Voices of Silence (47 page)

Red flags of conquest, banners great and golden! –

Who are these silent ones upon our track?

‘We in our thousands, perished unbeholden,

We are the women: pray you, look not back.’

Margaret Sackville

‘For we brought nothing into this world,

And it is certain that we can carry nothing out.’

‘They bring their love with them.’ Old saying.

When first you came

You were so weak, so helpless, and so bare

In this great world

You had so small a share,

But you brought Love with you, and all our fears

Have changed to hopes through the long, happy years.

And now you go

Back to th’ Eternal Love Who sent you here,

You take with you

All that we hold most dear,

Your love for us – now grown so large a thing,

And ours for you, past all imagining.

A little while

Without your living presence we must stay –

The love you brought

Death cannot take away,

Still living – still our own, Love cannot die!

The proof, the pledge of Immortality!

Last night, within our little town,

The Dead came marching through;

In a long line, like living men,

Just as they used to do.

Only, so long a line it seemed

You’d think the Judgment Day

Had dawned, to see them slowly pass,

With faces turned one way.

They walked no longer foe and foe

But brother bound to brother;

Poor men, common men they walked

Friendly to one another.

Just as in life they might have done

Who stabbed and slew instead . . .

So quietly and evenly they walked

These million gentle dead.

Margaret Sackville

Will ye forget now all is done,

And men may bear to feel the sun,

Nor see that friendly face with dread

To guess the friends who will be dead

Ere all his golden sand has run

To heap a sunset – since nor gun

Nor bomb tells now to any one

The thing wherefor our blood was shed . . .

Will ye forget?

We died (whatever lie be spun)

Less for ‘old England’ than, each one,

For the New England which shall shed

Her sorrows, walking diamonded

With love to praise Love’s sweetest Son . . .

Will ye forget?

F.W. Harvey

We who come back,

Nerveless and maimed, from the wild sacrifice

Of the World’s youth, stretch’d quivering on the rack

Of Nature pitiless to all its pain,

Will never look again

With the old gay, uncomprehending eyes

Upon the former founts of our delight,

Morning and eve and night,

Sunshine and shadow, melody, love and mirth.

War tutored us too well. We know their worth,

We who come back!

These will recall

Our martyred Innocence, the indelible stain

Of blood on our hands. Tho’ leaves of coronal

Be heap’d upon our brows, ’twill not redress

The eternal bitterness

That surges with the memory of our slain,

Our brothers by the bond of suffering.

And tho’ the Spring

Lights with new loves the eyes that once were wet

For loss of them,
WE
never shall forget,

We who come back!

Geoffrey F. Fyson

Who won the war?

‘I’, said the Politician.

‘I made a mess of ammunition,

And of the Dardanelles Expedition.

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

‘I’, said the Conscientious Objector.

‘I didn’t give a damn for England, and would like to have wrecked her.

Now I’ll be released before the man that’s been my protector.

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

‘I’, said the Profiteer.

‘I made everything dear.

I want to send Armies to Russia and keep it up at least another year.

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

‘I’, said the American President.

‘To raise a colossal Army I meant;

But I hadn’t time to complete the experiment.

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

‘I’, said the A.S.C.

‘I stuck to my lorry or my gee,

And always had a loaf in two, when the troops were lucky to get one in three.

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

‘I’, said Marshall Foch.

‘I stood no kind of josh.

Apply to me for information on how to carry out the order ‘At the Boche, slosh!’

I won the war.’

Who won the war?

Said the Tommy, ‘I thought I won it,

But all these ’ere gents seem to ha’ done it.

So I s’pose I must be wrong again.

’Owever, let me get ’ome and put these damn clothes on the fire,

And they can keep their old war!’

All the Tricksters and the Schemers fell a-scheming and a-tricking,

When they thought from the war they had got their last fat picking;

But when Tommy gets back home they will get a good sound ——

And that will be the end of a Perfect War!

W. Clifford Poulten

This is the wish, as he told it to me,

Of Driver Macpherson of Battery B.

I want no praise, nor ribbons to wear.

I’ve done my bit and I’ve had my share

Of filth and fighting and blood and tears

And doubt and death in the last four years.

My team and I were among the first

Contemptible few when the war-clouds burst.

We sweated our gun through the dust and heat,

We hauled her back in the Big Retreat

With weary horses and short of shell,

Turning our back on them. That was Hell.

That was at Mons; but we came back there

With shine on the horses and shells to spare!

And much I’ve suffered and much I’ve seen

From Mons to Mons on the miles between,

But I want no praise nor ribbons to wear –

All I ask for my fighting share

Is this: that England should give to me

My offside leader in Battery B.

She was a round-ribbed blaze-faced brown,

Shy as a country girl in town,

Scared of the gangway and scared on the quay,

Lathered in sweat at a sight of the sea,

But brave as a lion and strong as a bull

With the mud at the hub in an uphill pull.

She learned her job as the best ones do,

And we hadn’t been over a week or two

Before she would stand like a rooted oak

While the bullets whined and the shrapnel broke

And a mile of the ridges rocked in glee

As the shells went over from Battery B.

One by one our team went down

But the gods were good to the blaze-faced brown.

We swayed with the battles back and forth,

Lugging the limbers south and north.

Round us the world was red with flame

As we gained or gave in the changing game;

And, forward and backward, losses or gains,

There were empty saddles and idle chains,

For Death took some on the galloping track

And beckoned some from the bivouac,

Till at last were left but my mare and me

Of all that went over with Battery B.

My mates have gone and left me alone;

Their horses are heaps of ash and bone;

Of all that went out in courage and speed

There is left but the little brown mare in the lead,

The little brown mare with the blaze on her face

That would die of shame at a slack in her trace,

That would swing the team at the least command,

That would charge a house at the slap of a hand,

That would turn from a shell to nuzzle my knee –

The offside leader of Battery B.

I look for no praise, and no ribbons to wear.

If I’ve done my bit it was only my share,

For a man has his pride and the strength of his Cause

And the love of his home – they are unwritten laws.

But what of the horses that served at our side,

That in faith as of children fought with us and died?

If I, through it all have been true to my task

I ask for no honours; this only I ask:

The gift of one gunner. I know of a place

Where I’d leave a brown mare with a blaze on her face –

’Mid low leafy limetrees in cocksfoot and clover

To dream with the dragon-flies glistening over.

Will H. Ogilvie

Old comrade, are you living; do you hear me, can you see?

If they print this stuff in Blighty, will you guess it comes from me?

I was just a wee bit balmy, don’t you reckon, all the while?

And perhaps the life in Flanders didn’t help to fix that tile.

As the R.S.M. expressed it, ‘Who’s the freak in Number Nine

That looks as if his wits were umpteen kilos from the Line?’

So the Regimental copped it at the Cambrai do, I hear,

And the freak is safe in civvies with a pension, like a peer.

And for all his dud deportment and the Regimental’s scorn

He could work his blooming ticket with the smartest soldier born.

I never wrote, I own it, and I’ve not so much as tried

To find if you’re in England yet or on the other side;

But I never knew your number and I lost your home address

With my pack and all inside it, when they marked me C.C.S.

But I haven’t quite forgot you, and my only souvenir

That I wouldn’t sell for sixpence is the thought of you, old dear.

We were mates to some good purpose in a world of boundless bad,

And to scheme each other’s welfare was the one good thing we had.

We were some queer brace of partners; Fate was surely on the spree

When she yoked in double harness such a pair as you and me.

You’d a craze for searching bodies – I could never stick the smell;

You’d a deep respect for Scripture and for words you couldn’t spell.

You were gentler than a woman when you dressed a wounded limb,

And at grab – an old cat-mother isn’t half so quick and slim.

I think I see you sitting in our dug-out at Bapaume

Where you found your German wrist-watch – did you ever get that home? –

With a sandbag on your napper and your feet inside a pair

While I punched a tin of ‘Sweetened’ that you’d raised from God knows where.

I see you sternly frowning with my glasses on your nose

While you proved from Revelation when the war was bound to close,

Till you smelt the old pot cooking and your brows relaxed their frown,

And you sat and purred with pleasure as you spooned the custard down.

Well, it’s over now and ended; we shall never tramp again

Down the slimy, sodden mule-track in the darkness and the rain;

You would always come behind me on the duckboards, if you could,

To help me, if I stumbled with my load of wire or wood.

I can hear you in the darkness, when you saw that I was done –

‘There’s a tin of strawberry pozzy in my pack – step up, old son!’

I’ve got the same old billet, in the same old office chair,

And France seems just as wild a dream as Blighty seemed out there.

But I don’t get on with civvies – they know too much for me;

They’ve read the war-news twice a day, not once a month, like we.

They’ll swallow bags of bunkum and let it down, like pie,

But they think you daft, or shell-shocked, if you speak what ain’t a lie.

They love you if you spruce ’em well and give ’em lots of buck –

Of the Prussian Guards you’ve strangled, and the squealing Huns you’ve stuck;

They ar’n’t half sweet on bayonet-scraps and blood and all that tosh,

And they’d earn a D.C. Medal-mint at shouting down the Bosche.

But they’ve never heard the rat-tat of the gun that can’t be seen,

They’ve never watched the sheaves go down, and walked behind to glean;

They’ve made their ‘Great Advances’ with pins on paper maps,

They’ve made their ‘Splendid Pushes’ with the ‘latest’ on their laps.

But it ain’t worth while to tell ’em; you might talk till all was blue,

But you’d never make ’em compree what a bloke out there goes through.

George Willis

When all the stress and all the toil is over,

And my lover lies sleeping by your lover,

With alien earth on hands and brows and feet,

Then we may meet.

Moving sorrowfully with uneven paces,

The bright sun shining on our ravaged faces,

There, very quietly, without sound or speech,

Each shall greet each.

We who are bound by the same grief for ever,

When all our sons are dead may talk together,

Each asking pardon from the other one

For her dead son.

With such low, tender words the heart may fashion,

Broken and few, of pity and compassion,

Knowing that we disturb at every tread

Our mutual dead.

Margaret Sackville

You ask me why I loathe these German beasts

So much that I have dedicated self –

Brains, heart, and soul – to one black creed of hate,

Now and hereafter, both in war and peace.

You say I had a sense of humour once,

And kindliness, and Christian charity . . .

Perhaps I had –
before my pal came back
.

To-night he sleeps (thank God for morphia!)

And I shan’t wake to hear him screaming out,

‘Don’t! I
will
work. Don’t tie me up again.

Gilbert, for Christ’s sake, keep these fiends away.’