Voices of Silence (45 page)

The last march opened with the sudden blaze

Of howitzers upon the face of night,

Waving us onward ere the laggard light

Of morning broke down transport-crowded ways.

Next to the first was this the bitterest phase

Of our humiliation. Yet ’tis right

To chronicle some kindness, and requite

Our armed custodians with this word of praise.

By Fournes, by Haubourdin, the endless reel

Of marching men ran out its windings slow,

Till near day’s end, nigh broken on the wheel

Of hunger, and scarce longer fit to go,

Within the moated Citadel of Lille

The sharper pang gave place to deeper woe.

A.A. Bowman

O the terror of the Battle at this ending of the days!

O the thunder of the wings through the gloom!

O the thousand thousand companies that strew the sombre ways

To achieve this final doom!

Where the flames disrupt the night and the hell-fumes flee,

’Mid the darkness and the splitting of the skies,

Only your young white wistful face I see,

My brother, only your eyes!

Louis Golding

This is a last year’s map;

I know it all so well,

Stream and gully and trench and sap,

Hamel and all that hell;

See where the old lines wind;

It seems but yesterday

We left them many a league behind

And put the map away.

‘Never again’, we said,

‘Shall we sit in the Kentish Caves;

Never again will the night-mules tread

Over the Beaucourt graves;

They shall have Peace’, we dreamed –

‘Peace and the quiet sun’,

And over the hills the French folk streamed

To live in the land we won.

But the Bosch has Beaucourt now;

It is all as it used to be –

Airmen peppering Thiepval brow,

Death at the Danger Tree;

The tired men bring their tools

And dig in the old holes there;

The great shells spout in the Ancre pools,

And lights go up from Serre.

And the regiment came, they say,

Back to the selfsame land

And fought like men in the same old way

Where the cookers used to stand;

And I know not what they thought

As they passed the Puisieux road,

And over the ground where Freyberg fought

The tide of the grey men flowed.

But I think they did not grieve,

Though they left by the old Bosch line

Many a cross they loathed to leave,

Many a mate of mine;

I know that their eyes were brave,

I know that their lips were stern,

For these went back at the seventh wave,

But they wait for the tide to turn.

A.P. Herbert

I wonder are there roses still

In Ablain St Nazaire,

And crosses girt with daffodil

In that old garden there.

I wonder if the long grass waves

With wild-flowers just the same

Where Germans made their soldiers’ graves

Before the English came?

The English set those crosses straight

And kept the legends clean;

The English made the wicket-gate

And left the garden green;

And now who knows what regiments dwell

In Ablain St Nazaire?

But I would have them guard as well

The graves we guarded there.

So do not tear those fences up

And drive your wagons through,

Or trample rose and buttercup

As careless feet may do;

For I have friends where Germans tread

In graves across the line,

And as I do towards their dead

So may they do to mine.

And when at last the Prussians pass

Among those mounds and see

The reverent cornflowers crowd the grass

Because of you and me,

They’ll give perhaps one humble thought

To all the ‘English fools’

Who fought as never men have fought

But somehow kept the rules.

A.P. Herbert

When King Canute sat by the sea

To stop the waves – but shirked it,

He can’t have known – it seems to me –

The tide would turn at half-past three

Or else he might have worked it.

And so it was that old Canute,

His kingly honour pawning,

Allowed the waves to reach his boot

And then proclaimed in accents cute

He meant it as a warning.

But kings should fly their flag with pride,

Nor ever deign to strike it.

And if they watch the turn of tide

They’ll still be on the winning side

Although they may not like it.

So now for Socialists I yearn

Which really is a rum thing.

With democratic zeal I burn

(Until the tide again shall turn

And then I’ll give them something!)

Edward de Stein

At no distant date Britons, Allies, Colonials see: –

Final Victory on Land and Victory on Sea:

The Mesopotamia struggle will be at an end:

The Huns for
ever
vanquished and friend

Shakes hand with
friend
.

Work hard at Munitions and spare your wealth:

Be careful with food and take care of your health:

Let every Soldier, Sailor, and
Civilian
do his best,

A glorious time
is coming
, when all shall have rest.

F.H. French

When I come home, dear folk o’ mine,

We’ll drink a cup of olden wine;

And yet, however rich it be,

No wine will taste so good to me

As English air. How I shall thrill

To drink it in on Hampstead Hill

When I come home!

When I come home, and leave behind

Dark things I would not call to mind,

I’ll taste good ale and home-made bread,

And see white sheets and pillows spread.

And there is one who’ll softly creep

To kiss me, ere I fall asleep,

And tuck me ’neath the counterpane,

And I shall be a boy again,

When I come home!

When I come home from dark to light,

And tread the roadways long and white,

And tramp the lanes I tramped of yore,

And see the village greens once more,

The tranquil farms, the meadows free,

The friendly trees that nod to me,

And hear the lark beneath the sun,

’Twill be good pay for what I’ve done,

When I come home!

Leslie Coulson

Did you think (fools!) I hated men?

If so you thought, go think again.

And thought you that when I wrote ‘If

We Return’ that we’d return to sniff

Over the drinkers of ale, the smokers

Of ’baccy, the human vulgar jokers,

Best of what God and good green earth

Have made; that I meant
lemonade
,

And not a valiant great birth

Of Freedom, of men unafraid

Claiming a man’s just right to eat,

Drink, live and love, and breathe the sweet

Air of old England? Now as then

I stand for men – just men, the men

Who saved from violence that skin

Of yours: – God pardon them the sin!

Do I loathe drunkenness? I do, –

Just half as much as cant, and you!

F.W. Harvey

There’s an office back in London, and the dusty sunlight falls

With its swarms of dancing motes across the floor,

On the piles of books and papers and the drab distempered walls

And the bowlers on their pegs behind the door.

There’s an office-stool in London where a fellow used to sit

(But the chap that used to sit there’s oversea);

There’s a job they’re keeping open till that fellow’s done his bit,

And the one that job is waiting for is – Me!

And it may be black ingratitude, but oh, Good Lord, I know

I could never stick the office-life again,

With the coats and cuffs and collars and the long hours crawling slow

And the quick lunch and the same old morning train;

I have looked on Life and Death and seen the naked soul of man,

And the heart of things is other than it seemed,

And the world is somehow larger than the good old office plan,

And the ways of earth are wider than I dreamed.

There’s a chap in the Canadians – a clinking good chap too –

And he hails from back o’ nowhere in B.C.,

And he says it’s sure some country, and I wonder if it’s true,

And I rather fancy that’s the place for me.

There’s a trail I mean to follow and a camp I mean to share

Out beyond the survey, up in Cassiar,

For there’s something wakened in me that I never knew was there

And they’ll have to find some other chap to fill that vacant chair

When the boys come marching homeward from the War.

C. Fox-Smith

What will they do, when the Boys have got back?

What’s to become of the Wren and the Waac?

Will
they
carry on, while we tired heroes slack?

I wonder.

Ah! Shall I then marry the girl I adore?

(Who earns same as I did – perhaps a bit more)

Will one income keep two – perhaps three – maybe four?

God help us!

But what
shall
I do, when I’ve got my discharge?

When I’ve stepped off the deck of the cross-channel barge

And behave for a spell like a loonie at large?

I wonder.

Shall I lecture Girl Guides from my Field Service Book

Till they quake at my ‘Shun’ and they quail at my look?

No, I shan’t then.

But what
can
I do, when the war is ‘finee’?

Where is that job that is waiting for me?

Will she give up my stool when they make her ‘M.P.’?

I wonder.

Could
I slog at a desk? Could I stick on the land?

Shall I punch cows in Texas? or mine on the Rand?

Is there any old job that I think I could stand?

There isn’t.

Shall I lecture or write of the battles I’ve won –

How I got the C.B.? or is that overdone?

Or – would Dad like to pension his brave soldier son?

No, he wouldn’t.

Then what the – I’ve got it! I’ll be a Cook’s Guide

And thrill wond’ring tourists with rapture and pride

As I point out the spots where I fought and I died!

Well, why not?

In days of peace my fellow-men

Rightly regarded me as more like

A Bishop than a Major-Gen.,

And nothing since has made me warlike;

But when this age-long struggle ends

And I have seen the Allies dish up

The goose of
HINDENBURG
– oh, friends!

I shall out-bish the mildest Bishop.

When the War is over and the Kaiser’s out of print,

I’m going to buy some tortoises and watch the beggars sprint;

When the War is over and the sword at last we sheathe,

I’m going to keep a jelly-fish and listen to it breathe.

I never really longed for gore,

And any taste for red corpuscles

That lingered with me left before

The German troops had entered Brussels.

In early days the Colonel’s ‘Shun!’

Froze me; and, as the War grew older,

The noise of someone else’s gun

Left me considerably colder.

When the War is over and the battle has been won,

I’m going to buy a barnacle and take it for a run;

When the War is over and the German Fleet we sink,

I’m going to keep a silk-worm’s egg and listen to it think.

The Captains and the Kings depart –

It may be so, but not lieutenants;

Dawn after weary dawn I start

The never-ending round of penance;

One rock amid the welter stands

On which my gaze is fixed intently –

An after-life in quiet lands

Lived very lazily and gently.

When the War is over and we’ve done the Belgians proud,

I’m going to keep a chrysalis and read to it aloud;

When the War is over and we’ve finished up the show,

I’m going to plant a lemon-pip and listen to it grow.

Oh, I’m tired of the noise and the turmoil of battle,

And I’m even upset by the lowing of cattle,

And the clang of the bluebells is death to my liver,

And the roar of the dandelion gives me a shiver,

And a glacier, in movement, is much too exciting,

And I’m nervous, when standing on one, of alighting –

Give me Peace; that is all, that is all that I seek . . .

Say, starting on Saturday week.

A.A. Milne

Last night, as I was washing up,

And just had rinsed the final cup,

All of a sudden, ’midst the steam,

I fell asleep and dreamed a dream.

I saw myself an old, old man,

Nearing the end of mortal span,

Bent, bald and toothless, lean and spare,

Hunched in an ancient beehive chair.

Before me stood a little lad

Alive with questions. ‘Please, Granddad,

Did Daddy fight, and Uncle Joe,

In the Great War of long ago?’

I nodded as I made reply:

‘Your Dad was in the H.L.I.,

And Uncle Joseph sailed to sea,

Commander of a T.B.D.,