Voices of Silence (41 page)

I scarce can think ’twas yesterday

Those laughing lads could laugh and sing,

For now their dear boy lips are grey,

And Devon has made her offering.

Their song is dead, but that sweet strain

Still gathering charms unknown before,

Will make a music in my brain,

And haunt my heart for evermore.

Raymond Heywood

Those whom I’ve known, admired, ardently friended

Lie silent there wrapp’d in a soldier’s shroud;

Death broke their dreams, their aspirations ended,

These sanguine youth, noble, brave and proud.

Slowly they bear them ’neath the dim star light

Unto their rest – the soldiers’ cemetery:

The chaplain chants a low, brief litany;

The nightingale flings rapture on the night.

Back to their Mother Earth this night return

Unnumbered youth along the far-flung line;

But ’tis for these my eyes with feeling burn,

That Memory doth erect a fadeless shrine –

For these I’ve known, admired, ardently friended

Stood by when Death their love, their youth swift ended.

John W. Streets

’Tis strange to look on a man that is dead

As he lies in the shell-swept hell,

And to think that the poor black battered corpse

Once lived like you and was well.

’Tis stranger far when you come to think

That
you
may be soon like him . . .

And it’s Fear that tugs at your trembling soul,

A Fear that is weird and grim!

Hamish Mann

Thou thing –

Slimy and crawling

Oozing along.

Not brown,

As men’s eyes see

But reddish green,

And moist.

Death meaning nought

To thee.

Who livest

And breedest

During many aeons

Billions more yellow horrors

Like thyself.

Oh, Hell!

Have you seen men come from the Line,

Tottering, doddering, as if bad wine

Had drugged their very souls;

Their garments rent with holes

And caked with mud

And streaked with blood

Of others, or their own;

Haggard, weary-limbed and chilled to the bone,

Trudging aimless, hopeless, on

With listless eyes and faces drawn

Taut with woe?

Have you seen them aimless go

Bowed down with muddy pack

And muddy rifle slung on back,

And soaking overcoat,

Staring on with eyes that note

Nothing but the mire

Quenched of every fire?

Have you seen men when they come

From shell-holes filled with scum

Of mud and blood and flesh,

Where there’s nothing fresh

Like grass, or trees, or flowers,

And the numbing year-like hours

Lag on – drag on,

And the hopeless dawn

Brings naught but death, and rain –

The rain a fiend of pain

That scourges without end,

And Death, a smiling friend?

Have you seen men when they come from hell?

If not, – ah, well

Speak not with easy eloquence

That seems like sense

Of ‘War and its Necessity’!

And do not rant, I pray,

On ‘War’s Magnificent Nobility’!

If you’ve seen men come from the Line

You’ll know it’s Peace that is divine!

If you’ve not seen the things I’ve sung –

Let silence bind your tongue,

But, make all wars to cease,

And work, and work for Everlasting peace!

R. Watson Kerr

So they are satisfied with our Brigade,

And it remains to parcel out the bays!

And we shall have the usual Thanks Parade,

The beaming General, and the soapy praise.

You will come up in your capacious car

To find your heroes sulking in the rain,

To tell us how magnificent we are,

And how you hope we’ll do the same again.

And we, who knew your old abusive tongue,

Who heard you hector us a week before,

We who have bled to boost you up a rung –

A K.C.B. perhaps, perhaps a Corps —;

We who must mourn those spaces in the Mess,

And somehow fill the hollows in the heart,

We do not want your Sermon on Success,

Your greasy benisons on Being Smart.

We only want to take our wounds away

To some shy village where the tumult ends,

And drowsing in the sunshine many a day,

Forget our aches, forget that we had friends.

Weary we are of blood and noise and pain;

This was a week we shall not soon forget;

And if, indeed, we have to fight again,

We little wish to think about it yet.

We have done well; we like to hear it said.

Say it, and then, for God’s sake, say no more.

Fight, if you must, fresh battles far ahead,

But keep them dark behind your château door!

A.P. Herbert

O ye statesmen debonair,

With the partings in your hair;

Statesmen, ye who do your bit

In the arm-chairs where you sit;

You with top-hats on your head

Even when you lie in bed;

O superbly happy, ye,

Traders in Humanity;

Every time you smile, sweet friends,

A moan goes up, a plague descends.

Every time you show your teeth,

A hundred swords desert the sheath.

Every time you pare your nails,

The manhood of a city fails.

Every time you dip your pen,

You slaughter ten platoons of men.

For every glass of port you hold

Blood is spilt ten thousandfold . . .

O ye statesmen debonair,

With the partings in your hair;

O ye statesmen pink and white,

Sleep like little lambs to-night.

Louis Golding

In the market-place they have made

A dolorous new trade.

Now you will see in the fierce naphtha-light,

Piled hideously to sight,

Dead limbs of men bronzed in the over-seas,

Bomb-wrenched from elbows and knees;

Torn feet, that would, unwearied by harsh loads,

Have tramped steep moorlands roads;

Torn hands that would have moulded exquisitely

Rare things for God to see.

And there are eyes there – blue like blue doves’ wings,

Black like the Libyan kings,

Grey as before-dawn rivers, willow-stirred,

Brown as a singing-bird;

But all stare from the dark into the dark,

Reproachful, tense, and stark,

Eyes heaped on trays and in broad baskets there,

Feet, hands, and ropes of hair.

In the market-places . . . and women buy . . .

. . . Naphtha glares . . . hawkers cry . . .

Fat men rub hands . . .

O God, O just God, send

Plague, lightnings . . .

Make an end!

Louis Golding

Ah! when it rains all day

And the sky is a mist

That creeps by chillily

Where sun once kissed,

Like death pale shroud,

My soul cries out aloud

In hopeless misery.

I cannot read nor write

A line for gloom,

My life lags, drenched of light

To cheer its tomb;

Chill and wet,

Comfortless I fret

In hopeless night!

And naught to hear but rain

Battering the ground!

O numbing pain!

O maddening sound!

Drowned in sky

Trees drip, drip, and sigh

And drip, drip, again.

R. Watson Kerr

On stark and tortured wire

Where refuse of war lies

Tangled in mire –

When God is flinging

Rain down the skies –

Sit three little birds, singing.

R. Watson Kerr

Watching the rain dry up,

Watching the rain dry up,

We stick and slip in Flanders mud

Till camouflaged just like a spud,

Watching the rain dry up.

Plastered from hoof to crown;

And when we’ve watched all the rain dry up,

We watch all the rain come down.

This is the song of the mud,

The pale yellow glistening mud that covers the hills like satin;

The grey gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys;

The frothing, squirting, spurting, liquid mud that gurgles along the road beds;

The thick elastic mud that is kneaded and pounded and squeezed under the hoofs of the horses;

The invincible, inexhaustible mud of the war zone.

This is the song of the mud, the uniform of the poilu.

His coat is of mud, his great dragging flapping coat, that is too big for him and too heavy;

His coat that once was blue and now is grey and stiff with the mud that cakes to it.

This is the mud that clothes him.

His trousers and boots are of mud,

And his skin is of mud;

And there is mud in his beard.

His head is crowned with a helmet of mud.

He wears it well.

He wears it as a king wears the ermine that bores him.

He has set a new style in clothing;

He has introduced the chic of mud.

This is the song of the mud that wriggles its way into battle.

The impertinent, the intrusive, the ubiquitous, the unwelcome,

The slimy inveterate nuisance,

That fills the trenches,

That mixes in with the food of the soldiers,

That spoils the working of motors and crawls into their secret parts,

That spreads itself over the guns,

That sucks the guns down and holds them fast in its slimy voluminous lips,

That has no respect for destruction and muzzles the bursting of shells;

And slowly, softly, easily,

Soaks up the fire, the noise; soaks up the energy and the courage;

Soaks up the power of armies;

Soaks up the battle.

Just soaks it up and thus stops it.

This is the hymn of mud – the obscene, the filthy, the putrid,

The vast liquid grave of our armies.

It has drowned our men.

Its monstrous distended belly reeks with the undigested dead.

Our men have gone into it, sinking slowly, and struggling and slowly disappearing.

Our fine men, our brave, strong, young men;

Our glowing red, shouting, brawny men.

Slowly, inch by inch, they have gone down into it,

Into its darkness, its thickness, its silence.

Slowly, irresistibly, it drew them down, sucked them down,

And they were drowned in thick, bitter, heaving mud.

Now it hides them, Oh, so many of them!

Under its smooth glistening surface it is hiding them blandly.

There is not a trace of them.

There is no mark where they went down.

The mute enormous mouth of the mud has closed over them.

This is the song of the mud,

The beautiful glistening golden mud that covers the hills like satin;

The mysterious gleaming silvery mud that is spread like enamel over the valleys.

Mud, the disguise of the war zone;

Mud, the mantle of battles;

Mud, the smooth fluid grave of our soldiers:

This is the song of the mud.

Mary Borden

Mad

Neck-deep in mud,

He mowed and raved –

He who had braved

The field of blood –

And as a lad

Just out of school

Yelled: ‘April fool!’

And laughed like mad.

Wilfred W. Gibson

Wire over’ead!

Mud underfoot:

Gawd, I’m into a hole,

Pullin’ the sole

Right off’en me boot –

I wish I was dead!

Wire over’ead –

(My load weighs like lead)

The night’s black as ’ell;

I’m into a ditch –

Ye son of a bitch!

’Twas here Nelson fell –

Bang! There goes a shell –

I wish I was dead!

Wire over’ead –

Look out for the bridge!

Hear ole Sergeant grunt,

‘Halt! you there in front!

They’ve lost touch at the ridge’ –

I wish
I
was dead!

Wire over’ead!

Wire underfoot! –

There’s Tim come to grief –

Christ! – he’s dumping the beef.

Pull ’im out by the root:

I wish I was dead –

(To home blokes are in bed) –

Wish Gawd I was dead!

(Stumbles and grumbles on.)

Joseph Lee

In a place not far from Ypres,

Just a little further back,

By the name of Warrington Road, sir,

Better known as the Wooden Track.

If you went through the whole of Belgium,

Or along to the Somme and back,

There is no place so full of terror

As that awful Wooden Track.

’Tis vivid in our memory,

As here we try to tell,

There is no place to compare it

Not even that place called Hell.

So oft is it a driver’s duty

Of the columns further back

To carry ammunition

Along that fatal track.

And when they get the order

To be ready sharp at nine,

You will see the drivers mounted

And ready for the line.