry;

  Night folds them close like a pall;

  But the feet of them passing by

  Tramp on the hearts of all.

  What comforting makes them strong?

  What trust and what fears have they

  That march without music or song

  To death at the end of the way?

  What faith in our victory?

  What hopes that beguile and bless?

  What heaven-sent hilarity?

  What mirth and what weariness?

  What valour from vanished years

  In the heart of youth confined?

  What wellsprings of unshed tears

  For the loves they leave behind?

  No sleep, my soul to befriend;

  No voice, neither answering light!

  But darkness that knows no end

  And feet going by in the night.

  Elinor Jenkins

  The Last Evening

  Round a bright isle, set in a sea of gloom,

  We sat together, dining,

  And spoke and laughed even as in better times

  Though each one knew no other might misdoubt

  The doom that marched moment by moment nigher,

  Whose couriers knocked on every heart like death,

  And changed all things familiar to our sight

  Into strange shapes and grieving ghosts that wept.

  The crimson-shaded light

  Shed in the garden roses of red fire

  That burned and bloomed on the decorous limes.

  The hungry night that lay in wait without

  Made blind, blue eyes against the silver’s shining

  And waked the affrighted candles with its breath

  Out of their steady sleep, while round the room

  The shadows crouched and crept.

  Among the legions of beleaguering fears,

  Still we sat on and kept them still at bay,

  A little while, a little longer yet,

  And wooed the hurrying moments to forget

  What we remembered well,

  – Till the hour struck – then desperately we sought

  And found no further respite – only tears

  We would not shed, and words we might not say.

  We needs must know that now the time was come

  Yet still against the strangling foe we fought,

  And some of us were brave and some

  Borrowed a bubble courage nigh to breaking,

  And he that went, perforce went speedily

  And stayed not for leave-taking.

  But even in going, as he would dispel

  The bitterness of incomplete good-byes,

  He paused within the circle of dim light,

  And turned to us a face, lit seemingly

  Less by the lamp than by his shining eyes.

  So, in the radiance of his mastered fate,

  A moment stood our soldier by the gate

  And laughed his long farewell –

  Then passed into the silence and the night.

  Elinor Jenkins

  TWO

  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

  After landing in France, the British Expeditionary Force (or BEF), under the command of Sir John French, moved north to take up positions beside the French army to halt the German advance through Belgium. On Sunday 23 August they came face to face with the attacking forces in the small mining town of Mons. After a fierce battle down the streets and among the slag heaps, they were forced to withdraw. The Retreat from Mons, covering 250 miles in fierce summer heat, continued until 5 September. As rearguards turned to fight, the main body of troops marched until their feet were bloody and they moved almost in their sleep. They sang as they marched, and there were stories that ghosts of the English killed at Agincourt appeared to support them – ‘The Angels of Mons.’

  The German advance seemed unstoppable as they implemented the Schlieffen Plan, a long-planned strategy that would lead to the fall of Paris and would bring France to its knees inside six weeks, before the Russian armies had had time to mobilise effectively. But the plan depended upon a swift, undefended passage through Belgium. Instead, faced with unexpectedly strong resistance, Von Kluck, the German commander, altered the thrust of his attack. Suddenly he found himself threatened with being outflanked, and his armies were forced to withdraw first to the River Marne and then to the Aisne; his plans for a swift victory were gone. Now, his men began to move towards the Channel ports; if these fell, the British Army would be cut off and the British Isles isolated from the Continent.

  In what became known as ‘The Race for the Sea’, the BEF moved rapidly north once more. The decisive confrontation came at the end of October near the medieval Flemish wool town of Ypres. The British were heavily outnumbered and the German Crown Prince, certain of victory, arrived to watch the defeat of what the Kaiser had called a ‘contemptible little Army’. The British held on by a whisker, but by the end of the battle on 21 November the BEF had almost ceased to exist. Ypres became a symbol of the invincibility of the British Army that, though a vulnerable salient, was now to be held at all costs. Open warfare was over; with the coming of winter a line of trenches was drawn from the North Sea to the Swiss border – the Western Front. On Christmas Day, exhausted men on both sides of the line called an unofficial truce.

  Meanwhile, in a fraught atmosphere at home, the terrible news of the retreat and the near encirclement of the BEF was replaced by reports of the successful defence of Ypres. Spy mania and rumour flourished. Everything German was suspect – from waiters and governesses to dachshunds and hock – and there were stories that Russian soldiers, with snow still on their boots, had been seen in England on their way from Archangel to support the Allies in France.

  [There was a strange Man of Coblenz]

  There was a strange Man of Coblenz, the length of whose legs was immense;

  He went with one prance from Russia to France,

  That excitable man of Coblenz.

  Retreat

  It was a nightmare week of thirst and dust –

  With fairly heavy scraps at the beginning –

  And disappointment, mixed with a queer trust

  That we were winning.

  They say one German rush stopped strangely short –

  The Boches fell back; their horses couldn’t face

  Something! when we were in a tightish place –

  Somewhere near Agincourt!

  I wasn’t there – and of that whole crammed week

  Only two little things stick in my mind;

  Our battery – we were rearmost, so to speak –

  Had left me miles behind

  In a great field of roots – there crouching tight

  Across those turnips casting backwards glances –

  Less than a mile behind on a low height

  I caught a gleam of lances!

  (I’d felt that thrill in my small boy existence

  When Porsena of Clusium in his pride

  Marched upon Rome – and the ‘wan burghers spied’

  His vanguard in the distance!)

  Behind that hill was hid a host too vast

  To count – much too tremendous to alarm me!

  These were their first – and I the very last

  Of French’s little army!

  – Oh yes, we’d lots of shelling, heaps of scraps –

  They all but had us once – and shot my stallion

  Fro
m Fez – but funked a dozen Highland chaps

  Who tricked a whole Battalion!

  One other thing – I’d halted fairly beat

  – A baking road – some poplars over-arching –

  Men simply tumbling down with thirst and heat,

  And crumpled up with marching.

  There was a weedy ‘Sub’, who used to shy

  At work and drill and such-like useless trifles!

  Just then he passed me, limping, whistling, by

  Hung stiff with Tommies’ rifles!

  * * *

  Though of that week I never want to talk –

  I’ll think of Mons, whenever I remember

  The valse tune that he whistled – or I walk

  Through turnips in September!

  Charles T. Foxcroft

  The Mouth-Organ

  When drum and fife are silent,

  When the pipes are packed away,

  And the soldiers go

  Too near the foe

  For the bugle’s noisy bray;

  When our haversacks are heavy,

  And our packs like Christian’s load,

  Then Jimmy Morgan

  Plays his old mouth-organ,

  To cheer us on our road.

  ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary –’

  When by the shrunken river

  Reclined the great god Pan,

  And to his needs,

  Cut down the reeds –

  And music first began;

  Then all mankind did marvel

  At a melody so sweet;

  But when Jimmy Morgan

  Plays his old mouth-organ,

  Even Pan takes second seat!

  When Orpheus, of old time,

  Did strike his magic lute,

  He lorded it,

  As he thought fit,

  O’er boulder, bird and brute;

  And great trees were uprooted,

  And root-marched, so to say,

  But when Jimmy Morgan

  Plays his old mouth-organ,

  You should see us march away.

  When the Piper Pied of Hamlin,

  In the legend of renown,

  His pipe did play,

  He charmed away

  The children from the town:

  But behold our whole Battalion –

  To the joy of wife and wench –

  Led by Jimmy Morgan,

  And his old mouth-organ

  March forward to the trench.

  ‘Here we are, here we are, here we are again!’

  O, an overture by Wagner

  Strikes sweetly on mine ear,

  And the noble three,

  Brahms, Bach, and Bee-

  thoven, I love to hear;

  But when the rains are falling,

  And when the roads are long,

  Give me Jimmy Morgan

  And his old mouth-organ

  To lead our little song.

  ‘A-roving, a-roving; we’ll gang nae mair a-roving!’

  Sometimes he pipes us grave notes,

  Sometimes he pipes up gay;

  Till broken feet

  Take up the beat

  Of quick-step or Strathspey:

  But he plays upon our heart-strings

  When he plays a Scottish tune –

  Hear Jimmy Morgan

  And his old mouth-organ

  At ‘The Banks o’ Bonnie Doon’!

  He has a twist upon his mouth,

  A twinkle in his e’e;

  A roguish air,

  A deil-ma-care,

  Like the Piper o’ Dundee:

  Faith! we would dance thro’ half o’ France,

  And a’ the trenches carry,

  If Jimmy Morgan

  On his old mouth-organ,

  Did but give us ‘Annie Laurie’!

  And when the war is over –

  The war we mean to win –

  And Kaiser Bill

  Has had his pill,

  And we boys march thro’ Berlin;

  ‘Unter den Linden’ going,

  We’ll need no pipes to blow –

  Just Jimmy Morgan

  And his old mouth-organ,

  Leading us as we go!

  ‘Highland laddie, Highland laddie; whar hae you been a’ the day?’

  And when this life is ended,

  And Morgan gone aloft,

  He will not carp

  Tho’ he get no harp,

  Nor trumpet sweet and soft;

  But if there be a place for him

  In the Angelic choir,

  Give Jimmy Morgan

  His old mouth-organ,

  And he’ll play and never tire.

  Joseph Lee

  Singing ‘Tipperary’

  We’ve each our Tipperary, who shout that haunting song,

  And all the more worth reaching because the way is long;

  You’ll hear the hackneyed chorus until it tires your brain

  Unless you feel the thousand hopes disguised in that refrain.

  We’ve each our Tipperary – some hamlet, village, town,

  To which our ghosts would hasten though we laid our bodies down,

  Some spot of little showing our spirits still would seek,

  And strive, unseen, to utter what now we fear to speak.

  We’ve each our Tipperary, our labour to inspire,

  Some mountain-top or haven, some goal of far desire –

  Some old forlorn ambition, or humble, happy hope

  That shines beyond the doubting with which our spirits cope.

  We’ve each our Tipperary – near by or wildly far;

  For some it means a fireside, for some it means a star;

  For some it’s but a journey by homely roads they know,

  For some a spirit’s venture where none but theirs may go.

  We’ve each our Tipperary, where rest and love and peace

  Mean just a mortal maiden, or Dante’s Beatrice:

  We growl a song together, to keep the marching swing,

  But who shall dare interpret the chorus that we sing?

  W. Kersley Holmes

  Another ‘Scrap of Paper’

  (The Times of October 1st vouches for the following Army Order issued by the German Kaiser on August 19th. ‘It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you concentrate your energies, for the immediate present, upon one single purpose, and that is that you address all your skill and all the valour of my soldiers to exterminate first the treacherous English and walk over General French’s contemptible little Army.’)

  Wilhelm, I do not know your whereabouts.

  The gods elude us. When we would detect your

  Earthly address, ’tis veiled in misty doubts

  Of devious conjecture.

  At Nancy, in a moist trench, I am told

  That you performed an unrehearsed lustration;

  That there you linger, having caught a cold,

  Followed by inflammation.

  Others assert that your asbestos hut,

  Conveyed (with you inside) to Polish regions,

  Promises to afford a likely butt

  To Russia’s wingèd legions.

  But, whether this or that (or both) be true,

  Or merely tales of which we have the air full,

  In any case I say, ‘O Wilhelm, do,

  Do, if you can, be careful!’

  For if, by evil chance, upon your head,

  Your precious head, some impious shell alighted,

  I should regard my dearest hopes as dead,

  My occupation blighted.

  I want to save you for another scene,

  Having perused a certain Manifesto

  That stimulates an itching, very keen,

  In every Briton’s best toe –

  An Order issued to your Army’s flower,

  Giving instructions most precise and stringent

  For the immediate wiping out of our

  ‘Contemptible’ contingent.
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  Well, that’s a reason why I’d see you spared;

  So take no risks, but rather heed my warning,

  Because I have a little plan prepared

  For Potsdam, one fine morning.

  I see you ringed about with conquering foes –

  See you, in penitential robe (with taper),

  Invited to assume a bending pose

  And eat that scrap of paper!

  Owen Seaman

  The Freedom of the Press

  Waking at six, I lie and wait

  Until the papers come at eight.

  I skim them with an anxious eye

  Ere duly to my bath I hie,

  Postponing till I’m fully dressed

  My study of the daily pest.

  Then, seated at my frugal board,

  My rasher served, my tea outpoured,

  I disentangle news official

  From reams of comment unjudicial,

  Until at half-past nine I rise

  Bemused by all this ‘wild surmise’,

  And for my daily treadmill bound

  Fare eastward on the underground.

  But, whether in the train or when

  I reach my dim official den,

  Placards designed to thrill and scare

  Affront my vision everywhere,

  And double windows can’t keep out

  The newsboy’s penetrating shout.

  For when the morning papers fail

  The evening press takes up the tale,

  And, fired by curious competition,

  Edition following on edition,

  The headline demons strain and strive

  Without a check from ten till five,

  Extracting from stale news some phrase

  To shock, to startle or amaze,

  Or finding a daring innuendo –

  All swelling in one long crescendo,

  Till, shortly after five o’clock,

  When business people homeward flock,

  From all superfluous verbiage freed

  Comes Joffre’s calm laconic screed,

  And all the bellowings of the town

  Quelled by the voice of Truth die down,

  Enabling you and me to win

  Twelve hours’ release from Rumour’s din.

  C.L. Graves