Notepad

WWI -- the Great War -- was also a literary war, and I have always been fascinated by the poetry which has come from it. Flanders Field has a special place in many people's hearts, as one of the most well known and also as a Canadian tradition on November 11, Remembrance Day (Joh McCrae was a Canadian army physician), but there are many other great poems and stories -- including, in fact, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Here are a couple famous WWI poems. Included also is another war poem, one from another era and another view of war: Alfred Lord Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade (text found here) written in 1854 to memorialize what today we recognize as the idiocy and hubris of the battle of Balaclava (October 25, 1854). While the courage and valour of soldiers can never be questioned, I challenge anyone to romanticize the sheer lunacy of the charge of the light brigade after reading The Reason Why by Cecil Woodham Smith. There was nothing honourable or good about the charge of the light brigade, only hubris and personal pride and ambition gone horribly, horribly awry. "When can their glory fade?" Thank God that today they have faded at least a little, as the poetry of Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon and Ernest Hemingway and so many others concurs.

Ask Rudyard Kipling about the horrors of war. The diehard imperialist, and author of the famous poem The White Man's Burden (text found here), believing in the projected brevity and stated purpose of W.W.I, used his influence to secure a commission in the Irish Guards for his only son, Jack, who was both medically unfit and underage. Wounded in combat, Jack was listed missing in action and confirmed dead two years later. By that time, Kipling's grandiose notions about patriotism and valor were replaced by a quote of bitter self-recrimination which has echoed through this century of war and horror:

"If any ask us why we died; Tell them 'Because our fathers lied.'"
- a haunted Rudyard Kipling wrote

WWI was unique in that it was a poet's war, and from that war came haunting prose which for the first time highlighted the horrors and futility of war.

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Flanders Field
by John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

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In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe;
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

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After John McCrae probably the most famous WWI poet was Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon (1886-1967). Sassoon was one of the most controversial WWI poets, and when The Hero first appeared in print in 1917 many people were shocked and many fellow officers condemned him. Even today Sasson is still an object of discussion. Some still find it offensive that he came back from the front and said "I can't lead men to their death any more," arguing that it implies a monopoly of virtue -- as if other officers liked sending men to their deaths, simply because they acquiesced to their duties. On the other hand every society needs men who dare to stand up against common confictions, as Sassoon did.

On a side note, I personally enjoy the irony that his name, when the letters are rearranged, forms the anagram "a redress is on a foreign soil."

These three poems are three of his most famous. The first is The Hero, which he made clear does not refer to anyone he had known, though "it is pathetically true. And of course the average Englishman will hate it." The second is Suicide in the Trenches. And the third is New Menin Gate, written after he attended the dedication of the new Menin Gate in Ypres, Flanders by the new Belgian king Albert on July 24, 1927. The memorial was built to hold the names of all the allied soldiers who died nearby, but whose remains could not be identified or who are still missing. The massive memorial was too small, however, and while 54,896 names are inscribed upon it, 34,984 others are inscribed on a wall a few miles away at the Tyne Cot war cemetary. Sassoon wrote this heartrending poem the next day, in his hotel room in Brussels, but it was never published until after his death because he never dared to publish it during his life.

The Hero
by Siegried Lorraine Sassoon (1917)

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'Jack fell as he'd have wished,' the mother said,
And folded up the letter that she'd read.
'The Colonel writes so nicely.' Something broke
In the tired voice that quivered to a choke.
She half looked up. 'We mothers are so proud
Of our dead soldiers.' Then her face was bowed.

Quietly the Brother Officer went out.
He'd told the poor old dear some gallant lies
That she would nourish all her days, no doubt
For while he coughed and mumbled, her weak eyes
Had shone with gentle triumph, brimmed with joy,
Because he'd been so brave, her glorious boy.

He thought how 'Jack', cold-footed, useless swine,
Had panicked down the trench that night the mine
Went up at Wicked Corner; how he'd tried
To get sent home, and how, at last, he died,
Blown to small bits. And no one seemed to care
Except that lonely woman with white hair.

Suicide in the Trenches
by Siegried Lorraine Sassoon (1918)

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I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

On Passing the New Menin Gate
by Siegried Lorraine Sassoon (1927)

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Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
the unheroic dead who fed the guns ?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
'Their name liveth for ever', the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
as these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

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The other famous WWI author is, of course, Ernest Hemingway with his famous book A Farewell to Arms. Lesser known, however, are his poems, which include this one:

To Good Guys Dead
by Ernest Hemingway (1918)

1 5	They sucked us in; King and country, Christ Almighty And the rest. Patriotism, Democracy, Honor - Words and phrases, They either bitched or killed us.

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Sixteen years after WWI, in 1934, Bernard Newman and Harold Arpthorp, two British veterans, together wrote 'The Road to La Bassée' describing their return to one of the former battlefields in France. Maybe it was written as a sort of reply-poem to the 1915 soldiers song on the Bassée road, which also describes the landscape and the civilian life. Newman and Arpthorp must have known that song. They problably even sang it.

The Road to La Bassée
by Bernard Newman and Harold Arpthorp

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I went across to France again, and walked about the line,
The trenches have been all filled in - the country's looking fine.
The folks gave me a welcome, and lots to eat and drink,
Saying, 'Allo, Tommee, back again? 'Ow do you do? In ze pink?'
And then I walked about again, and mooched about the line;
You'd never think there'd been a war, the country's looking fine.
But the one thing that amazed me most shocked me, I should say
- There's buses running now from Bethune to La Bassée!

I sat at Shrapnel Corner and I tried to take it in,
It all seemed much too quiet, I missed the war-time din.
I felt inclined to bob down quick - Jerry sniper in that trench!
A minnie coming over! God, what a hellish stench!
Then I pulled myself together, and walked on to La Folette -
And the cows were calmly grazing on the front line parapet.
And the kids were playing marbles by the old Estaminet -
Fancy kiddies playing marbles on the road to La Bassée!

You'd never think there'd been a war, the country's looking fine -
I had a job in places picking out the old front line.
You'd never think there'd been a war - ah, yet you would, I know,
You can't forget those rows of headstones every mile or so.
But down by Tunnel Trench I saw a sight that made me start,
For there, at Tourbieres crossroads - a gaudy ice-cream cart!
It was hot, and I was dusty, but somehow I couldn't stay -
Ices didn't seem quite decent on the road to La Bassée.

Some of the sights seemed more than strange as I kept marching on.
The Somme's a blooming garden, and there are roses in Peronne.
The sight of dear old Arras almost made me give three cheers;
And there's kiddies now in Plugstreet, and mamselles in Armentiers.
But nothing that I saw out there so seemed to beat the band
As those buses running smoothly over what was No Man's Land.
You'd just as soon expect them from the Bank to Mandalay
As to see those buses running from Bethune to La Bassée.

Then I got into a bus myself, and rode for all the way,
Yes, I rode inside a bus from Bethune to La Bassée.
Through Beuvry and through Annequin, and then by Cambrin Tower -
The journey used to take four years, but now it's half an hour.
Four years to half an hour - the best speedup I've met.
Four years? Aye, longer still for some - they haven't got there yet.
Then up came the conductor chap, 'Vos billets s'il vous plait.'
Fancy asking for your tickets on the road to La Bassée.

And I wondered what they'd think of it - those mates of mine who died -
They never got to La Bassée, though God knows how they tried.
I thought back to the moments when their number came around,
And now those buses rattling over sacred, holy ground,
Yes, I wondered what they'd think of it, those mates of mine who died.
Of those buses rattling over the old pave close beside.
'Carry on! That's why we died!' I could almost hear them say,
To keep those buses always running from Bethune to La Bassée!'

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The Quiet
by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1917

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I could not understand the sudden quiet -
The sudden darkness - in the crash of fight,
The din and glare of day quenched in a twinkling
In utter starless night.

I lay an age and idly gazed at nothing,
Half-puzzled that I could not lift my head;
And then I knew somehow that I was lying
Among the other dead.

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The Charge Of The Light Brigade
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)