Francis Fowler Hogan (1896 - 1918) – American soldier poet

With thanks to Dr. Connie Ruzich via Twitter @wherrypilgrim for helping to discover so many other WW1 poets.

Francis Fowler Hogan was born in Pittsburgh, PC, USA on November 13, 1896, to Thomas and Emma Hogan, who once lived in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh. Thomas Hogan was a tea and coffee dealer in Pittsburgh and died in Saint Francis Hospital of pneumonia the day before his son, Francis’s eleventh birthday.

Francis was educated at Peabody High School where he was a member of the debate team, drama club, and the literary society. In May 1916, he took part in an Oscar Wilde play produced by the class - “The Importance Of Being Earnest.”   A classmate commented : “Mr. Hogan as Algernon Moncrieff was his own charming self to the delight of his audience.” While at the school, Francis also edited the student’s newspaper, “The Melting Pot”. He graduatedl in 1916 with honours. Following his graduation, Francis entered the newly formed School of Drama at the Carnegie Institute of Technology - "Carnegie Tech" - which is now the Carnegie Mellon University.

When America joined the First World War, Francis enlisted in the National Army.  He was sent to Camp Colt in Gettysburg PA for initial training, then to Camp Greene, NC, and finally to Camp Stuart, VA, a troop clearinghouse during WW1. 

Francis was assigned to Company M, 4th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division, travelled to the Western Front and took part in three major military operations: Aisne-Marne, Saint-Mihiel, and the Meuse-Argonne.  He was killed during the fighting on 17th October 1918 at Bois de Forêt and Clairs Chênes woods.  Several of his poems were included in Carnegie Tech War Verse (1918). 

This is believed to have been last poem written by Francis.  It was included in a letter written to his mother who sent it to the “Pittsburgh Dispatch” in November 1918.

“The Adventure”

I have found a cave.

Dark and very deep;

Who may know what wonders

In the cannon sleep?

Maybe there are gems

And a heap of gold;

Maybe sacred volumes

Stored there of old.

Maybe there are poppies

Which the gnomes hoard;

Bits of dragon skin,

Or a broken sword.

Or a queen enchanted

Whom we may free;

Maybe only death –

Come, let us see.

Francis Fowler Hogan

Francis's friend William Hervey Allen Jr (1889 – 1949) – American poet, writer and educator wrote a poem dedicated to him.

Sources:

Former Fulbright Scholar Dr. Connie Ruzich's website entitled Behind their Lines.  (Connie’s approach is rather more academic than mine:..)

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-little-folk.html 

“Carnegie Tech War Verse” (Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, PA, 1918)

https://archive.org/details/carnegietechwar00techgoog

https://greatwarpittsburgh.com/?p=516

John Allan Wyeth (1894 – 1981) was an American World War I veteran, war poet, and artist.

John in WW1

John Allan Wyeth was born on 24th October 1894 in New York City, USA. His parents were John Allan Wyeth, a war veteran and surgeon, and his wife, Florence Nightingale Wyeth, nee Sims. He had a brother, Marion Sims Wyeth, who designed houses in Florida.

Educated at the Lawrenceville School, a boarding school in New Jersey, John graduated from Princeton University in 1915, where he was a member of the Princeton Charter Club. He became a French teacher in a high school in Mesa, Arizona for a year, then went to graduate school at Princeton to study to become a professor of Romance languages.  

During the First World War, John served with the 33rd Division of the American Expeditionary Force as a translator/interpreter and then with the Army of Occupation in Germany. His WW1 collection was“This Man’s Army: A War in Fifty-Odd Sonnets” published in 1928 by Harold Vinal, Maine.

The Road to Bayonvillers

A German gun, Bayonvillers, 1918

The sidecar skimmed low down like a flying sled

over the straight road with its double screen

of wire—the blue profile of Amiens sank

below the plain—near by, a hidden blast

of gunfire by the roadside—just ahead,

a white cloud bursting out of a slope of green.

Then low swift open land and the wasted flank

of a leprous hillside—over the ridge and past

the blackened stumps of Bois Vert, bleak and dead.

Our sidecar jolted and rocked, twisting between

craters, lunging at every rack and wrench.

Through Bayonvillers—her dusty wreckage stank

of rotten flesh, a dead street overcast

with a half-sweet, fetid, cloying fog of stench.

On To Paris

Map of Paris subway WW1

Light enough now to watch the trees go by--

a sleep like sickness in the rattling train.

Men's bodies joggle on the opposite seat

and tired greasy faces half awake

stir restlessly and breathe a stagnant sigh.

The stale air thickens on the grimy pane

reeking of musty smoke and woolly feet.

Versailles—a bridge of shadow on a lake

dawn-blue and pale, the color of the sky.

Paris at last!--and a great joy like pain

in my heart. We scuffle down the corridor.

"Lieutenant."

                          "Sir."

                                       "In half an hour we meet

at another station — your orders are to take

these men by subway to the Gare du Nord."

"French Countryside" a
painting by John Allan Wyeth

Sources:

https://allpoetry.com/John-Allan-Wyeth

http://johnallanwyeth.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-blog-about-unknown-wwi-poet-and.html

https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/FRENCH-COUNTRYSIDE/41B04544749A69D8F471185778947DC7

https://fr.usembassy.gov/world-war-i-centennial-series-getting-around-paris/

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/E02936

Gerhard Moerner (1894-1917) – German WW1 poet

With grateful thanks to my friend Timo Gälzer for finding Gerhard’s resting place and to Timo and to my friend Dani Stöpselfor their help in translating the poem included here

Born Gerhard Klaus Müller-Rastatt, he used the pen-name Gerhard Moerner.  Gerhard was killed on 15th April 1917 and was buried in Vladslo Cemetery, Block 3 Grave 2587 

Albert Ehrenstein dedicated his poem "War Country" to Gerhard. 

Here is a poem by Gerhard:

"Nacht im Schützengraben"

Tief will sich der Himmel neigen,

Schwer von seiner Sternenlast.

Runde Leuchtraketen steigen

Auf zu seinem Blaudamast.

Rückwärts ist mein Kopf geglitten

Auf den Sand der Schulterwehr

Und mir ist, als wär ich mitten

In dem weißen Silbermeer.

Schüsse fallen, Rufe kommen,

Meine Hand kühlt kühlen Wind,

Und ich weiß kaum, traumbenommen,

Noch, was Stern, was Augen sind.

aus: „Aus dem Felde“. Gedichte. Kugelverlag, Hamburg 1917.

German troops in a trench WW1

“A Night in the Trenches”

 The sky wants to bend low,

Heavy with the burden of the stars

Round flares rise up

Onto the sky’s damask blue.

My head slips back

Onto the sand of the trench parapet

And I feel as if I'm in the middle

Of the silvery-white sea.

Shots are fired, shouts are heard,

My hand cools in the chill wind,

And I hardly know, I feel so dreamy,

Neither what stars, nor what eyes are.

from: "From the Field" - poems. Kugelverlag, Hamburg, 1917.

e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962) – American playwright, poet, artist and writer

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA on 14th October 1894, Edward Estlin Cummings attended Harvard University and graduated with a B.A.. in 1915 and an M.A. in 1916.  He served as a volunteer ambulance driver in France with the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, American Red Cross, during The First World War. Edward was imprisoned for three months in a French detention centre, having been mistaken as a spy. He went on to serve in the United States Army (1918-1919), then studied art in Paris (1920-1924).

Edward published his book “The Enormous Room” (1922) as a recollection of his imprisonment in France. The book explains in late August 1917, his friend and colleague, William Slater Brown (known in the book only as B.), was arrested by French authorities as a result of anti-war sentiments  expressed in letters. When questioned, Cummings stood by his friend and was also arrested and the pair were imprisoned for over four months in La Ferté-Macé, France.

With his ambulance in France, WW1

He then had several collections of his poems published, experimenting with punctuation, line division, and capitalization, possibly influenced by the style of French poet Apollinaire. In a letter to young poets published in a high school newspaper, Cummings said, "[N]othing is quite so easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all the time, and whenever we do it, we're not poets."

“The Enormous Room” by e.e. cummings is available as a download on Gutenberg  http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8446/pg8446-images.html

e.e. cummings is how Edward preferred his name to be written.   

By French poet Apollinaire
an example of his word play

XXX

i sing of Olaf glad and big

whose warmest heart recoiled at war:

a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig

westpointer most succinctly bred)

took erring Olaf soon in hand;

but--though an host of overjoyed

noncoms(first knocking on the head

him)do through icy waters roll

that helplessness which others stroke

with brushes recently employed

anent this muddy toiletbowl,

while kindred intellects evoke

allegiance per blunt instruments--

Olaf(being to all intents

a corpse and wanting any rag

upon what God unto him gave)

responds,without getting annoyed

"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave

(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers

(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)

their passive prey did kick and curse

until for wear their clarion

voices and boots were much the worse,

and egged the firstclassprivates on

his rectum wickedly to tease

by means of skilfully applied

bayonets roasted hot with heat--

Olaf(upon what were once knees)

does almost ceaselessly repeat

"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president,being of which

assertions duly notified

threw the yellowsonofabitch

into a dungeon,where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)

i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because

unless statistics lie he was

more brave than me:more blond than you.

https://poets.org/poem/i-sing-olaf-glad-and-big

George Willis – British poet

 

With thanks to  Eric Edwards via Twitter  @ebd_edwards

for finding this poem.

I have not been able to find anything out about George Willis.  If anyone can help, please get in touch.

In her Bibliography, Catherine W. Reilly lists the WW1 poetry collections by George Willis as:

“Any soldier to his son, (and other poems)” by George Willis and C.R.W. Nevinson (Allen & Unwin, London 1919).  45 p

“A Ballad of four brothers, (and other poems)” (Allen & Unwin, London 1921).

Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 338 

Any Soldier To His Son

What did I do, sonny, in the Great World War?

Well, I learned to peel potatoes and to scrub the barrack floor.

I learned to push a barrow and I learned to swing a pick,

I learned to turn my toes out, and to make my eyeballs click.

I learned the road to Folkestone, and I watched the English shore,

Go down behind the skyline, as I thought, for evermore.

And the Blighty boats went by us and the harbour hove in sight,

And they landed us and sorted us and marched us "by the right".

"Quick march!" across the cobbles, by the kids who ran along

Singing "Appoo?" "Spearmant" "Shokolah?" through dingy old Boulogne;

By the widows and the nurses and the niggers and Chinese,

And the gangs of smiling Fritzes, as saucy as you please.

I learned to ride as soldiers ride from Etaps to the Line,

For days and nights in cattle trucks, packed in like droves of swine.

I learned to curl and kip it on a foot of muddy floor,

And to envy cows and horses that have beds of beaucoup straw.

I learned to wash in shell holes and to shave myself in tea,

While the fragments of a mirror did a balance on my knee.

I learned to dodge the whizz-bangs and the flying lumps of lead,

And to keep a foot of earth between the sniper and my head.

I learned to keep my haversack well filled with buckshee food,

To take the Army issue and to pinch what else I could.

I learned to cook Maconochie* with candle-ends and string,

With "four-by-two" and sardine-oil and any God-dam thing.

I learned to use my bayonet according as you please

For a breadknife or a chopper or a prong for toasting cheese.

I learned "a first field dressing" to serve my mate and me

As a dish-rag and a face-rag and a strainer for our tea.

I learned to gather souvenirs that home I hoped to send,

And hump them round for months and months and dump them in the end.

I learned to hunt for vermin in the lining of my shirt,

To crack them with my finger-nail and feel the beggars spirt;

I learned to catch and crack them by the dozen and the score

And to hunt my shirt tomorrow and to find as many more.

I learned to sleep by snatches on the firestep of a trench,

And to eat my breakfast mixed with mud and Fritz's heavy stench.

I learned to pray for Blighty ones and lie and squirm with fear,

When Jerry started strafing and the Blighty ones were near.

I learned to write home cheerful with my heart a lump of lead

With the thought of you and mother, when she heard that I was dead.

And the only thing like pleasure over there I ever knew,

Was to hear my pal come shouting, "There's a parcel, mate, for you."

So much for what I did do - now for what I have not done:

Well, I never kissed a French girl and I never killed a Hun,

I never missed an issue of tobacco, pay, or rum,

I never made a friend and yet I never lacked a chum.

I never borrowed money, and I never lent - but once

(I can learn some sorts of lessons though I may be borne a dunce).

I never used to grumble after breakfast in the Line

That the eggs were cooked too lightly or the bacon cut too fine.

I never told a sergeant just exactly what I thought,

I never did a pack-drill, for I never quite got caught.

I never punched a Red-Cap's nose (be prudent like your Dad),

But I'd like as many sovereigns as the times I've wished I had.

I never stopped a whizz-bang, though I've stopped a lot of mud,

But the one that Fritz sent over with my name on was a dud.

I never played the hero or walked about on top,

I kept inside my funk hole when the shells began to drop.

Well, Tommy Jones's father must be made of different stuff:

I never asked for trouble - the issue was enough.

So I learned to live and lump it in the lovely land of war,

Where the face of nature seems a monstrous septic sore,

Where the bowels of earth of earth hang open, like the guts of something slain,

And the rot and wreck of everything are churned and churned again;

Where all is done in darkness and where all is still in day,

Where living men are buried and the dead unburied lay;

Where men inhabit holes like rats, and only rats live there;

Where cottage stood and castle once in days before La Guerre;

Where endless files of soldiers thread the everlasting way,

By endless miles of duckboards, through endless walls of clay;

Where life is one hard labour, and a soldiers gets his rest

When they leave him in the daisies with a puncture in his chest;

Where still the lark in summer pours her warble from the skies,

And underneath, unheeding, lie the blank upstaring eyes.

And I read the Blighty papers, where the warriors of the pen

Tell of "Christmas in the trenches" and "The Spirit of our men";

And I saved the choicest morsels and I read them to my chum,

And he muttered, as he cracked a louse and wiped it off his thumb:

"May a thousand chats from Belgium crawl under their fingers as they write;

May they dream they're not exempted till they faint with mortal fright;

May the fattest rats in Dickebusch race over them in bed;

May the lies they've written choke them like a gas cloud till they're dead;

May the horror and the torture and the things they never tell

(For they only write to order) be reserved for them in Hell!"

You'd like to be a soldier and go to France some day?

By all the dead in Delville Wood, by all the nights I lay

Between our lines and Fritz's before they brought me in;

By this old wood-and-leather stump, that once was flesh and skin;

By all the lads who crossed with me but never crossed again,

By all the prayers their mothers and their sweethearts prayed in vain,

Before the things that were that day should ever more befall

May God in common pity destroy us one and all!

https://allpoetry.com/Any-Soldier-To-His-Son

According to the link found by Eric Edwarads: A section of the poem was  published in a 1939 magazine called ‘The Great War…I Was There: Undying memories of 1914-1918.‘  - attributed to Anon. The magazine noted the poem was ‘found by an officer ‘somewhere in France’‘

https://greatwarfiction.wordpress.com/2022/10/09/new-army-education/

*Maconochie was a stew of sliced turnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, haricot beans and beef in a thin broth, named after the Aberdeen Maconochie Company that produced it. It was a widely used food ration for British soldiers in the field during the Boer War and in front-line trenches during the First World War.

Hermann Karl Hesse (1877 – 1962) – German born writer poet and artist who became a Swiss Citizen in 1923

Portrait of Hermann,
1905

Hermann Karl Hesse was born on 2nd July 1877 in Calw in Württemberg, in the Black Forest area of Germany.   His parents were Johannes Hesse, and his wife, Marie, nee Gundert. The Hesse family moved to Calw in 1873, where  

Johannes worked for the Calwer Verlagsverein, a publishing firm. Marie's father, Hermann Gundert, managed the publishing house until Johannes Hesse took over from him in 1893.

During the First World War, Herman volunteered with the Imperial army, saying that he “could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front”.  However, he was found not fit enough to be a front line soldier and was assigned to service in charge of prisoners of war. 

Critical of the conflict, he wrote: "That love is greater than hate, understanding greater than ire, peace nobler than war, this exactly is what this unholy World War should burn into our memories, more so than ever felt before."  Hermann found himself in the middle of a serious political debate.  He was attacked by the German press, received hate mail and was distanced from old friends. However, he did receive support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hermann in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland, "The attempt ... to apply love to matters political has failed."

Hermann’s father died on 8th May 1916 and his son, Martin, became seriously ill.  In addition, his wife suffered from schizophrenia. He was, therefore, forced to leave his military service and begin receiving psychotherapy. Thus began a preoccupation with psychoanalysis, through which Hermann got to know Carl Jung personally. During September and October 1917, Hermann wrote his novel “Demian” published after the Armistice in 1919 under the pen-name Emil Sinclair.  Hermann was granted Swiss citizenship in 1923.

Among the best-known works of Hermann Hesse are "Demian", "Steppenwolf", "Siddhartha" and "The Glass Bead Game", which explore an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  

Hermann died on 9th August 1962 and was buried in the cemetery of Sant’Abbondio in Gentilino, where his friend and biographer Hugo Ball and another German personality, the conductor Bruno Walter, are also buried.

Poetry collections by Hermann Hesse:

(1898) "Romantische Lieder" (Romantic Songs)

(1900) "Hinterlassene Schriften und Gedichte von Hermann Lauscher" (The Posthumous Writings and Poems of Hermann Lauscher)—with prose

(1970) "Poems" (21 poems written between 1899 and 1921)

(1975) "Crisis: Pages from a Diary"

(1979) "Hours in the Garden and Other Poems" (written during the same period as The Glass Bead Game)

Here is a WW1 poem by Hermann Hesse:

Denken an den Freund bei Nacht (September 1914)

Früh kommt in diesembösen Jahr der Herbst.

Ich geh bei Nacht im Feld, den kalten Wind am Hut,

Der Regen klirrt. Und du? Und du, mein Freund?

...

Du stehst - vielleicht -und siehst den Sichelmond.

Im kleinen Bogen über Wäldern gehen

Und Biwakfeuer rot im schwarzen Tal.

Du liegst - vielleicht - im Feld auf Stroh und schläfst,

Und über Stirn und Waffenrock fällt leicht der Tau.

Kann sein, du bist zu Pferde diese Nacht,

Vorpfosten, spähend unterwegs, Revolver in der Faust,

Flüsternd und kosend mit dem müden Gaul.

Vielleicht - ich denk’ mir’s so - bist du die Nacht

in einem fremden Schloß und Park zur Nacht

Und schreibst bei Kerzenlicht an einem Brief,

Und tippst am Flügel im Vorübergehn

An klingende Tasten -

- Und vielleicht

bist du schon still und tot. Und deinen lieben

ernsthaften Augen scheint der Tag nicht mehr,

Und deine liebe brauen Hand hängt welk,

Und deine weiße Stirne klafft. - O hätt ich,

hätt ich dir einmal noch am letzten Tage

dir etwas noch gezeigt, gesagt

von meiner Liebe, die zu schüchtern war!

Du kennst mich ja, du weißt ... und lächelnd nickst

du in die Nacht vor deinem fremden Schloß,

und nickst auf deinem Pferd im nassen Wald,

und nickst im Schlaf auf deiner harten Streu,

und denkst an mich und lächelst.

Und vielleicht

vielleicht kommst du einmal vom Krieg zurück

und eines Abends trittst du bei mir ein,

man spricht von Lüttich, Longwy, Dammerkirch,

und lächelst ernst, und alles ist wie einst,

und keiner sagt ein Wort von seiner Angst,

von seiner Liebe. Und mit einem Witz

Wirfst du die Angst, den Krieg, die bangen Nächte,

Das Wetterleuchten scheuer Männerfreundschaft

Ins kühle Nichtgewesensein zurück.

Thinking Of A Friend At Night (September 1914)

In this evil year, autumn comes early…

I walk by night in the field, alone, the rain clatters,

The wind on my hat…And you? And you, my friend?

You are standing—maybe—and seeing the sickle moon

Move in a small arc over the forests

And bivouac fire, red in the black valley.

You are lying—maybe—in a straw field and sleeping

And dew falls cold on your forehead and battle jacket.

It's possible tonight you're on horseback,

The farthest outpost, peering along, with a gun in your fist,

Smiling, whispering, to your exhausted horse.

Maybe—I keep imagining—you are spending the night

As a guest in a strange castle with a park

And writing a letter by candlelight, and tapping

On the piano keys by the window,

Groping for a sound…

—And maybe

You are already silent, already dead, and the day

Will shine no longer into your beloved

Serious eyes, and your beloved brown hand hangs wilted,

And your white forehead split open—Oh, if only,

If only, just once, that last day, I had shown you, told you

Something of my love, that was too timid to speak!

But you know me, you know…and, smiling, you nod

Tonight in front of your strange castle,

And you nod to your horse in the drenched forest,

And you nod to your sleep to your harsh clutter of straw,

And think about me, and smile.

And maybe,

Maybe some day you will come back from the war,

and take a walk with me some evening,

And somebody will talk about Longwy, Luttich, Dammerkirch,

And smile gravely, and everything will be as before,

And no one will speak a word of his worry,

Of his worry and tenderness by night in the field,

Of his love. And with a single joke

You will frighten away the worry, the war, the uneasy nights,

The summer lightning of shy human friendship,

Into the cool past that will never come back.

Translated by James Wright

From “Hermann Hesse poems: Selected and translated by James Wright”  (Jonathan Cape, London, 1977 ) – pp 64 – 66.  Original German from “Die Gedichte in Gesammelte Schriften” by Hermann Hesse (Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 1953).   With many thanks to writer, historian, translator and poet AC Benus for finding the original collection of that volume of Herman Hesse’s poems:

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Ev5KAAAAMAAJ/page/n7/mode/2up

Sources:

https://www.thivien.net/Hermann-Hesse/Ngh%C4%A9-v%E1%BB%81-b%E1%BA%A1n-trong-%C4%91%C3%AAm/poem-KOuHEO5KJHJKBIgQBENfbw

https://allpoetry.com/Thinking-Of-A-Friend-At-Night

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41907/41907-h/41907-h.htm

The 1905 portrait of Hermann Hesse was painted by Ernst Würtenberger (1868–1934)

Hermann Hesse was also an artist.  For more of his artwork see https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/06/08/hesse-trees/

Cortivallo, 1927
by Hermann Hesse

 

A poem printed on the front page of the Nationalist newspaper, Ireland, 12th February 1916 written by an anonymous poet using the pen-name A Drangan Boy

With thanks to Ciarán Conlan who found this poem for us - it was posted by MaryAnne Maher on the Facebook page 18th Regiment of Foot Royal Irish Regiment(& South Irish Horse)Association™

“AN IRISH SOLDIER ‘NEATH’ SLIEVENAMON”

Slievenamon or Slievenaman Mountain

Old hill! You’ve looked on many scenes of Ireland’s chequered story,

You’ve seen the “wild geese” fly to France and revelled in their glory;

You’ve heard the edict oft proclaimed – “To Hell or Connaught fly” –

And bent your head in sorrow as the victim’s pass’d you by.

But now, my grand old sentinel, another sun appears,

Dispelling past the clouds long cast in gloomy blood and tears.

No more the patriot outlaw seeks the shelter of your side,

To learn the soldier’s gallant trade, no more he needs to hide.

Amongst the rocky caverns, which dot your slopes, old hill,

And steal forth in the gloaming to join the moonlight drill,

For freedom’s sun is gleaming, and as “wild geese” never more

But as the gallant Irish soldiers we seek the Gaullic shore.

Unlike the days of Sarsfield, ‘tis no rotten Stuart cause,

Which calls is now to battle, and no tyrant alien laws,

Are there to make our King regret our loss to his own Crown,

Forgotten now is Fontenoy, but not our old renown,

Because on many bloody fields as in the days of yore,

The shamrock green in triumph’s seen for freedom evermore.

The savage Hun is weary, but we’re not conquered yet,

His deeds of blood at Ypres we’ll teach him to regret;

He trampled o’er our Irish dames, and there to us displayed,

What he had in store for Ireland if he won the game he played;

He little thought his mad assaults on priests and nuns also,

Would fiercely dart each Irish heart to deal him blow for blow.

The modern Attila now has grown sickly worn and grey,

His well-laid schemes of ruin and crime have sorely “ganged agley”

Our Munster boys and Connaught lands and Dublin Fusiliers,

And our Royal Irish heroes too of him have had no fears;

When we are marching home again lamenting comrades gone,

We’ll dry our tears in welcome cheers beneath old Slievenamon.

By A Drangan Boy

The Nationalist is a newspaper based in Clonmel in County Tipperary, Ireland. Established in 1890, it is a broadsheet newspaper published weekly, covering news, events, and sport in both Clonmel town and south Tipperary. It was formed to represent the views of the Irish nationalist community in County Tipperary, which led to the first editor been jailed under a Coercion Act on charges that he had intimidated a cattle dealer for taking a farm from which tenants had been evicted. It supported the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which led to the paper being shut down by Séumas Robinson during the Irish Civil War.  The newspaper is currently owned by Iconic Newspapers, which acquired Johnston Press's titles in the Republic of Ireland in 2014.

Slievenamon or Slievenaman (Tr. "mountain of the women") is a mountain with a height of 721 metres (2,365 ft) in County Tipperary, Ireland. It rises from a plain that includes the towns of Fethard, Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. The mountain is steeped in folklore and is associated with Fionn mac Cumhaill. On its summit are the remains of ancient burial cairns, which were seen as portals to the Otherworld. Much of its lower slopes are wooded, and formerly most of the mountain was covered in woodland. A low hill attached to Slievenamon, Carrigmaclear, was the site of a battle during the Irish Rebellion of 1798.

Patrick Sarsfield, (born, Lucan, County Dublin, Ireland;  died August 1693, Huy, Austrian Netherlands) - a Jacobite soldier who played a leading role in the Irish Roman Catholic resistance (1689–91) to England’s King William III. Sarsfield remains a favourite hero of the Irish national tradition.

Sarsfield

The Battle of Fontenoy was a major engagement of the War of the Austrian Succession, fought on 11 May 1745 near Tournai in modern Belgium. A French army of 50,000 under Marshal Saxe defeated a Pragmatic Army of roughly the same size, led by the Duke of Cumberland.

The Term 'Hun' was a derogatory nickname used primarily by the British and Americans - officers rather than men - during the First World War to describe the German Army, e.g. "the Huns attacked at dawn". The origin of the term dated back to the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1900).  When despatching his troops to China, Kaiser Wilhelm II instructed them in a speech he made to behave like the Huns of old and to wreak vengeance ("let the Germans strike fear into the hearts, so he'll be feared like the Hun").  According to W.A. Tucker in his memoir of his WW1 service “The Lousier War”, ordinary soldiers referred to the German troops as “Fritz”. 

Attila the Hun

Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in March 453. He was also the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans and Bulgars, among others, in Central and Eastern Europe. He is also considered one of the most powerful rulers in world history.

Drangan is a village, census town and civil parish in County Tipperary, Ireland. It is in the historical barony of Middlethird.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/official18thregoffootroyalirishregassociation

“The Lousier War” by W.A.Tucker (The New English Library, London, 1974)

Battle of Fontenoy, 1745 by
Pierre L'Enfant (1704 - 1987)

James Norman Hall (1887 – 1951) – American WW1 soldier, airman, writer and poet

 While reading the book "Cricket in the First World War: Play Up! Play the Game" by John Broom (published by Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2022), I came across a poem by James Norman Hall. Mention was also made of his war-time service.

James Norman Hall was born in Colfax, Iowa, USA on 22nd April 1887. His childhood home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Educated locally, James went to study at Grinnell College in Iowa, graduating in 1910. He wrote the song "Sons of Old Grinnell", which is part of the college songbook.

After graduating, James became a social worker in Boston for the Society for Prevention to Cruelty to Children, while he attempted to establish himself as a writer and study for a Master's degree at Harvard University.

James was on holiday in the United Kingdom in the summer of 1914, when war broke out. Posing as a Canadian, he enlisted in the British Army, serving in the Royal Fusiliers as a machine gunner during the Battle of Loos. He was discharged after his true nationality was discovered, and returned to the United States. His first book, “Kitchener's Mob: The Adventures of an American in the British Army” (published in 1916), tells of his wartime experiences.  The book sold quite well in America and, after a speaking tour to promote the book, James returned to Europe in 1916 on an assignment for “Atlantic Monthly” magazine. 

He was commissioned to write a series of stories about the group of American volunteers serving in the French Air Force’s Lafayette Escadrille but, after spending some time with the American fliers, he got caught up in the adventure and enlisted in the French Air Service. By then the original Escadrille had been expanded to the Lafayette Flying Corps, which trained American volunteers to serve in regular French squadrons.

During his time in French aviation, James was awarded the Croix de Guerre with five palms and the Médaille Militaire. When the United States entered the war in 1917, James was commissioned as a Captain in the Army Air Service. There he met another American pilot, Charles Nordhoff.  After being shot down over enemy lines on 7 May 1918, James spent the last months of the war as a German prisoner of war. After his release he was awarded the French Légion d'Honneur and the American Distinguished Service Cross.

LaFayette Squadron insignia

The La Fayette Squadron (French: Escadrille de La Fayette) was the name of the French Air Force unit escadrille N 124 during the First World War. The squadron was composed largely of American volunteer pilots flying fighters. It was named in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American War of Independence. In September 1917, the squadron was transferred to the US Army under the designation 103rd Aero Squadron. In 1921, The French Air Force recreated an N124 unit who claimed lineage from the war-time La Fayette escadrille and is now part of the escadron 2/4 La Fayette.

In 1925, James married Sarah Winchester, known as Lala, who was part-Polynesian. They had two children: the Academy Award winning cinematographer Conrad Hall (1926–2003) and Nancy Hall-Rutgers (born 1930). A prolific author, James died on 5th July 1951 in Tahiti and is buried on the hillside property just above the modest wooden house he and Lala lived in for many years. His grave bears a line of verse he wrote in Iowa at the age of 11: "Look to the Northward stranger / Just over the hillside there / Have you ever in your travels seen / A land more passing fair?"

'The Cricketers of Flanders'  

cover of the book in which
I found reference to the poem

The first to climb the parapet

With “cricket balls” in either hand;

The first to vanish in the smoke

Of God-forsaken No Man’s Land;

First at the wire and soonest through,

First at those red-mouthed hounds of hell,

The Maxims, and the first to fall,—

They do their bit and do it well.

Full sixty yards I’ve seen them throw

With all that nicety of aim

They learned on British cricket-fields,

Ah, bombing is a Briton’s game!

Shell-hole to shell-hole, trench to trench,

“Lobbing them over” with an eye

As true as though it were a game

And friends were having tea close by.

Pull down some art-offending thing

Of carven stone, and in its stead

Let splendid bronze commemorate

These men, the living and the dead.

No figure of heroic size,

Towering skyward like a god;

But just a lad who might have stepped

From any British bombing squad.

His shrapnel helmet set atilt,

His bombing waistcoat sagging low,

His rifle slung across his back:

Poised in the very act to throw.

And let some graven legend tell

Of those weird battles in the West

Wherein he put old skill to use,

And played old games with sterner zest.

Thus should he stand, reminding those

In less-believing days, perchance,

How Britain’s fighting cricketers

Helped bomb the Germans out of France.

And other eyes than ours would see;

And other hearts than ours would thrill;

And others say, as we have said:

“A sportsman and a soldier still!”

By James Norman Hall

Sources:  Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 366. Wikipedia and"A TREASURY OF WAR POETRY:BRITISH AND AMERICAN POEMS OF THE WORLD WAR 1914-1917" (1917)