Henry Lamont Simpson (1897 – 1918) – British soldier poet

Henry Lamont Simpson was one of the WW1 poets included in a commemorative exhibition held in 2018 

Born on 5th June 1897 at Crosby-on-Eden, Carlisle, Cumberland, UK (now Cumbria), Henry’s parents were Henry Colbeck Simpson, a tailor, and his wife, Margaret Jane Simpson, née Quirk.

Henry was educated at Carlisle Grammar School and won a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. 

However, instead of going to university, Henry was commissioned into the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers in June 1917. He was posted to the Western Front and took part in the Battle of Ypres in August 1917.  

Henry was killed by a sniper's bullet on 29th August 1918, while the Battalion was in front line trenches at Strazeele, near Hazebrouck. He is commemorated on the VIS-EN-ARTOIS MEMORIAL in VIS-EN-ARTOIS MILITARY CEMETERY, HAUCOURT, Pas de Calais; Reference Panel 5 and 6.

Here is one of Henry's poems:

“I cursed each tune” by Henry Lamont Simpson

I cursed each tune 

Of night-dim wood 

And Naiad's stream,

By that mad moon 

Asearch for blood 

And the waxen gleam 

Clearing the Battlefields
Mary Riter Hamilton

Of dead faces 

Under the trees 

In the trampled grass,

Till the bloody traces 

Of the agonies 

Of night-time pass. 

Henry’s WW1 poetry collection “Moods and tenses” was published in 1919 by Erskine Macdonald, London.

The poems of a soldier who died in World War One have been turned into a song called Remembrance Day - see https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-29975817

Noel Marcus Francis Corbett (1887 – 1962) – British Royal Naval officer and poet

Born in Lyme Regis, Dorset, UK on 20th December 1887, Noel’s father was the actor Thalberg Corbett and his mother was Edith Corbett, nee Harvey. 

Also known as T.B. Thalberg, Noel’s father was born in Gloucestershire in 1864 and died in Cornwall in 1947.

Noel was educated at Stubbington House School, was known as "the cradle of the Navy", which was founded in 1841 as a boys' preparatory school in the Hampshire village of Stubbington, around 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Solent. The school was relocated to Ascot in 1962, merging with Earleywood School, and closed in 1997.  

Noel joined the Royal Navy and was appointed a Midshipman in June 1904 and Sub-Lieutenant in August 1907. Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 30th November 1909, he served aboard the battleship HMS London, from October 1910 - February 1912. He was aboard the ship when in December 1911 she was called upon to give aid to the passengers and crew of the P. & O, liner S.S. Delhi, which had run aground near Cape Spartel, Morocco. Amongst the passengers were the Duke and Duchess of Fife (The Princess Royal) and their two daughters, which only gave further urgency to a grave situation. For his services in the rescue of the passengers and crew of the Delhi and for saving the life of Able Seaman Luxton, Noel was awarded the Sea Gallantry Medal and the Royal Humane Society Medal in silver. 

In 1915, Noel married Alice Jane Averina Hughes and the couple had a daughter, Daphne Edna H. Corbett (1916 - 1983), and a son. 

Noel served on HMS Indomitable during the First World War and was at the Battle of Jutland. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Commander on 30th November, 1917 and left the ship when appointed to the light cruiser HMS Aurora as First Lieutenant on 19th February, 1918.

HMS Indomitable

HMS Indomitable was one of three Invincible-class battlecruisers built for the Royal Navy before the First World War and had an active career during the war. She tried to hunt down the German ships Goeben and Breslau in the Mediterranean when war broke out and bombarded Turkish fortifications protecting the Dardanelles even before the British declared war on Turkey. She helped to sink the German armoured cruiser Blücher during the Battle of Dogger Bank in 1915 and towed the damaged British battlecruiser HMS Lion to safety after the battle. She damaged the German battlecruisers Seydlitz and Derfflinger during the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916 and watched her sister ship HMS Invincible explode. Deemed obsolete after the war, she was sold for scrap in 1921.

On 3rd November 1914, Churchill ordered the first British attack on the Dardanelles following the opening of hostilities between Turkey and Russia. The attack was carried out by Indomitable and Indefatigable, as well as the French pre-dreadnought battleships Suffren and Vérité. Indomitable was ordered to return to England in December. 

HMS Aurora was an Arethusa-class light cruiser that saw service in the First World War. She 

HMCS Aurora 1931

participated in the Battle of Dogger Bank and was a member of the Grand Fleet when the main fleet of the Imperial German Navy surrendered to it in 1918. Following the war, Aurora was placed in reserve and in 1920, the cruiser was transferred to the Royal Canadian Navy. Her service with the Royal Canadian Navy was brief, being paid off in 1922. The cruiser was sold for scrap in 1927 and broken up.

On 27th November 1919, Noel was appointed from Aurora for the new battlecruiser H.M.S. Hood.  For his services during the First World War, Noel was awarded the French Croix de Guerre (London Gazette 30 November 1917). 

HMS Hood was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy (RN). Hood was the first of the planned four Admiral-class battlecruisers to be built during the First World War. Already under construction when the Battle of Jutland occurred in mid-1916, that battle revealed serious flaws in her design despite drastic revisions before she was completed four years later.

HMS Hood 1924

(On 24 May 1941 during the Second World War, early in the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Hood was struck by several German shells, exploded, and sank within 3 minutes, with the loss of all but three of her crew of 1,418.)

On 30th June 1922, Noel was promoted to the rank of Commander.He was placed on the Retired List at his own request with the rank of Captain on 20th December 1933. The following year he was appointed Superintendent of the training ship “Cornwall”. 

HMS Cornwall

HMS Cornwall was a 74-gun third-rate Vengeur-class ship of the line built for the Royal Navy in the 1810s, commissioned in 1815 as HMS Wellesley. She was built out of teak which made her incredibly resistant to rot, and spent most of her service in reserve and was converted into a school ship in her later years.  

The ship was badly damaged during the Blitz on London in the Second World War.

Alice Corbett died on 6th May 1936 and Noel died on 20th January 1962 in Sutton

Noel’s WW1 poetry collection was “A naval motley, verses written at sea during the war and before it” (Methuen, London, 1916) and his poems were in 4 WW1 anthologies.  Here is one of his poems:

"Lines Written Somewhere in the North Sea" by Noel F. M. Corbett

The laggard hours drift slowly by; while silver mist-wreaths veil the sky

And iron coast wheron, flung high, the North Sea breaks in foam.

When flame the pallid Northern Lights on seeming age-long winter nights,

Then oftentimes for our delight God sends a dream of Home.

And once again we know the peace of little red-roofed villages

That nestle close in some deep crease amid the rolling wealds

That northward, eastward, southward sweep, fragrant with thyme and flecked with sheep,

To where the corn is standing deep above the ripening fields.

And once again in that fair dream I see the sibilant, swift stream -

Now gloomy-green and now agleam - that flows by Furnace Mill,

And hear the plover's plaintive cry above the common at Holtye,

When redly glows the dusky sky and all the woods are still.

Oh, I remember as of old, the copse aflame with russet gold,

The sweet half-rotten Scent of mould, the while I stand and hark

To unseen woodland life that stirs before the clamant gamekeepers,

Till, sudden, out a pheasant whirrs to cries of "Mark cock, mark!"

And there are aged inns that sell the mellow, cool October ale,

What time one tells an oft-told tale around the friendly fires,

Until the clock with muffled chime asserts that it is closing time,

And o'er the fields now white with rime the company retires.

How long ago and far it seems, this peaceful country of our dreams,

Of fruitful fields and purling streams - the England that we know:

Who holds within her sea-girt ring all that we love, and love can bring;

Ah, Life were but a little thing to give to keep her so!

Sources: Find my Past, Free BMD

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978),  p. 96 

https://archive.org/details/museinarmscollec00osbouoft/page/xxxiv/mode/2up

http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Noel_Marcus_Francis_Corbett

http://www.authorandbookinfo.com/cgi-bin/auth.pl?C010876

https://www.ancestry.com.au/search/collections/1030/?name=Alfred_Hughes&birth=1886&death=1936&pcat=42&qh=e%2FTMFsWBfVuBhW%2BjFZUDig%3D%3D

https://www.theirvingsociety.org.uk/the-thalbery-mystery-by-alex-bisset/

Clifford Henry Benn Kitchin (1895 – 1967) - writer and poet

With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich whose post reminded me I had not yet researched Clifford

Clifford photo taken
by Lady Ottoline
Morrell

Born on 17th October 1895 in Harrogate, Yorkshire, UK, Clifford was the elder son of Clifford Kitchin, a Barrister at Law, and his wife, Sarah Ellen Kitchin, nee Benn. 

Educated at Clifton College, Bristol and Exeter College, Oxford University, Clifford followed his father into the legal profession and went on to join the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps (OTC). He was commissioned into the Royal Warwickshire Regiment  8th July 1916 as a 2nd Lieutenant and served on the Western Front.  His final rank was Lieutenant. On 22nd April 1917, Clifford was admitted to Catterick Military Hospital 

Clifford’s younger brother John Frderick Raymond Kitchin, who was born in 1898, was killed in WW1.

“The Devon and Exeter Gazette”, Monday, June 24, 1918: “SEAPLANE TRADEDY – A verdict of “Death from misadventure” was returned at an inquest at a South Coast town on Saturday on Lt. John Frederick R. Kitchin,  and Second Lieut. George Cole, pilot and observer of a seaplane, who were killed the previous day. The evidence showed that the machine had difficulty in rising from the water owing to rough sea. It struck a pier, burst into flames, overturned, and fell into the sea. Medical opinion was that, although the bodies were severely burned, death was probably caused by drowning.”

After the war Clifford wrote books and also bred and raced greyhounds. On   the 1939 Census he is recorded as living at Chiddinghurst, Chiddingly, Chalvington, Hailsham R.D., Sussex and described himself as a novelist. 

Clifford’s WW1 poetry collections were:

"Curtains". Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1919. (poetry)

"Winged Victory". Oxford: B.H. Blackwell, 1920. (poetry)

Catherine W. Reilly.- "English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1978) pp. 2 and 191

Here are some of Clifford's poems:

 THE BATTLEFIELDS REVISITED

I. "THE HAPPY WARRIOR/' 

" IF I survive, I shall return again 

Battlefield visit

To Merville, Arras, Albert, Neuve-Chapelle, 

The towns of my companions who fell 

As petals of a rose beneath the rain. 

Yea, though the blood of friends be shed in vain, 

I that now pass the inmost gate of Hell 

Shall rise, and sing at last invincible 

The song of thanksgiving among the slain."- 

The prayer is answered. After many days 

He comes once more to tread the ancient ways 

Where poppies deck old wounds with scarves of red, 

Till seeing three frail crosses on a mound 

He kneels awhile to kiss the tortured ground, 

Wishing he too were sleeping with the dead. 

II. ARRAS. 

ROOFS flung aside like curtains, twisted beams 

Arras in WW1

Stretching their blackened fingers to the sky, 

Thin solitary gables looming high, 

Fold, in the void, vague penitential dreams. 

Before the moon, the cold cathedral gleams 

A white-limbed giant, glad to sanctify 

The new-built houses, whose foundations lie 

As islands washed with melancholy streams. 

The exiles have returned, and in the shade 

Of narrow streets, an endless cavalcade, 

Wanders with expectation to and fro, 

Till at the sudden music of a band 

They dance among the ruins hand in hand, 

And war becomes a tale told long ago. 

III. VIMY. 

HERE have the emblems of calamity 

Fringed with a tasselled flame the grey-black air, 

While swollen eye-lids blinded with despair 

Wept for the grave's reluctant mystery. 

Here was the wine of life poured sombrely 

WW1 Trench with yellow flowers

Upon the soil of plains remote and bare, 

Till Time the Mage with ceremonial care 

Delivered offspring of the agony. 

Amid the tangled wire the rose is born, 

And no-man's-land with locks of golden corn 

Quivers forgetful of the darkened hours. 

While with a wistful smile the reaper sees 

Gliding along a line of broken trees 

The crumbling trench ablaze with yellow flowers. 

pp. 55 - 57 "Winged Victory" 

https://archive.org/details/wingedvictory00kitciala/page/n3/mode/2up

Sources: Find my Past, Free BMD and

Dr. Connie Ruzich @wherrypilgrim via Twitter on 21st August 2022 

The documentary film "The Somme" opened in 34 cinemas in London on Aug 21, 1916. In its first months, an estimated 20 million people view the film. Shortly after the end of the war, Clifford Henry Benn Kitchen (1895  - 1967) wrote a haunting 5-line poem about the film: 

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-somme-film.html

Irving Berlin (1888 – 1989) – American song writer and composer

I read somewhere that “all songs are poems” which is why I am including Irving Berlin here

Seargent Berlin WW1

Born Israel Beilin on 11th May 1888, in the Russian Empire, his father Moses (1848–1901) was an itinerant Cantor.  His mother was Lena Lipkin Beilin (1850–1922).  

The family went to America when Irving was five years old. The Berlins were one of hundreds of thousands of Jewish families who emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, escaping discrimination, poverty and brutal pogroms. Other such families included those of George and Ira Gershwin, Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, L. Wolfe Gilbert, Jack Yellen, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM), and the Warner brothers.

On 1st April 1917, after President Woodrow Wilson declared that America would enter The First World War, Berlin felt that Tin Pan Alley should do its duty and support the war with inspirational songs. Berlin wrote the song, "For Your Country and My Country", stating that "we must speak with the sword not the pen to show our appreciation to America for opening up her heart and welcoming every immigrant group." He also co-wrote a song aimed at ending ethnic conflict, "Let's All Be Americans Now".

In 1917, Berlin was drafted into the United States Army, and his induction became headline news, with one paper headline reading, "Army Takes Berlin!" But the Army wanted Berlin, now aged 30, to do what came naturally to him  - i.e. write songs. While stationed with the 152nd Depot Brigade at Camp Upton, Long Island, he composed an all-soldier musical revue titled "Yip Yip Yaphank", written to be a patriotic tribute to the United States Army. The following summer, the show was taken to Broadway where it also included a number of hits, including "Mandy" and "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", which he performed himself.

The shows earned $150,000 for a camp service center. One song he wrote for the show but decided not to use, was "God Bless America".

List of songs written by Irving Berlin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_songs_written_by_Irving_Berlin

“For Your Country And My Country” (1917)

We know you love your land of liberty

We know you love your U.S.A.

But if you want the world to know it

Now's the time to show it

Your Uncle Sammy needs you one and all

Answer to his call

For your country and my country

With millions of real fighting men

It's your duty and my duty

To speak with the sword, not a pen

If Washington were living today

With sword in hand he'd stand up and say

For your country and my country

I'll do it all over again

America has opened up her heart

To ev'ry nationality

And now she asks of ev'ry nation

Their appreciation

It makes no diff'rence now from where you came

We are all the same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTQQGfOdbu4

A poem entitled “Through a Glass, Darkly” by American General George S. Patton, Jr. (1885 - 1945)

Patton in 1919

Born on 11th November 1885 and educated at the Virginia Military Institute and West Point United States Military Academy, George S. Patton began his military career leading cavalry troops against Mexican forces.

Promoted to the rank of Captain in May 1917, Patton left for Europe.  As Pershing's personal aide, Patton oversaw the training of American troops in Paris until September, then moved to Chaumont and was assigned as a post Adjutant, commanding the headquarters company overseeing the base. Patton was dissatisfied with the post and began to take an interest in tanks, as Pershing sought to give him command of an infantry battalion. While in a hospital for jaundice, Patton met Colonel Fox Conner, who encouraged him to work with tanks instead of infantry.

On 10th November 1917, Patton was assigned to establish the AEF Light Tank School. He was sent to the French Army's tank training school at Champlieu near Orrouy, where he drove a Renault FT light tank. 

Patton was promoted to Major in January 1918 and took delivery of the first ten tanks for the AEF on 23rd March 1918, at the tank school at Bourg, a small village close to Langres, in the Haute-Marne Département. The only US soldier with tank-driving experience, Patton personally backed seven of the tanks off the train. Patton trained tank crews to operate in support of infantry, and promoted its acceptance among reluctant infantry officers. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in April 1918, and attended the Command and General Staff College in Langres.

In August 1918, he was placed in charge of the U.S. 1st Provisional Tank Brigade (which was redesignated the 304th Tank Brigade on 6th November 1918). Patton's Light Tank Brigade was part of Colonel Samuel Rockenbach's Tank Corps, part of the American First Army. Personally overseeing the logistics of the tanks in their first combat use by U.S. forces, and reconnoitering the target area for their first attack himself, Patton ordered that no U.S. tank be surrendered.  Patton commanded American-crewed Renault FT tanks at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, leading the tanks from the front for much of their attack, which began on 12th September 1918. He walked in front of the tanks into the German-held village of Essey, and rode on top of a tank during the attack into Pannes, seeking to inspire his men.

Patton's Brigade was then moved to support U.S. I Corps in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. He personally led a troop of tanks through thick fog as they advanced 5 miles (8 km) into German lines.  Patton was wounded while leading six men and a tank in an attack on German machine guns near the town of Cheppy.  His orderly, Private First Class Joe Angelo, saved Patton, for which he was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Patton commanded the battle from a shell hole for another hour before being evacuated for treatment. 

In hospital, Patton wrote in a letter to his wife: "The bullet went into the front of my left leg and came out just at the crack of my bottom about two inches to the left of my rectum. It was fired at about 50 m so made a hole about the size of a [silver] dollar where it came out."

For his actions in Cheppy, Patton received the Distinguished Service Cross. For his leadership of the brigade and tank school, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. He was also awarded the Purple Heart for his combat wounds after the decoration was created in 1932.

A poem entitled “Through a Glass, Darkly” by General George S. Patton, Jr.  The poem was composed on 16th September 1922.  

Through the travail of the ages,

Midst the pomp and toil of war,

Have I fought and strove and perished

Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people

In all panoplies of time

Have I seen the luring vision

Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,

I have warred for pastures new,

I have listed to the whispers

When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle

In each changeless changing shape

From the high souled voice of conscience

To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,

Played the hero and the knave;

Fought for belly, shame, or country,

And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles

For the visions are not clear,

Yet, I see the twisted faces

And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior

In His sacred helpless side.

Yet, I've called His name in blessing

When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows

Where we hairy heathens warred,

I can taste in thought the lifeblood;

We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision

I can sense the coppery sweat,

Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery

When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness

Where the Persian darts bounced clear,

See their chariots wheel in panic

From the Hoplite's leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,

Reaching for the walls of Tyre.

Hear the crash of tons of granite,

Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,

Can I see the Legion close,

As our third rank moved in forward

And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish

Of that blistering treeless plain

When the Parthian showered death bolts,

And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering

Of those arrows in my neck.

Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage

As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks

When my Flemish plate gave way

And the lance ripped through my entrails

As on Crecy's field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness

Of the glittering tropic sea

I can see the bubbles rising

Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest

I have heard the bulwarks go

When the crashing, point blank round shot

Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass

On the red and slippery deck

With all Hell aflame within me

And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General

Have I galloped with Murat

When we laughed at death and numbers

Trusting in the Emperor's Star.

Till at last our star faded,

And we shouted to our doom

Where the sunken road of Ohein

Closed us in it's quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a'clatter

Have I waddled on the foe

Belching death at twenty paces,

By the star shell's ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly

The age long strife I see

Where I fought in many guises,

Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness

What the objects were I wrought,

But as God rules o'er our bickerings

It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,

Shall I battle as of yore,

Dying to be born a fighter,

But to die again, once more.

Source:

http://robert-e-howard.org/ShadowSinger20SS13.html

The Battle of St. Mihiel, Verdun, France was a battle of the First World War that took place on the Western Front from 12th to 15th September 1918 at the strategically important front ledge near Saint-Mihiel that had been held by the German side for years.  The American Expeditionary Force (A.E.F.), reinforced by French troops, under the joint command of John Pershing, against the German Army Department C, reinforced by k.u.k.(Austrian) troops. 

French tank at St. Mihiel

American Historian and Author Dr Connie Ruzich inspired this research with a post on her website Behind their Lines about the writers and poets of the First World War, featuring a delightful poem by Patton about tanks - which is worth reading:

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/07/pattons-poetry.html

Cheppy is a commune in the Meuse department in Grand Est in northeastern France. It was a site of fighting during WW1. An American monument sculpted by American sculptor Nancy Coonsman (1887 - 1976) was erected there by the State of Missouri after the war to honor the volunteers of the state killed in WW1.

Missouri Monument
Cheppy

Additional sources:

https://www.criticalpast.com/stock-footage-video/Cheppy+France+1918

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/07/pattons-poetry.html

http://www.webmatters.net/france/ww1_usa_cheppy.htm

Ernst Stadler (1883 – 1914) – German poet

With thanks to AC Benus* for reminding me that I had not yet researched Ernst Stadler and for translating Stadler’s poem “Fahrt über die Kölner Rheinbrücke bei Nacht” which is featured in Rudolf Binding’s “A Fatalist at War”

Ernst Maria Richard Stadler was born on 11th August 1883 in Colmar, Alsace-Lorraine in the north east of France, which was in German hands at that time, having been captured by Germany during the Franco-Prussian War (19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871). 

Ernst was educated in the nearby city of Strasbourg, a port on the River Rhine. He attended Strasbourg University and in 1906 he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Magdalen College, Oxford, England.  He went on to teach German at Brussels University.

In 1914 Ernst volunteered to join the German Army and was killed on 30th October 1914 fighting at Zandvoorde near Ypres on the Western Front.

Ernst Stadler’s collection of poems “Der Aufbruch” was published in 1914.

In his book "A Fatalist at War" Rudolph Binding featured the following poem with his comments about Ernst Stadler:

West Flanders, April 23, 1916

… One can get sad over quite different things. For instance, I read a poem yesterday, and I swear to you that the man who could write such a poem was a poet by the grace of all the gods. But he is dead; he was killed in the autumn of 1914 on the Western Front. His name was Ernst Stadler, born in August 1883, in Kolmar.

But here is the poem ; it seems to me so splendid that I am very sad that he will never write one again. Here it is :

"Fahrt über die Kölner Rheinbrücke bei Nacht"    

The Bridge at Cologne

Der Schnellzug tastet Sich und stößt die Dunkelheit entlang.

Kein Stern will vor. Die ganze Welt ist nur ein enger, nachtumschienter Minengang,

Darein zuweilen Förderstellen blauen Lichtes jähe Horizonte reißen: Feuerkreis

Von Kugellampen, Dächern, Schloten, dampfend, strömend . . . nur sekundenweis . . .

Und wieder alles schwarz. Als führen wir ins Eingeweid der Nacht zur Schicht.

Nun taumeln Lichter her . . . verirrt, trostlos vereinsamt . . . mehr . . . und sammeln sich . . . und werden dicht.

Gerippe grauer Häuserfronten liegen bloß, im Zwielicht bleichend, tot – etwas muß kommen . . . oh, ich fühl es schwer

Im Hirn. Eine Beklemmung singt im Blut. Dann dröhnt der Boden plötzlich wie ein Meer:

Wir fliegen, aufgehoben, königlich durch nachtentrissne Luft, hoch überm Strom. O Biegung der Millionen Lichter, stumme Wacht,

Vor deren blitzender Parade schwer die Wasser abwärts rollen. Endloses Spalier, zum Gruß gestellt bei Nacht!

Wie Fackeln stürmend! Freudiges! Salut von Schiffen über blauer See! Bestirntes Fest!

Wimmelnd, mit hellen Augen hingedrängt! Bis wo die Stadt mit letzten Häusern ihren Gast entläßt.

Und dann die langen Einsamkeiten. Nackte Ufer. Stille. Nacht. Besinnung. Einkehr. Kommunion. Und Glut und Drang

Zum Letzten, Segnenden. Zum Zeugungsfest. Zur Woll-lust.[i] Zum Gebet. Zum Meer. Zum Untergang.

 

The man is dead ; what one would give to bring him back to life! But others remain and will not be killed, although they can sing of nothing but their lecherous blood and the greasy grimaces of their cushions. But when one is overcome by a great and natural disgust — see, there comes a Stadler with whom one "flies, flowery exalted, kinglike through night-enfolded air, high over the stream."

The Resurrection of the Soldiers
Sir Stanley Spence CBE, RA (1891 - 1959)
National Trust

 From "A Fatalist at War" by Rudolf Binding, translated by Ian F.D. Morrow

pp 102 - 103 https://archive.org/details/fatalistatwar00rudo/page/102/mode/2up

AC Benus has very kindly translated the poem for us:

"Passage across the Cologne Rhine Bridge at night"

The express train feels its way along to plow through the darkness.

No star leads from the front. The whole world’s merely a night-shrouded, mineshaft,   

Into which, from time to time, conveyors of bluish light abruptly disrupt horizons: fire-rings

Of spherical streetlights, factory roofs, smokestacks, steaming, streaming . . . only a second’s worth . . .

And all is black again. As if we’re led into the bowels of the night for a graveyard shift.

Now lights stagger past . . . lost, desolately lonely . . . more . . . to congregate . . . to become thick.

The framework of gray housefronts lie bare, blanching in the half-light, dead –something must come . . . oh, I feel it ponderous on the brain. An apprehension sings in the blood. Then suddenly the ground rumbles like the sea:

We’re flying, elevated, kinglike through night-torn air, high above the current.

O riverbend of a million lights, mutely watched,

Before the waters’ flashing parade heavily rolls downstream.

A never-ending cordon, received gravely by night.

Like lit torches surging! Jubilantly! Bonfire of ships over bluer pools! Some starry festival!     

Thriving with life, bright eyes penetrating! Up to where the last houses of the city discharge their patrons.

And then the lengthening seclusions. Naked shores. Silence. Night.

Reflection. Contemplation. Communion. And passion and desire

To the very last, consecrated. To the festival of begetting. To woolly exuberance.

To prayer. To the sea. To ultimate perdition.

Poetry by Heart featured the following poem by Stadler:

“Setting Out”  1913

There was a time before, when fanfares bloodily tore apart my own impatient brain,

So that, up-rearing like a horse, it bit savagely at the rein.

Then tambourines sounded the alarm on every path

And a hail of bullets seemed like the loveliest music on earth.

Then, suddenly, life stood still. Different paths were leading between the old trees.

Rooms were tempting. It was sweet to linger and sweet to rest at ease,

And, unchaining my body from reality, like some old dusty armour,

To nestle voluptuously in the down of soft dream-hour.

But then one morning through the misty air there rolled the echo of the bugle’s ring.

Hard, sharp, whistling like a sword-thrust. As if suddenly on darkness lights had started shining.

As if, through the tented dawn, trumpet-jolts had roused the sleeping forces,

The waking soldiers leapt up and struck their tents and busily harnessed their horses.

I was locked into lines like splints that thrust into morning, with fire on helmet and stirrup,

Forward, with battle in my blood and in my eyes, and reins held up.

Perhaps in the evening, victory marches would play around my head.

Perhaps we all would lie somewhere, stretched out among the dead.

But before the reaching out and before the sinking,

Our eyes would see their fill of world and sun, and take it in, glowing and drinking.

Although that poem was used to symbolise the early excitement and positivity felt in Germany towards the start of the First World War, in letters written by Stadler in 1914, he expressed his sadness and shock at the pointless killing and violence which took place around him.

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/setting-out/

Poetry by Heart is a national competition in which young people in key stages 2,3, 4 and 5 choose  poems that they love, learn them by heart and perform them in a school or college competition.

I think this is a lovely idea and agree with the organisers that poetry can certainly help in difficult times such as now.   I also think it could be an idea to copy for all age groups - not just school children.

Their website is : //www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/

Tom Boughen of Poetry by Heart contacted me recently via my weblog to ask if I would like to write a piece for their weblog about some of my favourite WW1 female poets.  Here is it: https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/.../female-poets-of-the.../

Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/ernst-stadler-german-poet-first-world-war  

https://peterln.wordpress.com/2020/02/23/ernst-stadler-two-poems/

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/stadler/aufbruch/aufbruch.html

https://archive.org/details/fatalistatwar00rudo/page/102/mode/2up

*AC Benus is the author of a book about German WW1 poet Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele : “The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations.    ISBN: 978-1657220584

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

Theodore Augustus Girling (1876 - 1919) – British born Canadian WW1 poet

 

With thanks to Lizbet Tobin for telling me about Theodore.

Born on 11th January 1876 in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, UK, Theodore’s parents were the Reverend William Henry Girling, who was an Anglian Church Minister and Vicar of Wilshaw, and Mary Lacy Girling (nee Hulbert). 

At some stage of his life, Theodore went to Canada because in 1904 he married  Dora Simcox Lea, of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Theodore enlisted in the Canadian Veterinary Corps 3rd April 1915, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and served on the Western Front.   Theodore was Mentioned in Dispatches for gallant and distinguished service in the field. While awaiting repatriation after the end of the conflict, Theodore died on 1st March 1919 of broncho-pneumonia at No. 48 Casualty Clearning Station.  He was buried in Belgrade Cemetery, Namur,  Belgium - Grave Reference:  II. A. 15.

His WW1 poetry collection was “The Salient and Other Poems” by Theodore Augustus Girling, Second Edition, (Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London November 1918) and he also had poems published in the magazine “Canada in Khaki”.

“Canada in Khaki” was a magazine published in Toronto by the Musson Book Company and by the Canadian War Records Office to illustrate Canadians' actions during World War I and raise money for the Canadian War Memorial Fund.  “Canada in Khaki” was published between 1917–1919 in three volumes. The magazine had a subheading “A Tribute to the Officers and Men now serving in the Overseas Military Forces of Canada”. A collection of war art reproductions, cartoons, poems, military history and personal recollections, it featured illustrations by contemporary artists, such as John Byam Liston Shaw, Harold H. Piffard and others.

“THE SALIENT” by Theodore Augustus Girling    

"The Cloth Hall Ypres" by
Walter Westley Russell 

They come from Southern victories 

Another tryst to keep. 

They march along the well-known road 

Where often through the night they trode 

From Poperinghe to Ypres. 

Down by the grim Asylum 

And past the famed Cloth Hall, 

Old ruins now, more battered still, 

Chateau, cathedral, hall and mill, 

All tottering to their fall. 

Out past their old entrenchments 

To posts just lately won, 

And in the night they take their stand, 

In concrete fort and shell-hole land, 

Against the cowering Hun. 

They march not in as strangers, 

But those who bear the brief 

To shed fresh glory on their sign, 

Borne bravely in the fighting-line, 

Canada’s maple leaf. 

The purpose of their coming 

The graves of those shall speak 

Who bore the first dread gas attack 

And hurled the pressing foeman back 

Or died at Zillebeke. 

In Ypres’ famous salient 

They claim the right to share, 

Whose most heroic deeds were done, 

Most hardly wrested triumphs won, 

Most losses suffered here. 

And on the ridges forward 

Canadian signals fly, 

And in the lower land between, 

Advancing through the fiery screen, 

Canadian heroes die. 

Yet forward, dauntless pressing, 

The final goal assail, 

And claim for Britain’s Western sons 

One more great victory ’mid the guns — 

The heights of Passchendaele. 

Pp 47 – 48 “The Salient and Other Poems” by Theodore Augustus Girling, Second Edition, (Cecil Palmer & Hayward, London November 1918). The collection is available to read on line:https://archive.org/details/N030734

“The Cloth Hall, Ypres” painted by Walter Westley Russell (1867–1949) is in the National Army Museum. During the First World War, Russell served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers and was Mentioned in Dispatches.