(AA) Canto 14: Boiling Points
Floating on the surface of the flooded trench was the mask of a human face which had detached itself from the skull.
Siegfried Sassoon
American Incunabula
Now you are one of us, you know our tears,
Those tears of pride & pain so fast to flow;
You too have sipped the first strange draught of woe
EM Walker
“Deutschland ganzlich einzukeisen!” throats wail,
Submerging terrors reverse the blockade,
Lusitania… Old Head of Kinsale…
Torpedoes… hopes of peace noyantly fade;
One explosion
Back-echoes to New York –
Ship lists, hiss-slips, is gone… the World’s press flock to Cork.
To Jerkwater the news soon spread,
Hank hock’d a hooch with Harry,
Shocking ink columns shaking read,
“I have German ancestry,
But those poor American dead
Have rais’d the beast in me!”
“It is was it is, Hank, don’t get involv’d!”
“But Buddy, how else could this be resolv’d?”
“Call off your wolves!” Kaiserwards went,
Wise, by Woodrow Wilson,
Threat keenly meant, the President
Frets at word from London.;
“Zepp’lins have bomb’d our capital…” sacred causal fusion.
Washington
May 10th
1915
The Last Grenadier
The corn was turnin’, hairst was near,
But lang afore the scythes could start
A sough o’ war gaed through the land
Charles Murray
An old man hobbl’d with his great-grandsons,
Breath’d in the dust of a past century,
The growls & the howls of the young Hun’s guns
Awakening his vivid memory;
Tho’ barely sane,
Half driven blind by age,
He shuffl’d his frail frame onto that famous stage.
Tween Hougoumont & La Haye-Saint
His raging nostalgia veer’d,
Tward a panoramic lion
All his stumbling footsteps veer’d,
Fifty thousand phantoms upon
Hades horison reer’d,
Dogs braying fearfully from nearby farms,
All round resounds the mighty clash of arms.
He saw his father hard impal’d
Upon the scarlet square,
& as he wail’d the Gaurdsmen fail’d,
His Grand Pa-Pa led there,
Shielding his cowering grand-child whilst bayoneted bare.
Waterloo
June 18th
1915
Gallipoli
They seek to bring us under
But England lives, & still will live –
For we’ll crush the despot under
Alfred Tennyson
Kitchener’s Churchillian conjecture
Battle brings before Constantinople,
Champagne thrill of Achaean adventure,
The Gentle, savage; the Savage, gentle;
“Where are you from?”
“Melbourne…” “Why are you here?”
Senses of soldiers numb, led captive to the rear.
The soul of Rupert Brooke releas’d,
Packs poetry for the trip,
Byronic sortie to the East
But mosquito punctures lip,
By volumes his visions increas’d,
Death climbs aboard the ship,
For what seem’d a tayle, epic & Trojan,
Now slowly sluiced with tragical poison.
From sandy cliffs to hills jagged
Sloping from Chunuk Blair,
Up ridge ragged, long trail hagger’d,
Thro’ hot, wilderness air,
Bluce Slater from Australia spat bullets ev’rywhere.
Turkey
August
1915
East Lancashire’s War
I saw him stab
& stab again
a well-killed Boche
Herbert Read
“Give some fella a gun, ‘ees an ‘ero,
Give ‘im a conscience, ‘ee gets thrown in jail!”
“Charlie,” said Rose, “I wunt want yer to go!”
“Now why would I wanna leave you?” a wail
Strays down the street,
With his next door neighbour,
“Put summat on yer feet & go get yer mother!”
Beneath the rugged Hamildon,
Marching by a brown canal,
Pass morosely top o’ Hapton
As at some dour funeral,
Reeling, at length, thro’ Accrington,
To hear of their own Pal…
Upon the Town Hall notice boards they’ll see,
‘Patrick Sumner has died for his country.’
Freda broke down, felt in her heart
An ache to never die,
Charlie’s thoughts dart, world wrench’d apart,
“Revenge! Revenge!” he’ll cry
Racing to add his signature to Gen’ral Haig’s supply.
Lancashire
October
1915
Deserter
I want to go home. I want to go home.
The whizzbangs they rattle, the cannon they roar,
I don’t want to go to the Front any more!
Anonymous
There is a madness in the mind of man,
The water torture of a constant war,
Always up fighting, always in the van,
Frank phantasizes of his native shore
Scarpers his trench,
This war for him’s over,
Pretending to be French all the way to Dover.
He ran home to his early life
From man’s terrors travels far
& ravages his pretty wife,
Trousers mingle with her bra,
But then there comes the cruel knife
To open up the scar,
Cold knock-knock at door, two stone-faced Sergeants
Have come to fetch this white feather to France.
His family’s tearful farewell
Still haunting all the while
He paced the cell, a living hell
& barely legal trial,
Shot at the wall… some sprawl’d ‘deserter’ sporting insane smile..
France
March
1916
All Quiet on the Western Front
The candle stumps stand there staring solemnly.
Across the nocturnal vault of the church
Moans go drifting & choking words
Wilhelm Klemm
T’was just another day in the trenches,
The ‘stand to’ bugler blew before the dawn,
From this heatless zee-catching he wrenches;
Slugs, frogs, bats, rats & beetles flee the yawn;
Breakfast before
Shelling begins at eight,
Less murder, more the bore men call the ‘Morning Hate.’
Those walking with the Lord worship’d,
Others played or talk’d instead,
The gaunt are by despair oft gripp’d,
Some stand up & lost their head,
The ‘stand-to’ call’d as sunshine slipp’d
In bed of rosy red;
The ‘Evening Hate’ has cool’d as fades the light,
Both sides prepare patrols to pass the night.
Some flick thro’ books, some capture mice,
Some requisition rest,
Some pick at lice, some lose at dice,
Some gaze out to the West,
Watching a crimson streak that might have issued from Christ’s breast.
France
April
1916
Verdun
Does it matter? Losing your sight?…
There’s such splendid work for the blind:
& people will always be kind
Siegfried Sassoon
There is a glory in the call to arms,
Marshall Petain bestrode the sacred route,
All galvanised by strong & simple charms,
“The city must be held here coute que coute!”
Firm-fisted hands
Charcoal maps with action.
“Monsieurs, les Allemands sont toujours a Noyon!”
“The nation’s first emergency,
France with faith & fire… ATTAQUE!”
Jean Francois treads the Route Sacree,
Two columns pass on the track,
His marching up to Calvary,
The other slouching back…
& heeding an old soldiers wise advice
Fought well & waiv’d the supreme sacrifice.
With Douamont another Metz,
The war within a war,
Recalling debts the Marshall nets
The ruin’d Fort de Vaux,
Scanty reward for non-stop days of death-craz’d blood & gore.
France
June 7th
1916
Battle of the Somme
Rivers are brim-full of blood by fall of night.
Legion are the bodies laid out in the reeds,
Covered white with the strong birds of death.
George Heym
The Top Brass dined in rich bigwigerie,
“An effort must be made to win the war!
For now we face a weaker Germany,
The hell pits at Verdun her running sore!”
Over the top,
Footballs leading the way,
Thinking nothing could stop them on the Berlin way.
Brave captains, blades melded to hand,
Lead the calm, steel-hatted rows
Cross tangl’d miles of No Mans Land…
“Here they come!” squawk sentry crows,
From deep redoubts burnt soldiers stand
Singe-tingling heads to toes;
‘Das Trommelfeur’ offers a rare respite,
“At last the bastards have come out to fight…”
The chatter of the Maxim gun
Some violent thunderclap,
“No man shall run toward the Hun!”
(Thought absent from the map),
Officers thinning on the field, “Well cheerio old chap!”
Blighty Valley
July 1st
1916
Catalytic Conversion
I have a rendezvous with Death
at some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
Alan Seeger
As Siegessauler soldiery faded,
Der Kaiser holds his heavy head in hands,
His crumbling empire… hungry, blockaded,
The curse of scurvy scourging thro’ his lands;
There but remains
One way to win the War,
To sink the shipping lanes that lap the western shore,
& sunk enough to soon impress
A modicum of urgency
Upon America’s Congress,
Their precious democracy
Should Europe’s problems readdress,
& forge all people free
From tyranny, and threats of violence made:
The President calls for a great crusade,
Then took tea at the Pentagon,
“What clothes our forces wear?”
“The fleet rusts on, arms next to none,
A few planes in the air!”
“We’d better get a move on, then, we’re needed over there.”
Washington
April 6th
1917
Mumble Words 