Voices of Silence (46 page)
Authors: Vivien Noakes
* A General was also a general cook-housekeeper.
And Uncle Jack was Major too ——’
‘And what’, he asked me, ‘what were you?’
I stroked the little golden head;
‘I was a General,’ I said.
‘Come, and I’ll tell you something more
Of what I did in the Great War.’
At once the wonder-waiting eyes
Were opened in a mild surmise;
Smiling, I helped the little man
To mount my knee, and so began:
‘When first the War broke out, you see,
Grandma became a V.A.D.;
Your Aunties spent laborious days
In working at Y.M.C.A.’s;
The servants vanished. Cook was found
Doing the conscript baker’s round;
The housemaid, Jane, in shortened skirt
(She always was a brazen flirt),
Forsook her dusters, brooms and pails
To carry on with endless mails.
The parlourmaid became a vet.,
The tweeny a conductorette,
And both the others found their missions
In manufacturing munitions.
I was a City man. I knew
No useful trade. What could I do?
Your Granddad, boy, was not the sort
To yield to fate, he was a sport.
I set to work; I rose at six,
Summer and winter; chopped the sticks,
Kindled the fire, made early tea
For Aunties and the V.A.D.
I cooked the porridge, eggs and ham,
Set out the marmalade and jam,
And packed the workers off, well fed,
Well warmed, well brushed, well valeted.
I spent the morning in a rush
With dustpan, pail and scrubbing-brush;
Then with a string-bag sallied out
To net the cabbage or the sprout,
Or in the neighbouring butcher’s shop
Select the juiciest steak or chop.
So when the sun had sought the West,
And brought my toilers home to rest,
Savours more sweet than scent of roses
Greeted their eager-sniffing noses –
Savours of dishes most divine
Prepare and cooked by skill of mine.
I was a General. Now you know
How Generals helped to down the foe.’
The little chap slipped off my knee
And gazed in solemn awe at me,
Stood at attention, stiff and mute,
And gave his very best salute.
G.K. Menzies
Herr Hohenzollern
(The papers announce that the K
AISER
wishes in future to be known simply as a private gentleman.)
Says W
ILLIAM
: ‘Time has made of me
A sadder man and wiser;
Henceforth my object is to be
No more the German Kaiser,
But just a private gentleman.’
Ah,
WILLIAM
, vain endeavour,
‘Private?’ As private as you can.
But ‘gentleman?’ No, never.
In Memory of Kaiser Bill (The Butcher)
Who lost his Crown, November 9th 1918 Aged 59 years.
Oh! how we shall miss him
The villain was known so well.
He’s booked his seat for Early Doors
To the warmest place in Hell!
C. Clifford
Cousins German
Our family affairs seem rather bad.
There’s Cousin William: all the papers say
He’s to be hanged or somehow put away;
And Cousin Constantine they say’s as bad;
And now – these awful things in Petrograd!
Poor Cousin Nicholas has lost his job,
Kicked from his palace by a vulgar mob,
And everybody here seems strangely glad.
It makes one anxious: not so long ago
His people were as loyal as mine to me.
Now suddenly they turn and bid him go,
Saying they have no use for royalty.
The English once before grew sick of kings.
What if —— Enough of such unpleasant things.
W.N. Ewer
Armistice and the Price of War
Joy and sadness, the survivors, reconciliation and hatred, the return of the dead and the grief of the living, victory celebrations, the Peace Treaty, the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, war memorials, In Memoriam
As the news of the armistice was received, crowds gathered to celebrate the end of the fighting. For many it was too late; relief was overborne by the grief of their loss. While some urged reconciliation, others had suffered too much to be willing to forget. And the dead seemed ever present; it was said that if they were to march four abreast, twenty-four hours a day, it would take them more than a week to pass a single point.
It took a long time for demobilisation to be completed, and many returning soldiers found it impossible to settle. They were physically and mentally exhausted, and needed time to come to terms not only with what they had experienced, but also with the new life they faced in a nation in mourning for those who would never return. Many had gone straight from school to war, and had never known peace as adults. The promises of ‘a land fit for heroes’ soon rang hollow. Many at home had grown rich while others were fighting and dying for the freedom they now enjoyed, but there was high unemployment among ex-soldiers and a growing sense of disillusionment and resentment against those who seemed unable or unwilling to understand what they had suffered.
The Treaty of Versailles, signalling a formal end to the war, was signed on 28 June 1919. Three weeks later there was a Victory March through the streets of London. At 11 a.m. on the anniversary of the armistice, 11 November, all traffic was stilled and the people fell silent as they paused to remember. Work was already underway all over the country to build memorials – though many believed that such memorials were meaningless and an insult to those who had died. Sir Edwin Lutyens designed an empty tomb – a cenotaph – commemorating all the dead of the war. This was unveiled in Whitehall on 11 November 1920, on the same day that the body of an unknown warrior was buried in Westminster Abbey.
In the days immediately before, the bodies of six unknown soldiers had been exhumed from the battlefields of the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres and brought to an army hut close to Arras. Here they were laid side by side, covered with Union Flags. A Brigadier General and Lieutenant Colonel from the Directorate of War Grave Registration went alone into the chapel, where the General, with closed eyes, placed his outstretched hand on one of the bodies. This was then sealed in a coffin, which was taken at once to Boulogne and placed inside a second, oak coffin made from a tree felled at Hampton Court. On 10 November a company of French infantry kept guard over the body in the chapel of Boulogne Castle, before it was taken, under French escort, to board the British destroyer, HMS
Verdun
, for its passage across the Channel; the ship’s bell now hangs near the grave in the Abbey. With an escort of six other destroyers, it was met midway by HMS
Vendetta
, flying a white ensign at half-mast. As they came in to Dover, a field-marshal’s salute of nineteen guns was sounded from the ramparts of Dover Castle.
On the morning of 11 November, the coffin was placed on a gun-carriage of the Royal Horse Artillery and taken past huge, silent crowds to Whitehall, where the King unveiled the Cenotaph. From there the cortège travelled to the North Door of Westminster Abbey. Here twelve pall bearers – admirals, field-marshals, generals and an air marshal – carried the coffin past a guard of honour of 100 holders of the Victoria Cross to be interred just inside the West Door. The grave was filled with 100 sandbags of earth brought from the battlefields, and was then covered with a marble slab and surrounded by Flanders poppies. The inscription read in part: ‘Beneath this stone rests the body of a British warrior unknown by name or rank brought from France to lie among the most illustrious of the land . . . They buried him among the Kings.’ Since then, even the most formal State procession entering the Abbey must step to one side to avoid walking on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
The Armistice
In an Office, in Paris
The news came through over the telephone:
All the terms had been signed: the War was won:
And all the fighting and the agony,
And all the labour of the years were done.
One girl clicked sudden at her typewriter
And whispered, ‘Jerry’s safe’, and sat and stared:
One said, ‘It’s over, over, it’s the end:
The War is over: ended’: and a third,
‘I can’t remember life without the war’.
And one came in and said, ‘Look here, they say
We can all go at five to celebrate,
As long as two stay on, just for to-day’.
It was quiet in the big empty room
Among the typewriters and little piles
Of index cards: one said, ‘We’d better just
Finish the day’s reports and do the files’.
And said, ‘It’s awf’lly like
Recessional
,
Now that the tumult has all died away’.
The other said, ‘Thank God we saw it through;
I wonder what they’ll do at home to-day’.
And said, ‘You know it will be quiet to-night
Up at the Front: first time in all these years,
And no one will be killed there any more’,
And stopped, to hide her tears.
She said, ‘I’ve told you; he was killed in June’.
The other said, ‘My dear, I know; I know . . .
It’s over for me too . . . my Man was killed,
Wounded . . . and died . . . at Ypres . . . three years ago . . .
And he’s my Man, and I want him,’ she said,
And knew that peace could not give back her Dead.
May Cannan
Bacchanal
(November, 1918)
Into the twilight of Trafalgar Square
They pour from every quarter, banging drums
And tootling penny trumpets – to a blare
Of tin mouth-organs, while a sailor strums
A solitary banjo, lads and girls
Locked in embraces, in a wild dishevel
Of flags and streaming hair, with curdling skirls
Surge in a frenzied, reeling, panic revel.
Lads who so long have looked death in the face,
Girls who so long have tended death’s machines,
Released from the long terror shriek and prance:
And watching them, I see the outrageous dance,
The frantic torches and the tambourines
Tumultuous on the midnight hills of Thrace.
Wilfrid W. Gibson
For a Girl
Paris, November 11 1918
Go cheering down the boulevards
And shout and wave your flags,
Go dancing down the boulevards
In all your gladdest rags:
And raise your cheers and wave your flags
And kiss the passer-by,
But let me break my heart in peace
For all the best men die.
It was ‘When the War is over
Our dreams will all come true,
When the War is over
I’ll come back to you’;
And the War is over, over,
And they never can come true.
Go cheering down the boulevards
In all your brave array,
Go singing down the boulevards
To celebrate the day:
But for God’s sake let me stay at home
And break my heart and cry,
I’ve loved and worked, and I’ll be glad,
But all the best men die.
It was ‘When the War is over
Our dreams will all come true,
When the War is over
I’ll come back to you’;
And the War is over, over,
And they never can come true.
May Cannan
Tears
Silence o’erwhelms the melody of Night,
Then slowly drips on to the woods that sigh
For their past vivid vernal ecstasy.
The branches and the leaves let in the light
In patterns, woven ’gainst the paler sky
– Create mysterious Gothic tracery,
Between those high dark pillars, – that affright
Poor weary mortals who are wand’ring by.
* * *
Silence drips on the woods like sad faint rain,
Making each frail tired sigh, a sob of pain:
Each drop that falls, a hollow painted tear
Such as are shed by Pierrots, when they fear
Black clouds may crush their silver lord to death.
The world is waxen; and the wind’s least breath
Would make a hurricane of sound. The earth
Smells of the hoarded sunlight that gave birth
To the gold-glowing radiance of that leaf,
Which falls to bury from our sight its grief.
Osbert Sitwell
Victory
Who are ye that come with eyes red and weeping
In a long, long line and silent every one?
See overhead the flag of triumph sweeping –
‘We are the mothers, and each has lost a son.’
Cries of the crowd who greet their god of glory!
What of these who crouch there silent in the street? –
‘We are outraged women – ’tis a common story,
Quietly we lie beneath your armies’ feet.’