Voices of Silence (17 page)

’Tis midnight, and above the hollow trench,

Seen through a gaunt wood’s battle-blasted trunks

And the stark rafters of a shattered grange,

The quiet sky hangs huge and thick with stars.

And through the vast gloom, murdering its peace,

Guns bellow and their shells rush swishing ere

They burst in death and thunder, or they fling

Wild jangling spirals round the screaming air.

Bullets whine by, and Maxims drub like drums,

And through the heaped confusion of all sounds

One great gun drives its single vibrant ‘Broum’.

And scarce five score of paces from the wall

Of piled sand-bags and barb-toothed nets of wire,

(So near and yet what thousand leagues away)

The unseen foe both adds and listens to

The selfsame discord, eyed by the same stars.

Deep darkness hides the desolated land,

Save where a sudden flare sails up and bursts

In whitest glare above the wilderness,

And for one instant lights with lurid pallor

The tense, packed faces in the black redoubt.

Written in fire trench above ‘Glencorse Wood’, Westhoeck, 11 April, 1915.

W.S.S. Lyon

Forget, and forgive them – you say:

War’s bitterness passes;

Wild rose wreaths the gun-pit to-day,

Where the trench was, young grass is;

Forget and forgive;

Let them live.

Forgive them – you say – and forget;

Since struggle is finished,

Shake hands, be at peace, square the debt,

Let old hates be diminished;

Abandon blockade:

Let them trade.

Fools! Shall the pard change his skin

Or cleanse one spot from it?

As the letcher returns to his sin

So the cur to its vomit.

Fools! Hath the Hun

Earned place in the sun?

You who accuse that I fan

War’s spark from hate’s ember,

Forgive and forget if you can;

But I, I remember

Men who faced death,

Choking for breath,

Four years back to a day –

Men who fought cleanly.

Killed, say you? Murdered,
I
say,

Murdered most meanly,

Poisoned! . . . And yet,

You can forget.

Gilbert Frankau

There was a little Turk, and Baghdad was his home,

There was a little Hun, and he lived in Bapaume,

Each said to the other, as they shivered with alarm,

‘To find another home wouldn’t do us any harm’.

Y Beach, the Scottish Borderer cried,

While panting up the steep hill side,

Y Beach!

To call this thing a beach is stiff,

It’s nothing but a bloody cliff:

Why Beach?

Jack Churchill

Halt! Thy tread is on heroes’ graves,

English lads lie sleeping below,

Just rough wooden crosses at their heads,

To let their comrades know.

They’d sleep no better for marble ones

Or monuments so grand,

They sleep in tranquil contentment

In that far off Turkish land.

I’ve often passed those little mounds,

Where the deadly bullets me-ow,

And the air was full of shrapnel,

’Tis called shrapnel gully now.

Whilst coming from the trenches,

And glancing over there,

I’ve often seen many a khaki form

Kneeling in silent prayer.

There’s many a loving mother,

Home in England dear,

Who is weeping and broken-hearted

O’er her loved son lonely there.

There’s many a true English girl

Stricken with sudden pain,

Mourning for her fallen sweetheart

Whom she’ll never see again.

They know not where he lies,

Nor how he fell.

That’s why I’m writing these few lines

The simple truth to tell.

Their graves are on Gallipoli,

Up in the very heights,

Above the first great landing place,

Scene of the first great fight.

Officers and men who fell

In that first fierce rush of fame,

They lie there side by side,

Their rank is now the same;

The city boy who left the pen,

The country boy the plough,

They trained together in England,

They sleep together now.

Sleep on! Fallen comrades,

You’ll ne’er be forgotten by

The boys who fought with you

And the boys who saw you die.

Your graves may be neglected

But fond memory will remain,

The story of your gallant charge

Will ease the grief and pain.

PS – That we know your kin are feeling,

Over there across the foam,

And we’ll tell the story of your fall,

Should we e’er reach Home Sweet Home.

J. Stewart

Rolling out to fight for England, singing songs across the sea;

Rolling North to fight for England, and to fight for you and me;

Fighting hard for France and England, where the storms of Death are hurled;

Fighting hard for Australasia and the honour of the World!

Fighting hard.

Fighting hard for Sunny Queensland – fighting for Bananaland,

Fighting hard for West Australia, and the mulga and the sand;

Fighting hard for Plain and Wool-Track, and the haze of western heat –

Fighting hard for South Australia and the bronze of Farrar’s Wheat!

Fighting hard.

Fighting hard for fair Victoria, and the mountain and the glen;

(And the Memory of Eureka – there were other tyrants then),

For the glorious Gippsland forests and the World’s great Singing Star –

For the irrigation channels where the cabbage gardens are –

Fighting hard.

Fighting hard for gale and earthquake, and the wind-swept ports between;

For the wild flax and manuka and the terraced hills of green.

Fighting hard for wooden homesteads, where the mighty kauris stand –

Fighting hard for fern and tussock! – Fighting hard for Maoriland!

Fighting hard.

Fighting hard for little Tassy, where the apple orchards grow;

(And the Northern Territory just to give the place a show),

Fighting hard for Home and Empire, while the Commonwealth prevails –

And, in spite of all her blunders, dying hard for New South Wales.

Dying hard.

Fighting for the Pride of Old Folk, and the people that you know;

And the girl you left behind you – (ah! the time is passing slow).

For the proud tears of a sister! come you back, or never come!

And the weary Elder Brother, looking after things at home –

Fighting hard!
You Lucky Devils!

Fighting hard.

Henry Lawson

There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks.

There’s a beach asleep and drear.

There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.

There are sunken trampled graves,

There’s a little rotting pier,

And winding paths that wind unceasingly.

There’s a torn and silent valley.

There’s a tiny rivulet

With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.

There are lines of buried bones.

There’s an unpaid waiting debt.

There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the south.

Leon Gellert

The Turk, he is an honest man,

And fights us fair and true,

But we annoy him all we can

As we are paid to do;

It’s very hard to
keep
him riled;

We find him strangely reconciled

And things that once just made him wild

He takes a liking to.

The bully tin no more insults,

The Libby gives no grief,

That used to soar from catapults

And biff the shocked Redif;

At first it gave him quite a turn,

The flight of that innocuous urn,

And then he spoiled the whole concern

By gobbling up the beef.

Yet when the cruder kind of wheeze

No longer irritates,

There’s one that never fails to tease

His friends across the Straits,

Where many a Moslem scans our slopes

(With now and then some cramp, one hopes,

From looking long through telescopes)

And simply hates and hates.

We go and bathe
, in shameless scores,

Beneath his baleful een,

Disrobe, unscathed, on sacred shores

And wallow in between;

Nor does a soldier there assume

His university costume,

And though it makes the Faithful fume

It makes the Faithless clean.

Ay, all our arts have some reward,

But this I think’s the peach,

For man can bear the invader’s horde,

That riots in his reach,

That raids his roost in armèd swarms

Or swamps his citadels with storms,

But not their nude insulting forms

A-bathing off his beach.

A.P. Herbert

It ain’t the work and it ain’t the Turk

That causes us to swear,

But it’s havin’ to fight at dark midnight

With the things in our underwear.

To-day there’s a score – to-morrow lots more

Of these rotters – it ain’t too nice

To sit skin-bare in keen morning air

Lookin’ for bloomin’ -——.

They’re black an’ grey an’ brindle an’ white,

An’ red an’ big an’ small,

They steeplechase around our knees –

We cannot sleep at all! –

They’re in our tunics, and in our shirts,

They take a power of beating,

So for goodness sake, if you’re sending us cake,

Send also a tin of Keating.

T.A. Saxon