Poetry Friday 56

Yesterday saw the anniversary of the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the catalyst for the start of the First World War, so today I bring you war-related poetry. Whilst the First World War is famous for producing many memorable poems, that was not the first time that poetry was written about war. The following comes from Shakespeare's Henry V:

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

(William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene 3, lines 40-70)


This next poem reflects the utter futility of the First World War in a handful of lines:

Counter-Attack

We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began, -- the jolly old rain !
A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape, -- loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.
An officer came blundering down the trench:
'Stand-to and man the fire-step!' On he went . . .
Gasping and bawling, 'Fire-step . . . counter-attack !'
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
'O Christ, they're coming at us!' Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle . . . rapid fire . . .
And started blazing wildly . . . then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans . . .
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

Siegfried Sassoon, 1917 (© George Sassoon)

Private Peaceful - Michael Morpurgo

I've been meaning to read Michael Morpurgo's Private Peaceful ever since it came out but just never got around to it until this week. This novel charts the childhood of young Thomas Peaceful in the early years of the 20th century, and his eventual underage enlistment into the British army alongside his older brother to help fight in the First World War. More than anything else, this is a poignant story of childhood and war, and about the many life-changing effects a war has on those involved in it. It also reflects some of the brutality of the commanding regimes and the relentless squalor of trench warfare. This books is definitely not for the squeamish as Morpurgo tells the truth of life in the war as it really was.

The book opens at "Five Past Ten" (all the chapter titles are times) as "Tommo" Peaceful is recalling his childhood whilst waiting out the night on one of the First World War battlefields. He remembers his big brother Charlie taking him to school for his first day (and how much he didn't want to go), the tragica, accidental death of his father, his mother working hard to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table in spite of the grudging support of her husband's employer and Tommo's aunt. He remembers his brother Big Joe, who is called simple by some but who is very special to Tommo. He also recalls the only girl in his life, Molly, and how his brother Charlie took her away from him. But as the world turned to war, he was forced, like so many young men, to grow up fast. Charlie and Tommo enlist together and are sent to France almost immediately, to what could is most accurately described as hell on Earth. Bullets, bombs, death, shells, noise, dirt, disease, rats and stench fill their lives, and Charlie and Tommo fight for their lives and fight to stay together - facing certain death in the face every time they try to advance the British lines.

I won't tell you the twist at the end of this story, but it made me sob unrestrainedly to read the last few pages.