That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement Day. Thomas Hardy, Channel Firing
Human flesh rotting and stinking mere pulp was pasted into the mud-banks. If they dug to get deeper cover their shovels went into the softness of dead bodies who’d been their comrades. Scraps of flesh, booted legs, blackened hands, eyeless heads, came falling over them when the enemy trench-mortared their position. War correspondent
Out there, we walked quite friendly up to Death –
Sat down and ate beside him, cool and bland, –
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We’ve sniffed the green thick odour of his breath. –
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn’t writhe.
He’s spat at us with bullets, and he’s coughed
Shrapnel. We chorused if he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.
Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chums.
No soldier’s paid to kick against His powers,
We laughed – knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when every fighter brags
He fights on Death, for lives; not men, for flags. Wilfred Owen, The Next War
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And floundering like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green lime,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, chocking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mort. William Owen, Dolce Et Decorum Est
What passing-bells for those who die as cattle? –
Only the monstrous anger of the guns,
Only the shuttering rifles’ rapid rattle ...
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells. Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed Youth
The Meaning of Life Part III: Fighting Each Other ... We may never meet again, sir, so – no, just a moment sir – see me and the lads we’ve had a little whip-around, sir. We’ve bought you something, sir. We’ve bought you this, sir. Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 1983 starring Graham Chapman & John Cleese & Terry Gilliam & Eric Idle & Terry Jones & Michael Palin & Carol Cleveland & Patricia Quinn et al, director Terry Jones, soldiers on front line to Captain Biggs
When the First World War broke out in 1914 a royal family turned on itself. Germany’s leader, Kaiser Wilhelm II, was Queen Victoria’s grandson. Queen Victoria and the Crippled Kaiser – Secret History, Channel 4 2013
A terrified little boy with a secret disability thought shameful at the time. A child subjected to gruesome torture in the name of science and troubled by dark incestuous desires. ibid.
Churchill’s Turkish adventure was a disaster. Hesitation and delay led to the troops landing after Gallipoli two months after the first navel bombardment. The Turks were waiting for them. 50,000 Britain, Australian and New Zealand troops died in the bloodbath. Andrew Marr, The Making of Modern Britain, BBC 2009
On the western front the war was descending into a nightmarish paralysis. It reached its bloodiest with the Somme offensive of 1916. The idea was to destroy the German trenches with an intensive seven-day bombardment. British troops were told they would be able to stroll through the shattered German lines and bring the war to an end ... This was a totally new type of dug-in industrialised slaughter. ibid.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. Laurence Binyon, Ode to Remembrance, ‘For the Fallen’, The Times September 1914
Soldiers are citizens of death’s gray land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.
I see them in foul dugouts gnawed by rats
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank Holidays, and picture shows, and spats
And going to the office in the train. Siegfried Sassoon, Dreamers
My friends are dying young; while I remain,
Doomed to outlive these tragedies of pain
And half-forget how once I said farewell
To those who fought and suffered till they fell ...
Come back, come back; you didn’t want to die;
And all this war’s a sham, a stinking lie;
And the glory of our fathers laud so well
And a crowd of corpses freed from the pang of hell. Siegfried Sassoon, A Wooden Cross
I’d like to see a Tank come down the stalls,
Lurching to rag-time tunes, or ‘Home Sweet Home’, –
And there’d be no more jokes in Music-halls
To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume. Siegfried Sassoon, Blighters
‘Good morning; good morning!’ the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swing.
‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack
As the slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack. Siegfried Sassoon, The General
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumbs and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.
You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak homme and pray you’ll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go. Siegfried Sassoon, Suicide in the Trenches
If I were blind, and bald, and short of breath,
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base,
And speed glum heroes up the line of death. Siegfried Sassoon, Base Details
... Does it matter? – losing your fight? …
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light ... Siegfried Sassoon, Does It Matter?
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head ...
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead. Siegfried Sassoon, The Dug-Out
Write again, write again. I’m not dead yet. I’ve got weeks and weeks to live ... What a pity it is that we can’t change places for a fortnight. Here am I, aching for a quiet house to hide in and get poems off my chest. Siegfried Sassoon, letter to Robert Nichols