(AA) Canto 19: Invasion
Pawn Moves
Under the white flag as he advanced
They say he stood bravely, never winced
As the first bullet pierced his lungs
Ruthven Todd
Aft shouts of war the shafts begin to fly,
No longer men must idle day-long days,
The sun was barely half-an-hour high
& all the Lowland Borders were ablaze;
Wilhemina
Rushes across the sea,
The crooked Swastika denuding majesty.
Rules re-writ for modern warfare;
First possess total surprise,
Then wholly dominate the air;
Thro’ th’Ardennes a phalanx flies,
Cheval-de-frise embatter’d bare
Beneath the Stuka skies,
‘Rev–Rev–Rev,’ three lines of polish’d Panzer,
Wait as if with Nelson off Trafalgar.
King Leopold laments the end
Of proud neutrality,
Forced to defend, his German ‘friend’
Is ravaging freely –
Men learn from history they’ve nothing learn’d from history.
Brussels
May 10th
1940
The Top Job
I was among you; I was sad, unearthly.
My words resounded everyplace.
While all of you just mocked me
Andre Bely
Chamberlain winces under back bench brays,
His government attack’d on every side,
Embarras’d, all, by Norwegian affrays,
The time has come to win back England’s pride;
As angers grow
Disillusionment grew,
“In the name of God, go! Let us have done with you!”
At the regal heart of kingdom,
Prime Minister retires, backs
His choice successor premium,
Elderly Lord Halifax,
Then news comes in from Belgium
of Germany’s attacks,
“But it must be Winston,” his Lordship splurts,
“The only one who’ll hit them where it hurts!”
To Churchill royal summons fly,
Soon to his majesty;
“Do you know why I’ve summon’d thy
Sel?” “No, ’tis beyond me…”
A laught, “Please form my government,” a poignant, “Certainly.”
Buckingham Palace
May 10th
1940
Lightning War
War! The winds are sighing it,
The hill birds are crying it
To the valley’s uttermost bounds
WH Ogilvie
Deep amidst the forested Sedan Gap
Rommel’s panzers re-fuelling for free,
From some deserted garage steals a map
To guide them all thro’ champaign to the sea;
The tanks oil full
No time to hesitate,
Breakneck into battle, for waiting games vexate.
As pontoons creak beneath the tracks,
Blitzkreig rolls on guns blazing,
France buckling under wide attacks,
Morale ever descending,
At last ! the Gallic backbone cracks
Sedan’s surrendering –
Rommel photographs a ghostly fortress,
Whose scenes of slaughter sanities emboss.
Down daggletail, rag-taggling roads
Fox thrusts his lethal lance,
the air explodes as carts & loads
Crush’d by ceaseless advance,
Once more Prussian milit’rism galls Gallic arrogance.
France
May 14th
1940
Arras
all dying isn’t sad
there is the dying that precedes the living
and that’s the secret kind
Ketty Nivyabandi
Defeat seems such a certain circumstance,
The Allies losing battleplans & pride,
The British cut off from the rest of France,
A state of siege upsetting ev’ry side;
At Charleville,
His boots muddy once more,
Hitler calls a council to clarify his war.
The orders whipp’d along the ranks
To wait their coming orders
Before Gravelines, refresh the tanks,
Secure the army’s borders;
What anger rode the riverbanks,
Thro’ the Wehrmacht’s warders,
Pois’d on the brink of total victory
His acts & dreams seem contradictory.
But little did those soldiers ken
The reason why they’d froze,
For Hitler, then, the Englishmen
Aryan juxtapose,
& all they needed was a Bismarkian bloody nose.
Charleville-Mézières
May 24th
1940
Britain Stirs
Now over the map that took ten million years
Of rain and sun to crust like boiler-slag,
The lines of fighting men progress like caterpillars
Louis Macneice
German Arms form an arm-like corridor,
Fist punching up thro’ Flanders to the coast,
Not wheel’d to Paris, as lost Bismarck’s War,
Tho’ given up is Galleini’s ghost;
Spirit thought fled
Seizes the Cinque ports,
The ghoul-songs of the dead blew thro’ abandon’d forts.
Adm’ral Ramsey climb’d Henry’s keep,
With a Nelsonian stance,
Gazes across the hoary deep
To the distant dark of France,
Where brave embattl’d Britons heap
Slim chips upon one chance…
Slipping back to Blighty via Dunkerque…
“It’s crazy, but I’ve got to make it work!”
For once the British do not reel
Before the German gale,
From Grand Fort Phillipe, down to Lille,
Let fresh defence prevail,
From now each deep, bloodletted inch be fought for tooth & nail.
France
May 27th
1940
Slaughterhouse
A deadly bullet gliding through my side
Lies heavy on my heart. I cannot live.
I feel my liver pierc’d & all my veins
Christopher Marlowe
Ninety-nine of the Norfolks surrounded,
Sick of France, the French & the Luftwaffe,
Endurance & ammo nigh exhausted,
Bullet-bitten… hon’rable surrender…
Not welcome here,
With fresh, scourging duress
Fensmen filling of fear, the infamous S.S.,
Disgusted at how well they fought,
Rifle home with hammer-butts,
Upsprunging crude kangaroo court,
With falsest dum-dum bullets,
Finding the long, the tall, the short,
Guilty; by bayonet
Them march’d off into line, promis’d no harm,
With hands-on-heads they file by Duries Farm.
Twin barrels of two maxim guns
Shoot murd’rous swathes of lead,
Hot scarlet runs, England’s brave sons
Now sweet & fitting dead,
Or groyners stick’d like old, sick pigs, or pistol’d thro’ the head.
La Paradis
May 27th
1940
Fall of Belgium
Disconsolate I go,
The summer looks as cold to me
As winter’s frost & snow
John Clare
With the line along Lys lying broken,
Leopold calls General Derousseaux,
“Best seek a ceasefire for beleagured men,”
Then pell-mell breaks for the Anvaing Chateaux;
All hope is gone
As a gladsome Fuhrer,
Offers only unconditional surrender.
As Belgium’s capitulation
Ends the bloody killing spree,
Twenty miles of unmann’d’ station,
Between Wipers & the sea,
Opens up to devastation
& Hitler’s infantry,
Coming as a most terrible surprise
To these medieval-minded Allies.
Of his stubborn neutrality
The King now counts the cost,
But dares not flee while his country
To providence is toss’d,
“I have decided to remain, the Westeren cause is lost.”
Wynendale Chateaux
May 28th
1940
Monty
That wretched wire before the village line
Rattles like rusty brambles or dead bine,
& there the daylight oozes into dun
Edmund Blunden
All hope was burn’d by Belgium’s bare defeat,
The onus falls on one to save the day,
Retrieving lines of severing retreat,
Night falls, & he ingages at Roublaix:
Twenty-five miles
Travers’d thro’ anxious night,
Now safe behind earth-piles awaiting dawn’s own light.
The Wehrmacht push, & how they push,
Impassionate with killing,
Against a rock that rides the rush,
Oblivious to shelling,
Monty inspires his men to crush
All that bloody schnelling –
The gifts of victory soon his to reap,
Those very precious twenty winks of sleep.
In one short hour the courier
Predicts a coming rout,
“Do not bother me…” “But sir!”
His patience snaps in shout,
Yells, “Tell that blasted brigadier to turf those rascals out.”
Louvain
May 29th
1940
Dunkerque
The old dead Captains fought their ships,
& the great dead admirals led the line.
It was England’s night, it was England’s sea.
Robert Nathan
Panic grips the fabl’d British army,
Her soldiers splinter’d into shatter’d shards,
Her wounded bench’d to face the enemy,
Her bodies rotting, her ordnance scrap-yards;
But for one lot,
Led by Ervine Andrews,
Whose pure Parthian shot let loose tho’ they must lose.
In soft barnthatch did Tommy ‘ide,
Wi’ captain & five more men,
Beneath them fifteen Germans died
(& they’d do ‘em all again),
Two poor survivors fled outside
Raw-scalp’d by Billy’s bren;
“Let’s scarper boys!” young lads fleshly blooded
Wade thro’ Flanders fieldscapes freshly flooded.
By dune collars up piles the kit,
“Look lads, just like Lytham!”
A Messerschmitt swoops down, to spit
Death’s teeth, O hangman’s drum,
Then inland hangs… they brush off sand, “Yer don’t get them on prom!”
Malo-les-Bains
May 30th
1940
Mumble Words 