Voices of Silence (39 page)
Authors: Vivien Noakes
Back once more to the boots, gum, thigh,
In a pulverised trench where the mud’s knee-high;
To the duck-board slide on a cold wet night,
When you pray for a star-shell to give you light;
When your clothes are wet, and the rum jar’s dry,
Then you want all your cheeriness, P.B.I.
They take what may come with a grouse just skin-deep,
In a rat-worried dug-out on mud try to sleep;
Do you wonder they make all the atmosphere hum,
When some arm-chair old lunatic grudges them rum;
And they read in the papers that ‘James So-and-Such
Thinks that our soldiers are drinking too much’.
Leave the Tommy alone Mr James So-and-Such.
There are vices much nearer home waiting your touch;
Take yourself now for instance, examine and see
If your own priggish virtue is all it should be;
Give those of a larger life chance to enjoy
A charity wider than that you employ.
Don’t let Tommy’s vices shatter your sleep,
When you write to the ‘Times’ stick to ‘Little Bo-Peep’,
As a subject she’s really much more in your line
Than licentious soldiery, women, and wine.
So here’s to the lads who can live and can die,
Backbone of the Empire, the old P.B.I.
Arma Virumque Cano
No Prayers of Peace for me; no maiden’s sigh.
Give me the Chants of War, the Viking’s Song;
Battle for me; nor care I for how long
This war goes on. Tell me, where bullets fly;
Where noble men and brave may bleed and die;
Where skilful parry foils the sword-thrust strong.
Such are the tales I love. (I may be wrong –
A warrior, and no carpet knight am I.)
The D.S.O., the M.C. grace my breast;
My brow is bound with laurels and with lace;
I love this war. Perhaps you think that that
Is strange. Well I am different from the rest
Of you poor blighters. I live at the Base,
And use the Brain inside my nice, red, hat.
To James
(On his appointment to the Staff.)
It does not make me laugh and whoop
(Though certainly the choice
is
droll)
To hear that you are asked to stoop
To join that great malignant group;
I hasten to condole.
Not for your frame I fear – ah, no,
For, far as creature comforts go,
They lack but little here below:
I shudder for your soul.
I know that when the seas are rude
And people’s parcels long delayed,
No hint of trouble shall intrude
Where your select and frequent food
Is delicately laid;
That, though the sweet Imbrosial hens
Abruptly perish in their pens,
Your
eggs will not, like other men’s,
Be absent on parade.
I know the neighbourhood is rich
In sandbagged shelters, cutely packed,
Yet if there be some special niche,
The perfect kind of cranny which
We hitherto have lacked,
Where man may shun the shells of man
(And also Asiatic Anne),
’Twill be but part of some huge plan
For keeping you intact.
I fear for you no foeman’s knife,
But fear to see on that fresh face
The lofty look of one whose life
Is quite remote from earthly strife
(Though that will be the case);
I dread the perilous abyss
Of being
sui generis
,
And looking with some prejudice
On any other race.
I fear, yet hope, that after all,
If e’er you tread, supremely vast,
The lowly drain wherein we crawl,
You’ll have the kindness to recall
Some fragment of the past;
For some wee while confess the sin
Of merely earthly origin,
And not refuse a genial grin
For fear of losing caste.
A.P. Herbert
The Sacred Documents
Major Augustus Edward Grace
Was D.A.A.G. Corps,
And kept the Sacred Documents
In pigeon-holes galore,
And knew that on his shoulders lay
The burden of the war.
No officer on all the Staff
Was diligent as he;
’Twas but a little fault he had
That caused the tragedy.
A trifle absent-minded Grace
Was sometimes apt to be.
One morning – I remember well,
The day was wild and wet –
(The horror of that dreadful time!
It makes me tremble yet) –
With ‘A oblique stroke four five two’
Grace lit his cigarette!
That evening from the Army came
A note for Major Grace;
‘Ref. A oblique stroke four five two,
Line three, delete “his face”.’
But ‘A oblique stroke four five two’
Had vanished into space!
We sought the Sacred Document
Through half a hundred files,
At first with natural confidence
And deprecating smiles,
Like cats that for the first time tread
The dim nocturnal tiles.
But when we sought, and sought in vain,
Slowly a nameless dread
Began to seize us, and the hairs
Stood up upon each head
As in each other’s startled eyes
The dreadful thought we read.
The Sacred Document was lost!
We heard the furies mock,
The D.A.A. and Q.M.G.
In secret sold his stock.
And when the Corps Commander knew
He fainted with the shock.
That night, when in our beds we lay,
We saw – as in a trance –
A Britain humbled to the dust,
A dominated France.
But ah! for human vanity
Beneath the light of chance!
A bomb was dropped at dawn and left
The offices a wreck,
And of the Sacred Documents
Was found no single speck.
And yet – and Yet – and
YET
the war
Went on without a check!
Edward de Stein
Headquarters
A league and a league from the trenches – from the traversed maze of the lines,
Where daylong the sniper watches and daylong the bullet whines,
And the cratered earth is in travail with mines and with countermines –
Here, where haply some woman dreamed, (are those her roses that bloom
In the garden beyond the windows of my littered working-room?)
We have decked the map for our masters as a bride is decked for the groom.
Fair, on each lettered numbered square – cross-road and mound and wire,
Loophole, redoubt and emplacement – lie the targets their mouths desire;
Gay with purples and browns and blues, have we traced them their arcs of fire.
And ever the type-keys clatter; and ever our keen wires bring
Word from the watchers a-crouch below, word from the watchers a-wing;
And ever we hear the distant growl of our hid guns thundering.
Hear it hardly, and turn again to our maps, where the trench-lines crawl,
Red on the gray and each with a sign for the ranging shrapnel’s fall –
Snakes that our masters shall scotch at dawn, as is written here on the wall.
For the weeks of our waiting draw to a close . . . There is scarcely a leaf astir
In the garden beyond my windows, where the twilight shadows blur
The blaze of some woman’s roses . . .
‘Bombardment orders, sir.’
Gilbert Frankau
A Staff Captain’s Lament
’Twas near the close of ‘Z’ day
When a lull fell o’er the fight,
The strain on the Staff had been great all day
But was greater still that night.
‘Beer Emma’ sat wearily marking
Fresh colours on his map,
While the G.O.C. and Signals
Took a surreptitious nap.
The whole Red Line was captured,
And most of the Green Line too,
And the points where the Boche still lingered
Had now to be marked in Blue.
Fresh lines of Black and Yellow
Now started to appear,
Shewing still further objectives
In the open ground in rear.
A certain grim elation
‘Beer Emma’ could scarce restrain,
For the Brigade had been advancing
And would soon advance again.
First; to clear the blue bit
He’d need a Tank or two,
With a score or so of bombers
To see the thing go through.
Then on to the new objectives
One regiment for each,
With the others to bring assistance
At the points which the first can’t reach.
The ‘Esses C’ worked sadly,
No gleam of elation here,
For the work of a mere Staff Captain –
Well, it isn’t all skittles and beer.
All his water’s expended,
None of his rations remain,
And the dumps he’s already moved forward
Will have to move forward again.
It’s far enough to the Red Line;
It’s further still to the Green,
And he’s jolly well
got
to dump there
Though there’s no sort of road between.
The bombers will need ammunition,
The throats of the men will be dry,
There are tracks where a mule
can’t
be taken,
Tho’ God knows the fellows will try.
And mixed with the dump calculations
In the wretched Staff Captain’s head,
There’s the daily return of the wounded,
The horrible toll of the dead.
None of the Soldier’s elation;
Small share of the Victor’s pride;
Just a butt for ‘Q’ of Division:
You may not believe it – I’ve tried.
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
The third Battle of Ypres, known as the Battle of Passchendaele, was planned for the summer of 1917 with the objective of breaking through the German lines north-east of Ypres. Haig believed that the heavy casualties suffered by the enemy at Verdun and on the Somme had weakened the German willingness to fight, and that with careful planning a new attack would overwhelm them and bring an end to the years of stalemate on the Western Front.
One thing that Haig could not plan was the weather. The heavy preliminary bombardment, which could again be heard in southern England, destroyed the drainage system that had redeemed the flat, waterlogged countryside round Ypres, and then – the day after the British went over the top on 31 July – the rain started to fall. The attacking forces faced a growing quagmire and strong enemy defences. The Germans had built small concrete redoubts, nicknamed by the Tyneside soldiers ‘Tyne cots’ since they reminded them of cottages at home: some of these have survived to this day and give their name to Tyne Cot, the largest British cemetery on the Western Front.
The battle, which lasted for three months, was fought in some of the worst conditions of the war. As the front line inched its way forward, wooden tracks and duckboards were laid across the morass, but one slip or false step meant that men and horses could drown in liquid mud. Going in and out of the line, or bringing up supplies, was carried out under heavy shellfire, for the German guns had the roads and tracks ranged precisely. The exposed road leading out of Ypres towards Menin, along which men and horses must travel, acquired a fearful reputation. At the beginning of November the battle came to an end with an advance of 5 miles and the capture of the village of Passchendaele.
By this stage in the war, German aircraft were bombing the rest areas behind the lines. There seemed nowhere to escape. The French armies mutinied, ground down by the losses at Verdun, but British morale held.
The Sound of Flanders Guns
Let me go far away, so far I shall not hear
The deep, insistent throbbing of the guns; they beat
For ever day and night – my tired heart and brain
Can find no rest, but beat and throb in unison.
A long, long journey, punctured through and through
With restless darts of pain, for ever loud above
The din of traffic and the busy travellers’ talk,
I hear them muttering still, on and for ever on;
Oh, shall I never reach the Haven where I would be.
What could be fairer than this little village, set
Between its rocky sentinels, that watching stand
On either side, their bases lapped by seas of emerald,
Capped by great rolling hills, whose sides appear
Cushioned in velvet, for some giant king’s repose?
Thinking, Here must be Peace, I raise my weary eyes
And scan the far horizon; there I see appear
A long grey shape, so silent, grim and stern:
Our sea-hounds prowl, guarding our English homes.
A goodly sight, indeed, but still it seems to me
I hear the echoes of the Flanders guns again.
I hear them in the plash of wave, the sea-birds’ call,
And in the little church upon the windy hill,
Above the children’s voices, shrilling loud and clear,
Above the parson’s voice, they sound so in my ear
That ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men’ appears
But as some faint, almost forgotten dream.
And some will hear them to their dying hour,
Grim legacy of days of waiting pain; will hear
Above the clarion voice of Victory, and the happy talk
Of re-united friends, the gladsome laugh of children
And hum of peaceful cities, still that baleful sound
Will be the under-current of their daily lives,
One tarnished thread, that, running through and through,
Will soil life’s fairest fabric. We shall sometimes feel
Deep in our hearts a silent stab of pain, and hear
The low deep throbbing of the Flanders guns again.
Mary Beazley