Voices of Silence (48 page)

I don’t know
all
the things they did to him.

I only know that when I saw him last –

Helping a wounded Boche in Guillemont,

The day the Ulstermen took Lousy Wood –

He was a husky, cheerful, six-foot man,

(One of those glorious fools who didn’t wait

To get commissions; but just joined the ranks);

That now, he’s like some tortured starveling cat,

Who crawls about my house on twisted limbs,

Looking at me with
one
lack-lustre eye,

(His
wound
was in the knee-cap, not the head),

Twitching and tongue-tied; nothing like a man.

I don’t know
half
the things they did to him.

But I have listened to his screams; and learned

Too much for man to know this side of Hell.

You see,
he wouldn’t work
– the glorious fool:

Although their surgeons cut the bullet out –

(‘Chloroform?
Dummes Luder!
Strap him down.

I don’t waste chloroform on English pigs.’) –

And did their Prussian best to patch him up

For service in munitions or the mines . . .

He wouldn’t make munitions; said he knew

The Hague Convention, International Law . . .

They triced him by the thumbs for that – eight hours,

Hands to the roof-beam, toes just off the ground;

And when they cut him down, he couldn’t speak.

So – as he lay – they kicked him in the face . . .

I think that’s how he lost his other eye.

I don’t know where to find them on the map,

Those mines he sees o’ nights. But there is snow,

Snow and black fir-trees. If a chap won’t work –

(Remember, first he said he
wouldn’t
work;

But Hunger and the Horsewhip soon cured that!) –

They make him take his clothes off; tie him up

Close to the red-hot stove, until the sweat

Pours off his body; then they hack him out,

Naked and bleeding. It is very cold

Up there among the fir-trees and the snow . . .

Sometimes I wish they hadn’t sent him back,

Sometimes I feel he would be happier dead –

Cold-butchered by some
Unteroffizier

In those latrines which they call prison-camps.

But he’s come back; and I’ve learnt how to hate.

Hate! Not an individual loathing felt

For this one gaoler or the
Kommandant

(With pardon and trade orders for the rest)

But absolute revulsion, merciless,

Inexorable, reasoned, and approved –

A plain man’s hatred of the Unclean Folk.

Poor Jack – he’s moaning – I must go to him.

Gilbert Frankau

From the tennis lawn you can hear the guns going,

Twenty miles away,

Telling the people of the home counties

That the peace was signed to-day.

To-night there’ll be feasting in the city;

They will drink deep and eat –

Keep peace the way you planned you would keep it

(If we got the Boche beat).

Oh, your plan and your word, they are broken,

For you neither dine nor dance;

And there’s no peace so quiet, so lasting,

As the peace you keep in France.

You’ll be needing no Covenant of Nations

To hold your peace intact.

It does not hang on the close guarding

Of a frail and wordy pact.

When ours screams, shattered and driven,

Dust down the storming years,

Yours will stand stark, like a grey fortress,

Blind to the storm’s tears.

Our peace . . . your peace . . . I see neither.

They are a dream, and a dream.

I only see you laughing on the tennis lawn;

And brown and alive you seem,

As you stoop over the tall red foxglove,

(It flowers again this year)

And imprison within a freckled bell

A bee, wild with fear . . .

Oh, you cannot hear the noisy guns going:

You sleep too far away.

It is nothing to you, who have your own peace,

That our peace was signed to-day.

Rose Macaulay

This was the way that, when the war was over,

we were to pass together. You, its lover,

would make my love your land, you said, no less,

its shining levels and their loneliness,

the reedy windings of the silent stream,

your boyhood’s playmate, and your childhood’s dream.

The war is over now: and we can pass

this way together. Every blade of grass

is you: you are the ripples on the river:

you are the breeze in which they leap and quiver.

I find you in the evening shadows falling

athwart the fen, you in the wildfowl calling:

and all the immanent vision cannot save

my thoughts from wandering to your unknown grave.

St Ives, 1919

E. Hilton Young

By batteries and battalions the slow line swings along:

Come out and shout with heartfelt joy,

Come out and make a Song

That nothing ever shall destroy.

A song we never shall forget,

Seething with fierce, unbounded gladness;

Tainted with no regret,

Dulled with no touch of sadness.

Come out, you happy ones, whose men are come safe through the fight,

Thank God again you have them at your side.

Come out, you Broken-hearted,

Whose loved ones are departed:

Thank God with all your strength to-night,

That they for England died.

Patrick Miles

Through the silent streets they bore him

Proudly carried up on high.

No one going, no one coming,

To deter him from his triumph;

Silent was his passing by.

He wore no medals on his breast,

And his head no crown adorned;

But his eyes with tears were flowing

Weeping for his living brother,

Maimed, unreverenced, and scorned.

John Waring

Here, where our Kings are crowned;

Here, where the brasses keep

Scroll of the names that resound,

Let one brass nameless be found,

One unknown Englishman sleep.

Here, where we cherish in stone

Those who or ruled us or led –

Statesmen and poets known –

Carve we a tomb and a throne

‘To One of our Warrior-Dead.’

Needless to carve us his name:

Needless to know if he died

By Yser, by Tigris, or Thame,

Of the steel or the gas or the flame,

At hazard of sky or of tide!

Since he died for us and our Race

And the Fine undying Things,

Of his right (and not by their grace)

He has earned him his resting-place

With our poets, our priests, and our Kings.

And even though his be the least

Of all whose spirits went West

From the fight we fought with the Beast,

Yet neither a King nor a priest

Shall grudge him his honoured rest;

But an Empire stand at his grave,

And an Emperor-King bare head,

When we tomb with our lords of the waste and the wave,

In the heart of a Nation he died to save,

One Man of our Million Dead.

Here let him sleep; for a sign

Of high deeds wrought to an end

By the lowly folk and the fine

Whose lives were outspilled like wine

For England – England, their friend.

Here let us cherish in stone,

Not one man’s worth, nor his name,

But a million heroes . . . Unknown?

Nay! their fame is as trumpets blown,

Their fame is all England’s fame.

And this England they saved shall endure,

She shall neither dwindle nor pass,

Her feet shall be virile and sure;

She shall stamp on the creed impure –

The creed of class-against-class.

Neither in haste nor in hate,

Neither with tumult nor guns,

But duly in quiet debate

Shall she deal with the fate of her State,

Shall she order the claims of her sons.

Wherefore, if any to-day

Plot treason to ruin this land,

Here – by our unknown clay –

Let him kneel; and, kneeling, pray;

And praying, understand

The Cause for which one man died –

The Cause which is neither Bread

Nor Gold nor Conquest nor Creed nor Pride;

But the Cause of all Englishmen side-by-side,

The Cause of our Warrior Dead.

Gilbert Frankau

Old Brown’s speech I remember. Slow and wise.

Slow-wagging forefinger; slow-blinking eyes.

‘The very thing we want’ (said Brown)

‘To make memorial for the dead

Is something useful for the town.

Some cosy reading-room?’ (Brown said).

Jones smiled and nodded where he sat.

‘Ay, we’d be comfortable in that.’

He coughed, empurpled; hoiked at phlegm.

Tears filled my eyes. I had seen
them
,

Swift, fair and eager . . . David . . . Yellow broom . . .

Suddenly I left the room

And them all gaping . . .

Godfrey Elton

Erect the Memorial where all may see,

Let it have a fitting place;

For the men who died that we might be free

Were the flower of our race.

Give it pride of place in the old grey town,

Let it shine in the light of Heaven;

Oh! proud are we of our glorious dead,

For us their lives were given.

Raise it aloft in God’s acre wide,

In the place where their forebears sleep –

Where men bow the head to honour the dead,

And the women kneel to weep.

The children shall hush their laughter

When they trace, with loving pride,

The name of a dear, dead daddy

Or soldier brother who died.

Let its column rise in the silence, sweet,

Far from the revellers’ din;

Though their graves are afar, their names shall be

In the midst of their kith and kin.

On the market square, or the churchyard green,

Let our boys’ memorial rise,

Where all who pass shall linger to read

How great was the sacrifice.

Mary Reid

Out there in France on a battle’s front,

Where poppies bloom so red,

They grow in silent tribute

On the graves of heroes dead.

Dead for Britain’s honour,

They freely gave their lives.

And left behind to grieve them

Are fathers, mothers, wives.

England is proud in her sorrows,

Proud of the blood that runs

Through the hearts of her soldiers and sailors

Who gallantly kept back the Huns.

Ready when called for duty,

Aye, ready to face the foe,

Some are now facing starvation,

All through no fault of their own.

Is this the land for heroes

Gained at such cost of life,

Where nothing reigns but poverty

And want and strife!

I’m only one of many more,

Admired while strong and well,

But now I’m broken in the War,

No words can my feelings tell.

Because of England’s promises,

We did our best out there,

And now for those who have returned

There is no work to spare.

To gain an honest living

I try so very hard;

I ask you can you help me now

By buying this small card?

Only an officer! Only a chap

Who carried on till the final scrap,

Only a fellow who didn’t shirk –

Homeless, penniless, out of work,

Asking only a start in life,

A job that will keep himself and his wife,

‘And thank the Lord that we haven’t a kid.’

Thus men pay for the deeds men did!

Only an officer! Only a chap

Wounded and gassed in a bit of a scrap,

Only a fellow who didn’t shirk –

Shaky and maimed and unfit for work,

Asking only enough in life

To keep a home for himself and his wife,

‘And she’ll work if she can, but, of course, there’s the kid.’

Thus men pay for the deeds men did!

Only our officers! Only the chaps

That war-time uses and peace-time scraps,

Only the fellows a bit too proud

To beg a dole from the charity-crowd,

Carrying on in civilian life,

Carrying on – with a smile for the wife,

‘But it’s breaking his heart because of the kid!’

Thus men starve for the deeds men did!

Gilbert Frankau

‘You might have died heroically: France

And Flanders surely gave you just the chance.

You’d have escaped this marching thro’ the street,

This sordid seeking after bread and meat,

This aimless hunt for work. Work! Why, the war

Was held at great expense to manage for

The extra and unwanted carcases

Of men whose mere existences makes our ease

Uncertain. As your ranks go shuffling by,

The Premier can’t enjoy tranquillity.

Would you have us give you work and food, instead

Of spending money on our gallant dead?