Authors: Vivien Noakes
Voices of Silence (8 page)
All Souls, 1914
On All Souls’ night a year ago
The gentle, ghostly dead
Beat at my thoughts as moths beat low,
Near to my quiet bed,
Upon the pane; I did not know
What words they would have said.
They were remote within my mind
Remote beyond the pane;
Whether with evil wills or kind,
They could not come again –
They had but swerved, as things resigned
To learn return was vain.
To-night the young uneasy dead
Obscure the moonless night;
Their energies of hope and dread,
Of passion and delight,
Are still unspent; their hearts unread
Surge mutinous in flight.
The life of earth beats in them yet,
Their pulses are not done;
They suffer by their nerves that fret
To feel no wind nor sun;
They fade, but cannot yet forget
Their conflicts are not won.
Gordon Bottomley
The School at War – 1914
We don’t forget – while in this dark December
We sit in schoolrooms that you know so well,
And hear the sounds that you so well remember –
The clock, the hurrying feet, the chapel bell:
Others are sitting in the seats you sat in:
There’s nothing else seems altered here – and yet
Through all of it, the same old Greek and Latin,
You know we don’t forget.
We don’t forget you – in the wintry weather
You man the trench or tramp the frozen snow;
We play the games we used to play together
In days of peace that seem so long ago;
But through it all, the shouting and the cheering,
Those other hosts in graver conflict met,
Those other sadder sounds your ears are hearing,
Be sure we don’t forget.
And you, our brothers, who, for all our praying,
To this dear school of ours come back no more;
Who lie, our country’s debt of honour paying –
And not in vain – upon the Belgian shore;
Till that great day when at the Throne of Heaven
The Books are opened and the Judgment set,
Your lives for honour and for England given
The School will not forget.
C.A. Alington
‘Punch’ in the Enemy’s Trenches
(To the officer whose letter, reproduced in
The Daily Telegraph
, after reporting the irregular exchange of Christmas gifts between our men and the enemy, goes on to say: – ‘In order to put a stop to a situation which was proving impossible, I went out myself after a time with a copy of
Punch
, which I presented to a dingy Saxon in exchange for a small packet of excellent cigars and cigarettes.’)
A scent of truce was in the air,
And mutual compliments were paid –
A sausage here, a mince-pie there,
In lieu of bomb and hand-grenade;
And foes forgot, that Christmastide,
Their business was to kill the other side.
Then, greatly shocked, you rose and said,
‘This is not my idea of War;
On milk of human kindness fed,
Our men will lose their taste for gore;
All this unauthorized good-will
Must be corrected by a bitter pill.
And forth you strode with stiffened spine
And met a Saxon in the mud
(Not Anglo-) and with fell design
To blast his joyaunce in the bud,
And knock his rising spirits flat,
You handed him a
Punch
and said, ‘Take that!’
A smile upon his visage gleamed.
Little suspecting your intent,
He proffered what he truly deemed
To be a fair equivalent –
A bunch of fags of local brand
And Deutschodoros from the Vaterland.
You found them excellent, I hear;
Let’s hope your gift had equal worth,
Though meant to curb his Christmas cheer
And check the interchange of mirth;
I should be very glad to feel
It operated for his inner weal.
For there he found, our dingy friend,
Amid the trench’s sobering slosh,
What must have left him, by the end,
A wiser, if a sadder, Bosch,
Seeing himself with chastened mien
In that pellucid well of Truth serene.
Owen Seaman
Autumn 1914 in England
The role of women, flag days, Zeppelin raids
Many women in England immediately began to do what they could to support the war effort, although the attempts of some at emulating their military relatives in dress and demeanour were seen by others – including other women – as slightly absurd.
For some, particularly young mothers with children, the coming of war brought real hardship, as the breadwinner was either called back into the army or volunteered. Separation allowances were paid, but they were often slow in coming. As the men were called away, their jobs, and the new production tasks demanded by war, were filled by women. For many who became munition workers, drivers or bus conductresses, it was their first opportunity of working outside the home and earning reasonable money. Others joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment as trainee nurses, or took on voluntary work. Everywhere women were knitting, making socks and gloves and comforters for the men at the front. But motherhood was not forgotten; the war, after all, was being fought to protect the freedom of future generations.
The fear of invasion was joined by the reality of naval bombardment. In the middle of December 1914, Scarborough, Hartlepool and Whitby on the east coast were attacked by naval guns; there were 500 civilian casualties. A month later there were zeppelin raids over Yarmouth, Cromer and King’s Lynn in East Anglia, and London suffered its first air attack at the end of May 1915.
The Women
Theirs not to go where martial strains are sounding,
Guarding grim fortress-walls or city gate;
Theirs not to breast the battle-tide surrounding,
But ’mid life’s broken calm to watch and wait.
Theirs not to feel the passion of o’ercoming,
The pulsing beat of hearts that strive for right;
Theirs but to live while fears, like wild birds homing,
Come thro’ the shadows of each sleepless night.
Theirs not to know where lov’d ones’ feet are marching,
Where darling heads are pillow’d far away;
Theirs but to look towards Heav’n’s great spaces arching,
To breathe in loneliness dear names and pray.
Theirs to stand fast, a mighty trust safe keeping,
Theirs to flinch never, tho’ hard paths be trod,
Theirs to hold high Hope’s lamp o’er woe and weeping,
Theirs – Duty nobly done – the rest with God.
Augusta Hancock
Deportment for Women
By One of Them
Sisters, when fashion first decreed
To our devoted sex
That beauty must be broken-kneed
And spinal cords convex;
When sheathlike skirts without a crease
Were potent to attract,
Those were the piping times of peace
When everybody slacked.
But, since the menace of ‘The Day’
Has commandeered the Nut,
Since
demi-saison
modes display
A military cut,
It’s up to us to do our bit
Each time we take the road,
For, if we wear a warlike kit,
The mien must match the
mode
.
What! would you set a ‘forage cap’
Upon a drooping brow?
The feet that used to mince and tap
Must stride with vigour now;
No longer must a plastic crouch
Debilitate the knees;
We’ve finished with the ‘Slinker Slouch’;
Heads up, girls, if you please!
Jessie Pope
Khaki
Say, girls, I’ve just been round the town,
It took my breath away
To find that we have sisters still
Who bow to fashion’s sway.
For nice Spring hats and nice Spring gowns
Are everywhere displayed,
And purple seems to be just now
The latest leading shade.
These purple hats are not for us,
Nor purple frocks and hose;
Till times have changed, we’re proud to wear
Our Country’s choice of clothes.
No envy do we feel for those
In purple hue arrayed.
For surely khaki is, just now,
A more becoming shade.
I. Grindlay
Leave your Change
When you go down town a-shopping, for let’s say a blouse or hat,
Or the hundred things a pretty woman wears,
Will you kindly think a moment as you look on this or that,
How many folk just now have family cares?
Think of husbands, wives and widows who are now in deep distress,
And who daily sit in sorrow, sad, and brood,
How hard it is to manage, and how painful to confess
That they haven’t got the wherewithal for food.
When you’ve made your pretty purchase, be it pipe or cigarettes,
Caps, collars, cuffs, umbrellas, boots or shoes,
Will you ponder just a moment whilst your goods the shopman gets,
Of the many poor about you and their woes?
Think a moment of the trouble that the war has brought about,
And of all the many blessings you have got;
Think of rents and coals and foodstuffs that the poor are nigh without,
And be thankful that yours ain’t the poor man’s lot.
Though your country hasn’t called you to go fighting ‘Kaiser Bill’;
Though you haven’t perhaps been prompted to enlist,
Still your country expects something, each has got some niche to fill,
And it’s up to all and sundry to assist.
So don’t pass this ‘Leave Your Change’ box, do not count it coppers lost,
Simply say you’ll bank in Heaven for a while,
Where Lloyd Georgie cannot tax it, where you know it won’t be lost,
And the angels sweet will bless you with a smile.
T. Clayton
Britain’s Daughters
They talk about the Tommy and the brave things he has done,
The brave things he is just about to do.
’Tis mountains high the homage and the praise that he has won;
The world acclaims him; he deserves it too.
But what about our women, Britain’s daughters, passing fair;
The finest race of women on the Earth?
Have they been praised unsparingly? Have they received their share
Of honour that should advertise their worth?
We see them in the canteens where they toil so laughingly,
And feed the hungry soldier every day.
We see them on the ’buses where they tender chaffingly
The humble fares along the jolting way.
We find them donning breeches, milking cows and making cheese;
How charming is the agricultural maid!
She lets the men go fighting, and she tries so hard to please,
And hides her fear whene’er she feels afraid.
The chauffeuse is the neatest and the sweetest little girl,
Bedecked in livery of olive green.
She manages a motor-van or makes your senses whirl
When taking out a pullman-limousine.
The girl of no vocation’s doing all her good by stealth;
It drains her purse alarmingly ’tis true;
But be she poor or be she rich she’s thinking of the health
Of Tommy – and that everlasting stew!
Impossible it is for me to mention all the work
That our belovèd women find to do.
Suffice it then to say that they are never known to shirk,
Though novelty has flown, and romance too.
But of the valiant daughters of this dear old troubled land
The nurses ’tis a Tommy ne’er forgets.
God bless you and reward you, sisters of the Healing Hand;
A life of honour, yours, with no regrets.
Colin Mitchell
Munition Girls
Shells are but prayers for slaughter, cast in steel,
A strange religion calls its devotees
Cloistered with band and wheel
To tell such beads as these!
A twofold duty for a twofold need
Summons the woman, in the self-same breath,
To nurse, and yet to speed
The loom of wounds and death.
And Peace, the angel, as I see her move
’Mong these new purlieus, pale from half-despair,
Shudders, yet must approve
The eager labour here.
And from her eyes the passion-mist will clear,
And from her face will wash the blood-red stain,
If at the end she hear
The pæan, ‘War is slain!’
The Deserters
Where are the maids that used to lay my table
And cook my meals and (sometimes) scrub the floor?
Florrie and Maud and Emily and Mabel,
All, all are gone to prosecute the War;
In reeking vaults and mountain dells
They tend their sheep and fill their shells,
While my wife answers all the bells
And no one shines my Sam Browne any more.