troops 'retire'
10 When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run, Trampling the terrible corpses?blind with blood.
O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
1917 1918
Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing; And I was filled with such delight As prisoned birds must find in freedom, Winging wildly across the white
; Orchards and dark-green fields; on?on?and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted; And beauty came like the setting sun: My heart was shaken with tears; and horror Drifted away . . . O, but Everyone
10 Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Apr. 1919 1919
1. A city in northern France, in the front line 1. Many women were recruited into munitions through much of the war. The British assault on factories during the war. the Western Front that began on April 9, 1917, 2. In ancient Greece and Rome, victorious genwas known as the Battle of Arras. erals were crowned with laurel wreaths.
.
SASSOON: MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER / 1963
On Passing the New Menin Gate1
Who will remember, passing through this Gate,
The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?
Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate,?
Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?
5 Crudely renewed, the Salient2 holds its own.
Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;
Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,
The armies who endured that sullen swamp.
Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride
10 'Their name liveth for ever,' the Gateway claims.
Was ever an immolation so belied
As these intolerably nameless names?
Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime
Rise and deride this sepulchre0 of crime. tomb
1927-28 1928
From Memoirs of an Infantry Officer
[THE OPENING OF THE BATTLE OF THE SOMME]
On July [1916] the first the weather, after an early morning mist, was of the kind commonly called heavenly. Down in our frowsty cellar we breakfasted at six, unwashed and apprehensive. Our table, appropriately enough, was an empty ammunition box. At six-forty-five the final bombardment began, and there was nothing for us to do except sit round our candle until the tornado ended. For more than forty minutes the air vibrated and the earth rocked and shuddered. Through the sustained uproar the tap and rattle of machine-guns could be identified; but except for the whistle of bullets no retaliation came our way until a few 5.9' shells shook the roof of our dug-out. Barton and I sat speechless, deafened and stupefied by the seismic state of affairs, and when he lit a cigarette the match flame staggered crazily. Afterwards I asked him what he had been thinking about. His reply was 'Carpet slippers and Kettle- holders'. My own mind had been working in much the same style, for during that cannonading cataclysm the following refrain was running in my head:
They come as a hoon and a blessing to men,
The Something, the Owl, and the Waverley Pen.
For the life of me I couldn't remember what the first one was called. Was it the Shakespeare? Was it the Dickens? Anyhow it was an advertisement which I'd often seen in smoky railway stations. Then the bombardment lifted and lessened, our vertigo abated, and we looked at one another in dazed relief. Two Brigades of our Division were now going over the top on our right. Our
1. The names of 54,889 men are engraved on this nerable, being exposed to enemy fire from the front war memorial outside Brussels. and both sides. 2. Protruding part of fortifications or, as here, line 1. I.e., 5.9-caliber. of defensive trenches. Salients are particularly vul
.
1964 / VOICES FROM WORLD WAR 1
Brigade was to attack 'when the main assault had reached its final objective'. In our fortunate role of privileged spectators Barton and I went up the stairs to see what we could from Kingston Road Trench. We left Jenkins crouching in a corner, where he remained most of the day. His haggard blinking face haunts my memory. He
