Lord Cockburn (1779 – 1854) was a Scottish lawyer, judge and literary figure. He served as Solicitor General for Scotland between 1830 and 1834.
Alec was educated at Sherborne School in Dorset before going on to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. In 1914 Alec was awarded the English Verse Prize at Sherborne and one of his poems was accepted in August 1915 by the “Chronicle”. Commissioned into the Dorset Regiment in May 1917, Alec served as a machine gunner on the Western Front. He was a Lieutenant when he was captured by the Germans near Arras in March 1918. Alec spent the remainder of the war in Prisoner-of-War (PoW) camps in Karlsruhe and Mainz.
Alec Waugh’s WW1 poetry collection was “Resentment: poems” (Grant Richards, London, 1918) and he had poems published in four WW1 Anthologies.
"Cannon Fodder" September 1917 By Alec Waugh
Is it seven days you've been lying there
Out in the cold,
Feeling the damp, chill circlet of flesh
Loosen its hold
On muscles and sinews and bones,
Feeling them slip
One from the other to hang, limp on the stones?
Seven days. The lice must be busy in your hair,
And by now the worms will have had their share
Of eyelid and lip.
Poor, lonely thing; is death really a sleep?
Or can you somewhere feel the vermin creep
Across your face
As you lie, rotting, uncared for in the unowned place,
That you fought so hard to keep
Blow after weakening blow.
Well. You've got what you wanted, that spot is yours
No one can take it from you now.
But at home by the fire, their faces aglow
With talking of you,
They'll be sitting, the folk that you loved,
And they will not know.
O Girl at the window combing your hair
Get back to your bed.
Your bright-limbed lover is lying out there
Dead.
O mother, sewing by candlelight,
Put away that stuff.
The clammy fingers of earth are about his neck.
He is warm enough.
Soon, like a snake in your honest home
The word will come.
And the light will suddenly go from it.
Day will be dumb.
And the heart in each aching breast
Will be cold and numb.
O men, who had known his manhood and truth,
I had found him true.
O you, who had loved his laughter and youth,
I had loved it too.
O girl, who has lost the meaning of life,
I am lost as you.
And yet there is one worse thing,
For all the pain at the heart and the eye blurred and dim,
This you are spared,
You have not seen what death has made of him.
You have not seen the proud limbs mangled and
Broken,
The face of the lover sightless raw and red,
You have not seen the flock of vermin swarming
Over the newly dead.
Slowly he'll rot in the place where no man dare go,
Silently over the night the stench of his carcase will flow,
Proudly the worms will be banqueting...
This you can never know.
He will live in your dreams for ever as last you saw him.
Proud-eyed and clean, a man whom shame never knew,
Laughing, erect, with the strength of the wind in his manhood -
O broken-hearted mother, I envy you.
Alec Waugh’s book about his experience as a PoW is “The Prisoners of Mainz”, illustrated by British artist and fellow WW1 PoW R. T. Roussel (1883 – 1967). This is available on Gutenberg as an ebook https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/54203/pg54203-images.html
Sources, Find my Past, FreeBMD,
Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliogrphy” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 331.
https://allpoetry.com/From-Albert-to-Bapaume
https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/blog/poem/from-albert-to-bapaume/
https://warpoets.org.uk/worldwar1/poets-and-poetry/alec-waugh/
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp35838/raphael-t-roussel
Photo of Alec Waugh in WW1 from .
https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en/noartistknown/alec-waugh/nomedium/asset/3757947
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| "Our Leading Lady" illustration by R.T. Roussel from Alec's book about his PoW exerpeinces |
R.T. Roussel (1883 – 1967) - British artist who designed and constructed dioramas. He was the son of Theodore Roussel, a French painter and etcher
