Voices of Silence E-Book

Vivien Noakes

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Beschreibung

The poetry of the First World War has determined our perception of the war itself. This volume features poetry drawn from old newspapers and journals, trench and hospital magazines, individual volumes of verse, gift books, postcards, and a manuscript magazine put together by conscientious objectors.

Leseprobe

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 2QGwww.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.

In selecting the poems, I have searched through trench newspapers and hospital gazettes, private scrapbooks and autograph albums, old newspapers, magazines and journals, gift books and collections of poems published in aid of a particular cause, and many slim volumes of single poets’ work that were published during or shortly after the war. I have looked at advertisements, at postcards that were sold on the streets by unemployed ex-servicemen, at In Memoriam notices in local newspapers and at the headstones of war graves. It was my privilege to handle an illicit, handwritten magazine literally sewn together before being passed from cell to cell by jailed conscientious objectors. In the decades since the war, most of these works have been unavailable to the general reader, out of print and accessible only in specialist libraries, museums or newspaper archives.

With a handful of exceptions, I have not knowingly selected any work that describes an event not witnessed or experienced by the writer, give or take the considerations of fantasy and humour – I doubt if anyone ever actually saw a Sentry-pede, and I do not think that Harold met his maker because of the abundance of souvenirs he brought home with him. Gilbert Frankau’s ‘Eyes in the Air’ is a first-person account of aerial combat over the line; Frankau was not in the Royal Flying Corps, but from the trenches he was able to watch dog-fights at first hand. Wilfrid Gibson served in the army in England but did not go overseas; despite this, his response to the accounts of front-line experience that he heard from his fellow-soldiers is so acute that he is thought to be one of the most significant poets of the war. A.A. Milne was not wounded at Loos but he saw active service with those who were – whether or not they were greengrocers from Fulham is open to speculation. C. Fox-Smith’s ‘The Call’ is written by a woman, but accurately expresses the thoughts of many of the men as the end of the war approached. Readers must make up their own minds about the chapter entitled ‘L’Envoi’.

There are poems by writers whom we do not usually associate with war poetry – Gordon Bottomley, John Drinkwater and J.B. Priestley, for example. Sometimes the poet may be well known, but the poem I have chosen is not: Alan Seeger’s ‘I have a Rendezvous with Death’ is found in most anthologies but his ‘On Returning to the Front after Leave’ is not, nor is Geoffrey Dearmer’s fine poem ‘Gommecourt’. There is a single poem, ‘Noon’, by Robert Nichols, a poem I have not found in any other anthology.

The use of Robert Nichols’s poem leads me on to an explanation of the general arrangement of the work. As I began to sort and order the poems I had chosen, it became clear that the most sensible way to assemble them would be to follow a broadly chronological pattern built round times and battles or particular themes: it is within the description of daily life in the trenches that ‘Noon’ finds its place. Gradually the material evolved into the story of the experience of the Great War told in verse by those who were there. Although, as an anthology, it lends itself to dipping, it has been designed as a whole. A few rather better-known poems, like ‘Beaucourt Revisited’ and ‘The General’, have been included for narrative reasons within this design, and a handful of works of a less obvious poetical standard than the rest, such as the text of postcards, are included because they speak powerfully of their time.

One of the richest, and certainly the most fascinating, sources was trench newspapers. We cannot now know how many of these ephemeral publications there were, but most units produced something that was written, sometimes illustrated, and then assembled by their men, often in the most impossible conditions. Fortunately, a number have survived, in the British Library, in regimental museums or in private ownership, but many more must have been lost.

One of the earliest of these was the remarkable Fifth Gloucester Gazette, published between 1915 and 1919. As with other notably successful trench publications, a single poet contributed work of remarkable quality – in this case, F.W. Harvey. But the most famous, and most lasting, of these publications was the Wipers Times and the newspapers – such as the Somme-Times and the ‘Better Times’ – that were its sequels, published between February 1916 and December 1918. A facsimile edition first appeared in 1930 and has been followed by others since. Here, it is Gilbert Frankau who has made the most enduring contribution.

Compared to others, the Wipers Times was a relatively sophisticated production. In his Preface to the 1930 facsimile, written in the spring of 1918, the editor tells us that the first number was produced in a wrecked printing house near to the Cloth Hall in Ypres – pronounced Wipers by the British soldiers – which had been discovered by a sergeant who had been a printer in civilian life. ‘There were parts of the building remaining, the rest was on top of the press. The type was all over the country-side. [. . .] Paper was there, ink in plenty, everything in fact except “copy” ’, which the men then set about providing. The editorial ‘den’ was in a rat-infested, water-logged cellar in the old Ypres ramparts. The twelve pages had to be printed one by one, as there were not enough ‘y’s’ and ‘e’s’ to do more than a page at a time. When this original press was shattered by a 5.9 shell, a replacement, ‘a lovely little hand-jigger and a lot more type’, were found near Hell-fire Corner (of all places) and brought back into Ypres so that production could continue. This new, lighter press moved with them wherever they went, the newspaper changing its name as they moved. All but the final number were printed close to the front, on one occasion above ground within 700 yards of the line. ‘Have you ever sat in a trench in the middle of a battle and corrected proofs?’ asked Roberts. ‘Try it.’7 Only the edition that was in production at the opening of the March offensive of 1918 had to be abandoned, because of thoughtless enemy activity.

Other trench newspapers were more primitive – often no more than a single folded sheet. The Spud was typed and then duplicated, as was Depot Review, which was entirely the work of private soldiers. The altogether more ambitious compilation, The Anzac Book, was written and drawn, again largely by private soldiers, during the closing weeks of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. Unusually, the idea for this publication had come from a member of the Staff who set up a production committee on the peninsular and then asked for contributions. It was also unusual in being intended for a broader readership – not only the men in the trenches but also those at home. The editor was Australia’s official war correspondent, the noted C.E.W. Bean of the Sydney Morning Herald. What was grandly described as his editorial office was situated in a dug-out overlooking Anzac cove.

The very nature of this war means that most of the poems are written by men, but there were also women at the front, notably the remarkable Mary Borden, who served in French military hospitals, often close to the line. Both in England and abroad, women worked as VAD nurses, in the auxiliary forces or in factories. Others – the wives, and the mothers of small children or of men at the front – waited and all too often mourned. Their writings are vivid testimony to the tragedy of anxiety and loss.

Given their variety and richness, and their importance as social and historical testaments, it is inevitable that the poems in this book would have been rediscovered sooner or later. Some may surprise and others discomfort. Together they broaden and enrich our understanding of an event that has had such a profound effect on our national history and consciousness.

A few words about editorial decisions are necessary. In this collection we have followed, wherever possible, the conventions of presentation of the original poems. All poems are complete – a group of dots in the text is a group of dots in the original poem and does not indicate excision. Asterisks indicate a break in a sequence of sonnets. Editorial intrusion has been restricted to the tacit correction of obvious mistakes – generally the result of the makeshift conditions of publication – and to the occasional removal of such incidental things as unnecessary inverted commas round titles. Where a poem appeared for the first time during the war and was later tidied up and reissued in a post-war edition of the poet’s work, the earlier version has been chosen. Within the text of poems, the early twentieth-century convention of full stops within acronyms has been retained; in editorial comment the modern convention of dropping these has been followed.

Notes

1. Captain Eric Gore-Booth, quoted in Malcolm Brown, The Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front, p. 104.

2. Undertones of War, Penguin edn (1937), p. 168.

3. Quoted in Malcolm Brown, Tommy Goes to War, p. 40.

4. Preface to The Poets in Picardy, and Other Poems, p. 11.

5. Preface, ‘How it Happened’, to the collected edition of the Wipers Times, ed. F.J. Roberts, Eveleigh Nash and Grayson, 1930, p. vii.

6. For a contemporary poem about Siegfried Sassoon and his protest, see ‘Lieutenant Tattoon, M.C.’, p. 143.

7. Preface, ‘How it Happened’, pp. v–vii.

How it Began

In 1815 the armies of France, Britain and Prussia came face to face on Belgian soil at the battle of Waterloo. In the aftermath of the Napoleon wars, a treaty was drawn up at the London Conference of 1838–9 which guaranteed that this small country, so often the cockpit of Europe, would henceforth be a perpetually neutral state. The treaty was signed by Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia.

On the other side of Europe, the Ottoman Empire was breaking up. The Greeks had launched their war for independence in 1821, and as the century progressed more countries struggled to be free. But Turkish domination was replaced by rival bids for territorial rights, and the opening years of the twentieth century found the Balkans in turmoil. In 1908 the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed the Balkan state of Bosnia-Hercegovina, a land populated by Slavs. In the years that followed, its neighbour Serbia emerged as the leader of the Slavic people, determined to oust the Austro-Hungarian overlords. It was a cause that Russia championed. Austria, angered by the threat this posed, awaited an opportunity to overthrow Serbia.

Meanwhile, a growing rivalry between France and Prussia for European mastery was reaching a climax. In 1870 the Prussians nominated a Hohenzollern prince as a candidate for the Spanish throne. Bismark’s wilful distortion of the facts of diplomatic intervention led on both sides to cries for war. In July 1870 France declared war on Germany. But France was ill prepared. Early in 1871, after a siege of four-and-a-half months, Paris fell and France surrendered. By the terms of the peace, it relinquished to Germany its eastern state of Alsace and much of Lorraine. An indemnity was demanded and a German army of occupation installed until the payment was complete. In a France determined to make good its inglorious defeat, la revanche was born.

In the summer of 1914, against a background of territorial ambition, increasing armaments and growing tension and fear, there existed in Europe two opposing camps. The Triple Alliance, pledging military support under certain circumstances, was made up of Germany, Austria and Italy; the Triple Entente, a collaboration that grew from the settlement of long-standing differences rather than from promises of military alliance, comprised Russia, France and Britain. Between Russia and France there existed also a military alliance in which Britain had no part. The newly united state of Germany, ruled by Prussians with expansionist, imperialist dreams, felt itself encircled by enemies. In particular it feared Russia’s rapidly increasing industrial and military strength.

On Sunday 28 June 1914, a young Slavic nationalist, Gavrilo Princep, assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, who were visiting the Bosnian town of Sarajevo. Austria, realising that this was the opportunity it needed to confront and crush Serbia, accused it of complicity in the murder. On 5 July the Kaiser assured his Austrian ally that Germany would stand by Austria, even if an Austrian march into Serbia should unleash a great war. Indeed, Germany had long been preparing for such a war that would sweep away its rivals and secure European domination. Its plans were well laid and its preparations complete.

On 23 July the Austro-Hungarian government issued an ultimatum to Serbia, demanding that it put an end to intrigues whose purpose was to take from Austro-Hungary territories that it claimed were rightfully its own. The ultimatum included a number of impossible demands.

On 25 July the Serbian government conceded most of the points and suggested that the others should be subject to international arbitration. Austria would agree to no such compromise and on 28 July declared war on Serbia. As a precaution against possible Russian support of Serbia, Austria mobilised its forces along its Russian border.

The next day Russia responded by ordering partial mobilisation; two days later this mobilisation was complete. On that day, Friday 31 July, Germany sent a note to Russia demanding that it should halt all military preparations within twelve hours. Its own troops were already mobilised. France, meanwhile, waited anxiously to see what happened next.

On 1 August, Germany declared war on Russia. The next day German troops entered Poland and Luxembourg, and patrols crossed the borders into France. On the same day it declared war on France, and delivered an ultimatum to Belgium demanding free passage across its country. No agreement was given, and on 3 August, following its plan to invade France from the north rather than across the heavily defended land of Alsace-Lorraine, Germany crossed into neutral Belgium. On Tuesday 4 August Britain delivered an ultimatum to Germany stating that, unless it withdrew its forces from Belgium, a state of war would be declared. No reply was received, and at midnight German time – 11 p.m. in London – Britain declared war on Germany.

ONE

The Outbreak of War

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

Unlike other countries that came into the war in the summer of 1914, Britain had no compulsory military service. Her regular army was small and much of it was posted overseas, particularly in India. There were reservists, who were immediately recalled to the colours, and Territorials whose purpose was to protect their homeland rather than to serve overseas, though this was soon to change. It would take time to create an army large enough to fight a major European war.

Despite the situation, conscription was not introduced. Instead, an immediate appeal was made for 100,000 volunteers – fit, unmarried men between the ages of 19 and 35. Lord Kitchener was put in charge of recruitment, and posters which showed him proclaiming ‘YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU’ were displayed countrywide. Moral blackmail was also used. ‘What did you do in the Great War Daddy?’ was a question and a poster designed to shame those who held back from enlisting, as was the practice of handing out white feathers to young men not in uniform. Those who failed to ‘take the King’s shilling’ were despised as shirkers. In fact, the response was so immediate and so overwhelming that many recruits had to begin training without uniforms or weapons.

There was much local pride in the number of volunteers that came forward, and in some towns friends from the same streets and workplaces were encouraged to join up together, forming what were known as Pals’ Brigades. One such town was Accrington in Lancashire, where 1,100 men enlisted inside ten days, with a further 400 being turned away. In theory such mutual support and comradeship was an excellent idea, but later in the war – particularly during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, when single units suffered appalling casualties – it meant that whole communities of young men were almost wiped out. At the beginning, though, many people thought that Kitchener’s New Armies, as they were called, would never be called upon to fight, for the war would be over by Christmas.

Meanwhile, the battles of 1914 were fought by regular soldiers. The first members of the British Expeditionary Force – the BEF – under the command of Sir John French, crossed to France on 9 August.

The Kaiser and Belgium

He said: ‘Thou petty people, let me pass!

What canst thou do but bow to me and kneel?’

But sudden a dry land caught fire like grass,

And answer hurtled but from shell and steel.

He looked for silence, but a thunder came;

Upon him from Liège a leaden hail.

All Belgium flew up at his throat in flame,

Till at her gates amazed his legions quail!

Take heed, for now on haunted ground thy tread;

There bowed a mightier War-Lord to his fall;

Fear! Lest that very grass again grow red

With blood of German now, as then of Gaul!

If him whom God destroys He maddens first,

Then thy destruction slake thy madman’s thirst!

Stephen Phillips

England to Belgium

Not lusting for a brief renown

Nor apt in any vain dispute

You throw the scythes of autumn down,

And leave your dues of autumn fruit

Unharvested, and dare the wrong

Of death’s immitigable wing,

And on your banners burn a song

That gods unrisen yet shall sing.

Because your Belgian fields are dear,

And now they suffer black despite,

Because your womanhood can hear

The menace on the lips of night,

Because you are a little clan

Of brothers, and because there comes

The thief among you, to a man

You take the challenge of your drums.

Not all our tears and wrath shall weigh

The utter bitterness that falls,

O Belgian hearts, on you this day,

The sorrow of your broken walls,

And desolated hearths, the crime

Of Prussian sword and Prussian flame,

But, brothers, with the world we chime

The story of your Belgian name.

We will be comrades at your side,

Your battle and our battle one

To turn again this monstrous pride

That veils but does not know the sun;

Our blood and thews with yours are set

Against this creed of bar and goad,

The Ironside is in us yet

As when the ranks of Cromwell rode.

For all things clean, for all things brave,

For peace, for spiritual light,

To keep love’s body whole, to save

The hills of intellectual sight,

Girt at your Belgian gate we stand,

Our trampled faith undaunted still,

With heart unseared and iron hand

And old indomitable will.

John Drinkwater

The Old Soldiers

We come from dock and shipyard, we come from car and train,

We come from foreign countries to slope our arms again

And, forming fours by numbers or turning to the right,

We’re learning all our drills again and ’tis a pretty sight.

Our names are all unspoken, our regiments forgotten,

For some of us were pretty bad and some of us were rotten,

And some will misremember what once they learnt with pain

And hit a bloody serjeant and go to clink again.

Edward Shanks

March up to the Colours

Come on, come in, and like a river flowing,

In volume irresistible toward the raging sea;

Let all the nations see that Britons now are willing

To fight for right and justice in ‘The War of Liberty’.

Let there be no laggards of our able bodied youth,

In silken dalliance toying, as in piping times of peace;

When ‘home land’ is in danger it is a time forsooth,

To show you are true metal and to take a gun apiece.

The war may be a short one, or it may last for years,

You are ready to endure it, to prove your country right;

If Belgium now is burning amid a rain of tears,

It might have been ‘Our England!’ so strike with all your might.

Kitchener has called for you to take a Briton’s share,

Your country has need of you, so do not hesitate

To march up to the colours, with many a mother’s prayer,

For England, home and beauty – remember Belgium’s fate.

W.J. Wilkinson

The Skunk

The Skunk is quite a nasty beast,

Unsavoury, to say the least.

A football match he likes to watch,

Smoke cigarettes, and call for ‘Scotch’,

The daily papers he enjoys

That tell about the other boys;

But when the War is done, the Skunk

Will wish he hadn’t been a funk!

St John Hamund

The Sloth

The Sloth is of another kind;

He doesn’t want to stop behind;

He means to fight. ‘Some day’ perhaps

He’ll go and join the other chaps.

And when at last he’s at the Front

He’s just the sort to bear the brunt.

Let’s stick a pin in him to show

That now’s the proper time to go!

St John Hamund

Cricket Field or Battle Field? (‘This is not the time to play games.’ – Lord Roberts)

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But won when the world’s at rest:

Not when the heart of the world is sore

And the soul of the world distressed.

Not when the score is a thousand score,

And a thousand score of the best!

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But won when the world’s at rest:

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But not in the time of strife:

Not when the eye of the world is stern,

And it’s war, my sons, to the knife!

Not when the call is for each and all,

And the Cause is your country’s life!

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But not in the time of strife.

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But not when your King’s umpire:

Not when the breath of your batsmen faints

And the arms of your bowlers tire;

Not when the runs are acclaimed by guns,

And the ball is a ball of fire!

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But not when your King’s umpire!

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But what of another place?

Throw off your white for the khaki cloth,

And a worthier wicket face!

And then if you win, by the grace of God,

Return to the God of Grace!

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But what of that other place?

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But won when the world’s at rest:

Not when the score is a thousand score,

And a thousand score of the best;

Not when the heart of the world is sore

And the soul of the world distressed.

Battles are won in the playing fields –

But won when the world’s at rest!

L. Godfrey-Turner

First Week in the Army (As interpreted by some of the ‘Derby’ Jocks)

On Saturday I listed in the tartan boys brigade,

And said good-bye to all my pals, long hair, and lemonade.

’Twas Sunday night I kissed the girls I had to leave behind,

I only wept a pint or so – some more I’d sure to find.

On Monday I reported quite punctual at eight,

Got fitted out in khaki, and in kilts I felt first rate.

On Tuesday I encountered Sergeant Major’s fearsome glare,

And my knees they knocked like ninepins, they weren’t used to being bare.

On Wednesday I did squad drill and doubling by the hour,

Until everything inside me had turned completely sour.

On Thursday came a route march which I voted quite a treat,

Until the Friday morning when I had to dress my feet.

On Friday morn I stood in line to get my first week’s pay,

With Ripon Town so near at hand, it soon had gone astray.

On Saturday I had the time to dream of things I’d miss,

And cursed the blooming Kaiser who brought me into this.

Pro Patria

In bowler hats, top coats,

With woollen mufflers round their throats,

They played at war,

These man I watched to-day.

Weary with office work, pinched-faced, depressed,

About the field they marched and counter-marched,

Halting and marking time and all the rest –

Meanwhile the world went on its way

To see the football heroes play.

No music, no applause,

No splendour for them but a Cause

Hid deep at heart.

They drilled there soberly,

Their one half-holiday – the various show

Of theatres all resisted, home renounced;

The Picture Palace with its kindly glow

Forgotten now, that they may be

Worthy of England’s chivalry.

Winifred M. Letts

The Volunteers

Time: 7.30 p.m. Scene: A large disused barn, where forty members of the local Volunteer Training Corps are assembled for drill. They are mostly men well over thirty-eight years of age, but there is a sprinkling of lads of under nineteen, while a few are men of ‘military age’ who for some good and sufficient reason have been unable to join the army. They are all full of enthusiasm, but at present they possess neither uniform nor arms. Please note that in the following dialogue the Sergeant alone speaks aloud; the other person thinks, but gives no utterance to his words.

The Sergeant. Fall in! Fall in! Come smartly there, fall in

And recollect that when you’ve fallen in

You stand at ease, a ten-inch space between

Your feet – like this; your hands behind your back –

Your weight well poised on both feet, not on one.

Dress by the right, and let each rear rank man

Quick cover off his special front rank man.

That’s it; that’s good. Now when I say, ‘Squad, ’shun’,

Let every left heel swiftly join the right

Without a shuffling or a scraping sound

And let the angle of your two feet be

Just forty-five, the while you smartly drop

Hands to your sides, the fingers lightly bent,

Thumbs to the front, but every careful thumb

Kept well behind your trouser-seams. Squad, ’shun!

The Volunteer. Ha! Though I cannot find my trouser-seams,

I rather think I did that pretty well.

Thomas, my footman, who is on my left,

And Batts, the draper, drilling on my right,

And e’en the very Sergeant must have seen

The lithe precision of my rapid spring.

The Sergeant. When next I call you to attention, note

You need not slap your hands against your thighs.

It is not right to slap your thighs at all.

The Volunteer. He’s looking at me; I am half afraid

I used unnecessary violence

And slapped my thighs unduly. It is bad

That Thomas should have cause to grin at me

And lose his proper feeling of respect,

Being a flighty fellow at the best;

And Batts the draper must not ——

The Sergeant. Stand at ease!

The Volunteer. Aha! He wants to catch me, but he ——

The Sergeant. ’Shun!

The Volunteer. Bravo, myself! I did not slap them then.

I am indubitably getting on.

I wonder if the Germans do these things,

And what they sound like in the German tongue.

The Germans are a ——

The Sergeant. Sharply number off

From right to left, and do not jerk your heads.

[They number off.

The Volunteer. I’m six, an even number, and must do

The lion’s share in forming fours. What luck

For Batts, who’s five, and Thomas, who is seven.

They also serve, but only stand and wait,

While I behind the portly form of Batts

Insert myself and then slip out again

Clear to the front, observing at the word

The ordered sequence of my moving feet.

Come let me brace myself and dare ——

The Sergeant. Form fours!

The Volunteer. I cannot see the Sergeant; I’m obscured

Behind the acreage of Batts’s back.

Indeed it is a very noble back

And would protect me if we charged in fours

Against the Germans, but I rather think

We charge two deep, and therefore ——

The Sergeant. Form two deep!

The Volunteer. Thank Heaven I’m there, although I mixed my feet!

I am oblivious of the little things

That mark the due observance of a drill;

And Thomas sees my faults and grins again.

Let him grin on; my time will come once more

At dinner, when he hands the Brussels sprouts.

[The drill proceeds.

Now we’re in fours and marching like the wind.

This is more like it; this is what we need

To make us quit ourselves like regulars.

Left, right, left, right! The Sergeant gives it out

As if he meant it. Stepping out like this

We should breed terror in the German hordes

And drive them off. The Sergeant has a gleam

In either eye; I think he’s proud of us.

Or does he meditate some stratagem

To spoil our marching?

The Sergeant. On the left form squad!

The Volunteer. There! He has done it! He has ruined us!

I’m lost past hope, and Thomas, too, is lost;

And in a press of lost and tangled men

The great broad back of Batts heaves miles away.

[The Sergeant explains and the drill proceeds.

The Volunteer. No matter; we shall some day learn it all,

The standing difference ’twixt our left and right,

The bayonet exercise, the musketry,

And all the things a soldier does with ease.

I must remember it’s a long, long way

To Tipperary, but my heart’s ——

The Sergeant. Dismiss!

[A subaltern known as Colquhoun]

A subaltern known as Colquhoun,

Was considered, at home, a buffoquhoun,

He would not have been

If his parents had seen

Him drilling his Scottish Platolquhoun.

The Barrack Room

‘Lights out’ has sounded long ago, and midnight must be near;

The wind without roars winterly, the moon shines cold and clear;

Each window on the ceiling casts a phantom window white,

Which o’er the long, bare, narrow room reflects an eerie light.

It shines on thirty wooden beds, six inches from the floor,

Where thirty fellows for a while the officers ignore;

The silent bugle gives them peace, and now, until the day,

Their bodies rest; their dreams may fly who knows how far away?

For scarcely two were of one trade, whom war’s demands unite,

Who left the office, study, plough, for one great cause to fight;

The veteran hard beside the boy who never drilled before,

Each with what little soldiers need ranged near him on the floor.

There’s cheeky Jimmy, the recruit, who does the shuffle dance,

He left his fifteen bob a week to capture Huns in France;

There’s Algy Somebody, Esquire, neglecting an estate,

And all the pheasant shooting, too, to learn ‘deliberate’.

There’s ‘Whistlefield’, the farmer chiel – find soldiering hard? Not he!

Who’d dance sometimes till two a.m., and yoke his cart at three;

There’s poor old Bill, the banker’s clerk, who started work at ten,

And thought he’d learn to ride a horse instead of drive a pen!

For each the work, the grub, the luck, the hope and fear the same,

Who comes for motives all diverse to learn the grimmest game;

And surely when, or soon or late, the weary war is done,

He’ll be more quick to see a pal in every mother’s son!

W. Kersley Holmes

[Have you seen the Pals, sir?]

Have you seen the Pals, sir?

As they swing out through the town,

There’s Tom and Dick and Harry,

Smith, Robinson and Brown.

A credit to their Colonel, sir,

In their uniforms so neat,

I’m sure we all are proud of them,

As they march along the street.

And don’t they look so smart,

When they’re out upon parade,

Men from every rank of life,

And every kind of trade.

Married men and single men,

All ready to face the foe.

God guard the Pals of Accrington,

Wherever they may go.

Their officers are proud of them,

These lads in navy blue,

All workers not shirkers,

[ ]

All volunteers, not conscripts,

Beloved by all the girls,

Give them a cheer when they appear,

They’re worth it are the Pals.

C. Wolstencroft

The Call to Arms

There’s a woman sobs her heart out,

With her head against the door,

For the man that’s called to leave her,

– God have pity on the poor!

But it’s beat, drums, beat,

While the lads march down the street,

And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,

Keep your tears until they go.

There’s a crowd of little children

That march along and shout,

For it’s fine to play at soldiers

Now their fathers are called out.

So it’s beat, drums, beat;

But who’ll find them food to eat?

And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,

Ah! the children little know.

There’s a mother who stands watching

For the last look of her son,

A worn poor widow woman,

And he her only one.

But it’s beat, drums, beat,

Though God knows when we shall meet;

And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,

We must smile and cheer them so.

There’s a young girl who stands laughing,

For she thinks a war is grand,

And it’s fine to see the lads pass,

And it’s fine to hear the band.

So it’s beat, drums, beat,

To the fall of many feet;

And it’s blow, trumpets, blow,

God go with you where you go.

Winifred M. Letts

On Trek

Under a grey dawn, timidly breaking,

Through the little village the men are waking,

Easing their stiff limbs and rubbing their eyes;

From my misted window I watch the sun rise.

In the middle of the village a fountain stands,

Round it the men sit, washing their red hands.

Slowly the light grows, we call the roll over,

Bring the laggards stumbling from their warm cover,

Slowly the company gathers all together

And the men and the officer look shyly at the weather.

By the left, quick march! Off the column goes.

All through the village all the windows unclose:

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

From 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