Voices of Silence (12 page)

Rifle and pack are laid aside,

Tunic and shirt are open wide,

No longer we stumble and curse in the dusty straggling line,

But deep we lie in the grass,

Watching the great clouds pass,

And the scent of the earth is like wine to us, beakers of cool green wine.

We smoke together and smile,

Good comrades, knowing no guile,

While a frail moon hangs in the blue, and the day goes down like a song.

No shadows mock our little life,

As they did in days before the strife,

But the twilight, the stars and the dawn are kind, and we suffer no wrong.

J.B. Priestley

As we ride downhill at ease,

Two and two,

Shines the river through the trees

Into view,

With a sparkle and a sheen

Caught in glimpses through the green;

And we check with one accord

For the ford.

From the moving column floats

Dusty haze,

Dust is in our thirsty throats:

Summer’s blaze

Glows on khaki, flames on steel,

Till we scorch from head to heel –

But the ford is full in sight,

Cool and bright.

Trampled pebbles shining fly

As we splash

Through the shallows, flinging high

Foam and flash:

Jewels drip from hoof and flank

As we scramble up the bank,

While the troubled ripples clear

In the rear.

W. Kersley Holmes

Dearest Florrie, Came to anchor after 10 miles on a road

Which for stones would beat a quarry and for mud a bloomin’ sink,

I am lying in a farmyard, where we’re making our abode,

And I hope you’re doing nicely, as this leaves me in the pink.

Well, we’ve marched for miles on cobbles, which is dreadful for the feet,

Past the fertile fields of France, which have a most peculiar stink;

And we’ve smoked that French tobacco, and it much resembles peat,

And we’ve tried a few French liquors which they leaves me in the pink.

We haven’t seen a German, but we’re getting pretty near:

And we haven’t been in Trenches, but we’re just upon the brink,

And when I write again, you need not be surprised to hear

We’ve been at ’em with the bayonet, and been dabbling in the pink.

Well, whatever comes, keep smiling, for, whatever comes, I’m true,

And so are all the Glosters and they’re not the boys to shrink,

And when the Kaiser’s busted, I’ll be racing back to you,

And trust as [I] shall find you as this leaves me – in the pink.

There’s a line that runs from Nieuport down into Alsace Lorraine,

Its twists and turns are many, and each means a loss or gain;

Every yard can tell a story, every foot can claim its fee,

There the line will stay for ever from Lorraine up to the sea.

Places memorised by symbol, little things that caught the mind,

As at Loos ’twas but a lone tree which in mem’ry is enshrined;

Perhaps at Wipers ’twas a corner, shell-bespattered, held our sight,

Or a nightingale at Plug Street, sending music through the night.

Little things, yet each implanted when the nerves are tension high,

And in years to come remembered how, while gazing, death passed by;

So the line for all has sign posts, and a dug-out oft can hold

Little memories to haunt one as the future years unfold.

Though this line will be behind us as we push on to the Spree,

Yet to all it will be sacred, mud-encased though it may be;

In the future dim and distant they will tell the tale again –

The ghosts of those who held the line from Nieuport to Lorraine.

Take a wilderness of ruin,

Spread with mud quite six feet deep;

In this mud now cut some channels,

Then you have the line we keep.

Now you get some wire that’s spiky,

Throw it round outside your line;

Get some pickets, drive in tightly,

And round these your wire entwine.

Get a lot of Huns and plant them

In a ditch across the way;

Now you have war in the making

As waged here from day to day.

Early morn the same old ‘stand to’

Daylight, sniping in full swing;

Forenoon, just the merry whizz-bang,

Mid-day oft a truce doth bring.

Afternoon repeats the morning,

Evening falls then work begins;

Each works in his muddy furrow

Set with boards to catch your shins.

Choc-a-block with working parties,

Or the rations coming up;

Four hours scramble, then to dug-out,

Mud-encased, yet keen to sup.

Oft we’re told, ‘Remember Belgium’

In the years that are to be;

Crosses set by all her ditches

Are our pledge of memory.

Since the breed that were our forebears first crouched within a cave,

And found their food and fought their foe with arrow and with stave,

And the things that really mattered unto men were four, or three:

Shelter, and sustenance; a maid; the simple right to be;

And Fear stalked through the forest and slid adown the glade –

There’s been nothing like the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

When Mac first designed his dug-out, and commenced his claim to peg,

He thought of something spacious in which one might stretch a leg,

Might lie out at one’s leisure, and sit up at one’s ease,

And not be butted in the back by t’other fellow’s knees;

Of such a goodly fashion were the plans the builder laid,

And even so the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

He shored it up with timber, and he roofed it in with tin

Torn from the battered boxes that they bring the biscuits in –

(He even used the biscuits, but he begs I should not state

The number that he took for tiles, the number that he ate!) –

He shaped it, and secured it to withstand the tempest’s shocks –

(I know he stopped one crevice with the latest gift of socks!) –

He trimmed it with his trenching-tool, and slapped it with his spade –

A marvel was the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

He lined the walls with sand-bags, and he laid the floor with wood,

And when his eye beheld it, he beheld it very good;

A broken bayonet in a chink to hold the candle-light;

A waterproof before the door to keep all weather-tight;

A little shelf for bully, butter, bread, and marmalade –

Then finished was the dug-out that Macfarlane made.

Except the Lord do build the house there is no good or gain;

Except the Lord keeps ward with us the watchman wakes in vain:

So when we’d passed the threshold, and partaken of Mac’s tea,

And chalked upon the lintel, ‘At the Back o’ Bennachie’,

Perchance a prayer soared skyward, although no word was said –

At least, God blessed the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

For when the night was dark with dread, and the day was red with death,

And the whimper of the speeding steel passed like a shuddering breath,

And the air was thick with wingèd war, riven shard, and shrieking shell,

And all the earth did spit and spume like the cauldron hot of Hell:

When the heart of man might falter, and his soul be sore afraid –

We just dived into the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

Deep is the sleep I’ve had therein, as free from sense of harm

As when my curly head was laid in the crook of my mother’s arm;

My old great-coat for coverlet, curtain, and counterpane,

While patter, patter on the roof, came the shrapnel lead like rain;

And when a huge ‘Jack Johnson’ made us a sudden raid,

I was dug out from the dug-out that Macfarlane made!

If in the unseen scheme of things, as well may be, it chance

That I bequeath my body to the soil of sunny France,

I will not cavil though they leave me sleeping where I fell,

With just a little wooden cross my lowly tale to tell:

I do not ask for sepulture beneath some cypress shade –

Just a six by two feet ‘dug-out’ by Macfarlane made.

Joseph Lee

The hour is drowsed with things of sleep

That round my tottering senses creep

Like subtle wandering scents, so rare

They might ensweeten fairies’ hair;

And I am walking in a glade

With gold and green and purple made

Unearthly beautiful:

And, oh, the air is very cool!

I see green lawns between the trees,

And cows and sheep upon the leas,

And, in the distance, hills;

And at my feet cool, mossy rills

Empurpled with the wavering shade

Of trees and bushes in the glade;

And ever I rejoice

And ever sings a voice.

I see – but, sudden the singing ceases,

Splintering my dream in pieces –

I see, in waving candle light

That cowers and flickers in a draft,

A low-roofed den – a hole of night –

That leaks to heaven by creaky shaft;

A table (where the candle stands

In bottle streaked with frozen strands

Of tallow drippings), strewn with tins

And cans, just tiny refuse bins

With swelling slops of tea and jam

And twisted greasy bits of ham;

And belts hung round the dingy walls

Like horses’ harness in their stalls;

And in the corner gloom, alone –

A dusty, silent gramophone!

R. Watson Kerr

I want to write a poem, yet I find I have no theme,

‘Rats’ are no subject for an elegy,

Yet they fill my waking moments, and when star-shells softly gleam,

’Tis the rats who spend the midnight hours with me.

On my table in the evening they will form ‘Battalion mass’,

They will open tins of bully with their teeth,

And should a cake be sent me by some friend at home, alas!

They will extricate it from its cardboard sheath.

They are bloated, fat and cunning, and they’re marvels as to size,

And their teeth can penetrate a sniping plate,

I could tell you tales unnumbered, but you’d think I’m telling lies,

Of one old, grey whiskered buck-rat and his mate.

Just to show you, on my table lay a tin of sardines – sealed –

With the implement to open hanging near,

The old buck-rat espied them, to his missis loudly squealed,

‘Bring quickly that tin-opener, Stinky dear!’

She fondly trotted up the pole, and brought him his desire,

He proceeded then with all his might and main,

He opened up that tin, and then – ’tis here you’ll dub me ‘Liar!’ –

He closed it down, and sealed it up again.

Have you seen one, should a rival chance to spoil his love affair,

Bring a bomb, Mills, hand, and place it underneath

The portion of the trench where that said rival had his lair,

And then he’ll pull the pin out with his teeth.

When the soldier, fagged and weary,

In surroundings that are dreary,

Aside lays his rifle and grenade,

Seeks solace in forgetful slumber,

From shell-crash and battle’s thunder,

’Tis then the ‘chats’ are mustered for parade.

At the double about his back

In a most irregular track

They make for the parade-ground on his spine.

When there they will never keep still,

Undisciplined they stamp at will,

And up and down they march in ragged line.

Round his ribs they do manœuvre,

Curses issue from the soldier,

There’s divisions by the score, he declares,

Doing artillery formation

Without his approbation,

He wriggles and he twists and loudly swears.

Through long, dark night they carry on,

At charges they become ‘tres [bon]’,

The soldier to disperse them madly tears

With savage fingers at his skin,

And prays for the morning glim,

In darkness, though, the victory is theirs.

The morn at last breaks good and clear,

Light is this ‘Army’s’ one great fear,

They retired to warm flannel trenches.

But not too long there they linger,

For the soldier’s thumb and finger,

Routs them out with unregretful wrenches.