Base Details – Siegfried Sassoon

March 17, 2016April 2, 2019 ~ Meg ~ 12 Comments

As the war drags on, dreams of glory are replaced with bitterness and cynicism as revealed in this short poem by Siegfried Sassoon from 1918.

Siegfried_Sassoon_by_George_Charles_Beresford_(1915) — The author, 1915

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,
I’d live with scarlet Majors at the Base
And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
You’d see me with my puffy petulant face,
Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel
Reading the Roll of Honor, ‘Poor young chap,’
I’d say– ‘I used to know his father well;
Yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap.’
And when the war is done and youth stone dead,
I’ll toddle safely home and die– in bed.

According to historian Barbara Tuchman:

“After the Marne, the war grew and spread until it drew in the nations of both hemispheres and entangled them in a pattern of world conflict no peace treaty could dissolve. The Battle of the Marne was one of the decisive battles of the world not because it determined that Germany would ultimately lose or the Allies would ultimately win the war but because it determined that the war would go on. There was no looking back …”

“General staffs, goaded by their relentless timetables [for troop mobilization], were pounding the tables for the signal to move lest their opponent gain an hour’s head start. Appalled upon the brink, the chiefs of state who would be ultimately responsible for their country’s fate attempted to back away, but the pull of military schedules dragged them forward.” — The Guns of August

(Header image thanks to 1914-1918.net)

Believe

October 27, 2015October 27, 2015 ~ Meg ~ 9 Comments

The shriek of shells, of mortar fire

We huddled in the trench’s filthy mire

Alone, not alone, in the cold, I grieve

The wretched truth I’ve yet to believe

We all were dying behind barbed wire

In response to Mind and Life Matter‘s limerick challenge

(Featured Image: In the trenches 1916, near Verdun, France- From The Western Front, Then and Now, John Giles)

The Great War through the eyes of a poet

October 23, 2015June 21, 2017 ~ Meg ~ 9 Comments

(Image: In the trenches south of Armèntieres, 1915, From The Western Front, Then and Now, by John Giles)

As many of you know, I’ve slowly been developing a story about a pair of distant cousins whose great grandfathers perished in the Great War. I must admit to having a morbid fascination with this most horrific period of human history. In the course of my research, I stumbled upon a collection of poetry, written about the war and the experiences of the men who fought those bloody and futile battles. I just have to share one or two of these with you. I’ll begin with this one by Wilfred Owen. The soldiers faced not only the enemy in battle but also the terrible conditions of trench warfare. The mud, the water, the lice and rats, and the cold:

Exposure

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knive us…

Wearied, we keep awake because the night is silent…

Low, drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient…

Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,

But nothing happens

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire,

Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.

Northward, incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,

Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.

What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow…

We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.

Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army

Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,

But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.

Less deathly than the air that shudders black with snow,

With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause, and renew;

We watch them wandering up and down the wind’s nonchalance,

But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with fingering stealth come feeling for our faces-

We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,

Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,

Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.

Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires, glozed

With crusted dark, red jewels; crickets jingle there;

For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;

Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed,

We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;

Nor ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.

For God’s invincible spring our love is made afraid;

Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,

For love of God seems dying.

Tonight, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,

Shriveling many hands, puckering foreheads crisp.

The burying party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,

Pause over half known faces. All their eyes are ice,

But nothing happens.

–Originally published in: The Collected Works of Wilfred Owen, Copyright Chatto & Windus Ltd. 1963