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Never forgetting the Somme

UnderYourSpell

UnderYourSpell

Gerund Whore
Joined
May 20, 2007
Posts
15,794
In solid rows the Gravestones stand
their march is stark across the land
each one a Mothers bitter blow
grown from greed politicians sow,
a wind of hate righteous fanned.

Always the youngest to command
and lead across the bloody strand,
meets just like him the enemy foe.
In solid rows.

Throughout the history at hand
no lessons learnt, no death is grand,
these wasted lives will never grow
to manhood underneath the mow.
grassed over see the gravestones stand.
In solid rows.
 
As a student, I learned much more about WWII than WWI. Memorial Day in late May was more important than Armistice Day in November, although I suspect that had as much to do the traditonal beginning of summer in much of the U.S.

Somme certainly was one of the most tragic battles in recorded history, and I believe WWI was every bit as tragic as WWII. Thanks for sharing the poem.
 
I'll second what GM said. I've always loved that poem, but I learned much more about WW2 in school that WW1. I imagine that for my (post WW2 baby boom) generation, the events from the Great Depression through Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war had more visceral meaning for our parents' generation and so they tended to emphasize it over the First World War.
 
America was determined to stay neutral but the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 changed that, although they still didn't come in until 1917 as an independent unit.
 
This was written a year before the Battle of the Somme:


In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I have visited Lt-Col John McCrae's grave in Wimereux, France. He died in January 1918.
 
Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned out 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 gas-shells dropping softly 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 flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.-
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, 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 mori.

Wilfred Owens
 
JUST A COMMON SOLDIER
(A Soldier Died Today)
by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.
Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho' sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,
All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.
But we'll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,
And the world's a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,
For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.
Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,
And the world won't note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land
A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?

A politician's stipend and the style in which he lives
Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.
While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It's so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know
It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?
Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier's part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he's here to hear the praise,
Then at least let's give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

© 1987 A. Lawrence Vaincourt
 
Handley_Page said:
JUST A COMMON SOLDIER
(A Soldier Died Today)
by A. Lawrence Vaincourt

He was getting old and paunchy and his hair was falling fast,
And he sat around the Legion, telling stories of the past.
Of a war that he had fought in and the deeds that he had done,
In his exploits with his buddies; they were heroes, every one.

And tho' sometimes, to his neighbors, his tales became a joke,
All his Legion buddies listened, for they knew whereof he spoke.
But we'll hear his tales no longer for old Bill has passed away,
And the world's a little poorer, for a soldier died today.

He will not be mourned by many, just his children and his wife,
For he lived an ordinary and quite uneventful life.
Held a job and raised a family, quietly going his own way,
And the world won't note his passing, though a soldier died today.

When politicians leave this earth, their bodies lie in state,
While thousands note their passing and proclaim that they were great.
Papers tell their whole life stories, from the time that they were young,
But the passing of a soldier goes unnoticed and unsung.

Is the greatest contribution to the welfare of our land
A guy who breaks his promises and cons his fellow man?
Or the ordinary fellow who, in times of war and strife,
Goes off to serve his Country and offers up his life?

A politician's stipend and the style in which he lives
Are sometimes disproportionate to the service that he gives.
While the ordinary soldier, who offered up his all,
Is paid off with a medal and perhaps, a pension small.

It's so easy to forget them for it was so long ago,
That the old Bills of our Country went to battle, but we know
It was not the politicians, with their compromise and ploys,
Who won for us the freedom that our Country now enjoys.

Should you find yourself in danger, with your enemies at hand,
Would you want a politician with his ever-shifting stand?
Or would you prefer a soldier, who has sworn to defend
His home, his kin and Country and would fight until the end?

He was just a common soldier and his ranks are growing thin,
But his presence should remind us we may need his like again.
For when countries are in conflict, then we find the soldier's part
Is to clean up all the troubles that the politicians start.

If we cannot do him honor while he's here to hear the praise,
Then at least let's give him homage at the ending of his days.
Perhaps just a simple headline in a paper that would say,
Our Country is in mourning, for a soldier died today.

© 1987 A. Lawrence Vaincourt
Click to expand...

Thank you for sharing this. It has so much meaning for me. As a babyboomer, I have a more vivid recollection of WWII as do most in my generation in no small part because radio and after it ended, television after it ended. That wasn't so much the case in the early twentieth century. Like it or not, "The medium is the message."(Marshall McCluan)

I believe WWI was every bit as meaningful as the world war that came after it.

My wife's grandfather was a foot soldier in the trenches. He saved his young lieutenant's life who came from a wealthy family in Manhattan where coincidentally my wife'/ grandfather of more modest means worked in his family's grocery store after the war. They gave him an expensive watch ingratitude. We still have it.

https://youtu.be/ntt3wy-L8Ok
 
The Battles of the Somme occured before the US entered the conflict.

US deaths for the whole of WW1 were about 116,700.

British deaths for the Somme alone were 95,500. Total Allied deaths 146,000.

Total casualties, killed and wounded, between both sides were over 1 million.

War memorials throughout the British Commonwealth show many names of those killed on the Somme.
 
oggbashan said:
The Battles of the Somme occured before the US entered the conflict.

US deaths for the whole of WW1 were about 116,700.

British deaths for the Somme alone were 95,500. Total Allied deaths 146,000.

Total casualties, killed and wounded, between both sides were over 1 million.

War memorials throughout the British Commonwealth show many names of those killed on the Somme.
Click to expand...

I regret it if you thought my earlier post suggested my wife's American grandfather was in the battles of the Somme. This thread and the poems in it make me think about the many tragic battles of WWI.
 
I came across this one a few weeks back:

Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not)

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

- Keith Douglas (24 January 1920 – 9 June 1944)
 
That poem is from WWII

There's a brilliant reading of it by Sir Laurence Olivier in the BBC World at War series.

Thanks for posting it.



Bramblethorn said:
I came across this one a few weeks back:

Vergissmeinnicht (Forget-me-not)

Three weeks gone and the combatants gone
returning over the nightmare ground
we found the place again, and found
the soldier sprawling in the sun.

The frowning barrel of his gun
overshadowing. As we came on
that day, he hit my tank with one
like the entry of a demon.

Look. Here in the gunpit spoil
the dishonoured picture of his girl
who has put: Steffi. Vergissmeinnicht.
in a copybook gothic script.

We see him almost with content,
abased, and seeming to have paid
and mocked at by his own equipment
that's hard and good when he's decayed.

But she would weep to see today
how on his skin the swart flies move;
the dust upon the paper eye
and the burst stomach like a cave.

For here the lover and killer are mingled
who had one body and one heart.
And death who had the soldier singled
has done the lover mortal hurt.

- Keith Douglas (24 January 1920 – 9 June 1944)
Click to expand...
 
The Soldier
Rupert Brooke, 1887 - 1915

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
 
greenmountaineer said:
I regret it if you thought my earlier post suggested my wife's American grandfather was in the battles of the Somme. This thread and the poems in it make me think about the many tragic battles of WWI.
Click to expand...

No. I didn't think that. I was just putting the Battles of The Somme in context.

Without US forces the Allies couldn't have won WW1.
 
oggbashan said:
No. I didn't think that. I was just putting the Battles of The Somme in context.

Without US forces the Allies couldn't have won WW1.
Click to expand...

I have to disagree with that. Of the over 100k US killed, over 40k were lost due to the influenza epidemic.

The entry of the US certainly added to a morale boost to the Allies and a loss of morale to the Central Powers but militarily their contribution was negligible. The Americans were still learning lessons which the other allies had learnt over the last 4 years.

Germany had effectively been defeated with the lack of victory in their Spring Offensive. The Aussie and New Zealanders heavily contributed to morale loss of the Germans prior to the Hundred Days which ended the war. The Hundred Days was spearheaded by the Canadians and the Aussies.

The Germans had noted that the Canadians were used as shock troops to lead major offences. An operation was enacted that made the Germans believe the Canadians were being mobilized in one region. While in great secrecy the Canadians were moved to another.

The Canadians by then were masters of the set piece battle. And the Aussies with General Monash in charge mastered complete integration of all forces types.

The effects of morale cannot be discounted. The arrival of fresh US forces at the rate of 10k a day boosted Allied morale probably French morale more than anything. France was as exhausted as the Germans were.

Britain, acting as the US did in WW II, with manpower reserves and industrial output along with the effectiveness of Dominion forces during the last year was the biggest reason for Allied victory in The War to End All Wars.

Our victory at Vimy is seen as the first step out of the shadows of Empire.
 
Wilfred Owen
Spring Offensive

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept. But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones' pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky's mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field —
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.

Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste —
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun, —
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell's upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world's verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.

But what say such as from existence' brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames —
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder —
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?
 
Lost Innocence

Cold winds sweep down
over Ottawa from the
Gatineau Hills carrying
remnants of winter.
Is it this that makes
these old eyes water
or the memories?

What horrors have they seen,
these mundane men,
grizzled and bent,
standing now like monuments?
Comrades together once more
to salute those left behind
at Dieppe,
at Juno beach,
at Kap Yong.

There were good times too,
friendships forged in the fires of war,
a pride that shines, even now,
in the rows of proudly polished medals
and in those same sad eyes.

Few who fought in those four
years remain to remind us.
Twenty million died, but still
we sacrifice our young.

As jets fly low, respectfully
in formation and guns salute,
some wounds are too fresh
and young soldiers crumple,
weeping, mortally afraid once more.

A pride, if not remembrance,
is present in the eyes of a child
holding his tearful mother’s hand
and in the other a picture
of yet another soldier lost in
Afghanistan.
 
GuiltyPleasure said:
Cold winds sweep down
over Ottawa from the
Gatineau Hills carrying
remnants of winter.
Is it this that makes
these old eyes water
or the memories?

What horrors have they seen,
these mundane men,
grizzled and bent,
standing now like monuments?
Comrades together once more
to salute those left behind
at Dieppe,
at Juno beach,
at Kap Yong.

There were good times too,
friendships forged in the fires of war,
a pride that shines, even now,
in the rows of proudly polished medals
and in those same sad eyes.

Few who fought in those four
years remain to remind us.
Twenty million died, but still
we sacrifice our young.

As jets fly low, respectfully
in formation and guns salute,
some wounds are too fresh
and young soldiers crumple,
weeping, mortally afraid once more.

A pride, if not remembrance,
is present in the eyes of a child
holding his tearful mother’s hand
and in the other a picture
of yet another soldier lost in
Afghanistan.
Click to expand...

Is that yours?
 
A Halifax airport hotel in November, the day after the day after Donald Trumped Hillary and everyone is quiet even though it’s Happy Hour. A nondescript hotel, three floors, neutral rooms, an okay “Bistro” restaurant and bar which has good local beer and surprise greasy food. In the morning, there’s a free “Continental Breakfast” although the continent in question may be Antarctica. People are here to get away, most stay one night and fly south leaving their car in the hotel parking lot, which may well generate more revenue than the hotel. I just finished a three-day assignment a little north of here and am staying an extra night to pick up my wife when she arrives in the morning. Then we’ll go into the city and visit with our daughter for the weekend.

The exercise room, an expanded closet with one wall mirrored to make it look bigger, is crowded with three. The elliptical clunks and groans as I go through my paces and watch the post-mortem on CNN. The fellow on the weight machine next to me is taking the family to Florida for a cruise. David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again” flashes across my mind, but I just nod affirmatively and say “I hear they can be fun.”

Everything is packed and I’m off to the airport soon. The sky is grey but it isn’t raining which is good for the Remembrance Day ceremonies. But what I am remembering is Leonard Cohen now dead, a hero to scribblers up here. I leave with The Partisan playing in my mind.

When they poured across the border
I was cautioned to surrender
This I could not do
I took my gun and vanished.

I have changed my name so often
I've lost my wife and children
But I have many friends
And some of them are with me

An old woman gave us shelter
Kept us hidden in the garret
Then the soldiers came
She died without a whisper

There were three of us this morning
I'm the only one this evening
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison

Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows

Les Allemands étaient chez moi
Ils me dirent, "résigne toi"
Mais je n'ai pas peur
J'ai repris mon âme

J'ai changé cent fois de nom
J'ai perdu femme et enfants
Mais j'ai tant d'amis
J'ai la France entière

Un vieil homme dans un grenier
Pour la nuit nous a caché
Les Allemands l'ont pris
Il est mort sans surprise

Oh, the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then we'll come from the shadows​
 
GuiltyPleasure said:
It is, other writers must be given credit when quoted IMO. BTW you recently wrote a poetic description of an English churchyard that was near perfect.
Click to expand...

I asked because it's so good, now that sounds rude and it's not meant to be, but I'm sure you understand :rose:
 
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