Paul Graham Clark (1897 - 1918) – British born New Zealand poet

With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich* for finding this poet for us

Paul Graham Clark was born in Leicester, Leicestershire, England in 1897. His parents were Alfred Clark, a physician and surgeon, and his wife, Isabella E. F.Clark, nee Christy. Paul’s siblings were Phyllis K., born 1898 in Leicester and Victoria C., born 1901 in Sholing, Hampshire.

In March 1901 the family home was at Bath Lodge, Bath Road, Heathlands Terrace, Sholing, Hampshire. I found a reference to Paul travelling to Australasia in 1903, when he was six years old, so the family may have gone to live in New Zealand at around that time. 

Paul studied medicine at Auckland University College and also enrolled at St John’s in 1915.  He applied and was accepted for a Maria Blackett Scholarship the same year when he had to take leave of absence to enlist in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He was initially rejected as underage and wasn’t accepted into the force until 1918. He attained the rank of Second Lieutenant. 

Information taken from Paul’s Army records show that he gave his mother as his next of kin living at Victoria Avenue, Remera, Auckland, New Zealand. He was issued the serial number 46224 on enlistment. Paul embarked on 8th February 1918 as part of the 34th Reinforcements Auckland Infantry Regiment, “A” Company from Wellington, New Zealand aboard H.M.N.Z.T. 100 “Ulimaroa” bound for Liverpool, England. 

The archives at the John Kinder Theological Library hold correspondence from Clark to the St John’s College Trust Board asking for leave from the college and whether they can hold his scholarship for him until he returns from the war. He was killed while fighting in Bapaume, France, during the Second Battle of Bapaume on 26th August 1918 and was buried in the Achiet-Le-Grand Communal Cemetery Extension, France, Grave Reference: III. F. 28.

Paul is also remembered on the King’s College Honour Roll for the Great War 1914-1918.

A poem written by Paul Graham Clark:

“En Voyage”

They’ve swung her out into the harbour now

And she’s rounded the Heads at last,

While the waves of the briny break over her prow

And New Zealand’s a thing of the past.

We’ve said good-bye to the “missis,”

And kissed all the kiddies, too,

With a note to all that will miss us,

And a special one sent up to you.

We’re a speck in the boundless ocean now,

Just a thousand poor souls, all told;

And feel just like — well, just like how

We felt back in the days of old

When they fitted us out in Bill Massey’s boots,

Dished each one out a spoon and a fork,

Then lined us up like a lot of coots

And told us we couldn’t talk.

Oh, what of the squeamish first few days,

When we’d hardly cleared N.Z.!

The transport ship Ulimaroa leaving Wellington Port, NZ 

How the fellows in hundreds of different ways

Went over and hung the head.

They’d stay there forlorn for hours on end

While they gazed at the ship’s black side,

And swore they were counting the rivets up —

But somehow I think that they lied.

They shove us at night into our six by two’s

In a hole that should only hold ten;

But at somebody’s order — I wish I knew whose —

It’s branded “Two hundred men.”

The air’s none too good of a night time,

But when in the morning we wake,

You could take out your knife and slice it

Then scrape it away with a rake.

The tucker’s as good as it always was -

— I don’t think! ” did you say?

Well, what if it isn’t, we’ll eat it because —

Well, if we didn’t it wouldn’t pay.

We’ve not come out on a picnic, boys,

Nor yet on a pleasure trip,

So we’ll have to give up a few of our joys

When aboard the King’s troopship.

New Zealand troops after the capture of Bapaume

So we’re swinging away on our journey still

And we’ve nothing to trouble us yet,

Save our thoughts of the land that knows no ill

And the folks that we can’t forget.

For a life on the ocean waves all right,

And there’s a good time yet to come;

But as sure as the moon shines bright to-night

There’s no place now like home.

We’re steaming ahead for England and France

All willing to do our bit;

We’re willing to live or die, just as

Chance in her uncertain way thinks fit.

But back of the mind of each one of us

Is the land we are longing to see,

Where bush fire and beach are a part of us

Way back in our “ain countree.”

Paul Graham Clark

SOURCES;

*Initial Source: Dr Connie Ruzich's wonderful website Behind their Lines: https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/08/a-new-zealanders-war.html

Additional Sources

Find my Past, FreeBMD, 

https://www.kinderlibrary.ac.nz/remembering-anzacs-paul-graham-clark/

Leicestershire And Rutland, Soldiers Died 1914-1920

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBM%2FLEIC-RUT%2F3904&expand=true&tab=this

Frank Carbaugh (1896 – 1918) - American soldier ("Doughboy") poet

 With thanks to Dr Connie Ruzich” for finding this poet for us

Franklin L. Carbaugh – known as Frank - was born in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, United States of America in 1896.  His parents were George H. Carbaugh and his wife, Alice, nee Deardorff. 

Frank joined the American Army as a non commissioned officer with the 7th Machine Gun Battalion. He was posted to the Western Front and was wounded during the Second Battle of the Marne in late July 1918, by which time his rank was Sergeant.   

While in hospital in France, Frank wrote a poem entitled “The Fields of the Marne” about "war and future peace".  Frank died in August, 1918.  Nearly three years later, in May 1921, his parents met the train that took their youngest son's body back to Pennsylvania for burial in the family plot at Cedar Hill Cemetery in Franklin County. 

("Doughboys” became the most enduring nickname for the troops of General John Pershing's American Expeditionary Forces, who crossed the Atlantic Ocean to join war weary Allied armies fighting on the Western Front during the First World War. )

“The Fields of the Marne”

The fields of the Marne are growing green,

   The river murmurs on and on;

No more the hail of mitrailleuse,

   The cannon from the hills are gone.

The herder leads the sheep afield,

   Where grasses grow o'er broken blade;

And toil-worn women till the soil

   O'er human mold, in sunny glade.

The splintered shell and bayonet

   Are lost in crumbling village wall;

No sniper scans the rim of hills,

   No sentry hears the night bird call.

From blood-wet soil and sunken trench,

   The flowers bloom in summer light;

And farther down the vale beyond,

   The peasant smiles are sad, yet bright.

The wounded Marne is growing green,

   The gash of Hun no longer smarts;

Democracy is born again,

   But what about the troubled hearts?

            —Sgt. Frank Carbaugh

The poem was first published in the American Army’s newspaper “Stars and Stripes,” and in 1919 it was included, along with  83 other poems written by American Doughboys, in a WW1 anthology entitled “Yanks; A.E.F. Verse” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1919), which can be viewed as a free download via Archive: https://archive.org/details/yanksaefverse00newy/page/n7/mode/2up

Sources:

Original Source:*Dr Connie Ruzich's wonderful website Behind Their Lines :

https://behindtheirlines.blogspot.com/2018/07/fields-of-marne.html

Additional sources:  Find my Past, 

https://eu.publicopiniononline.com/story/news/2018/11/09/world-war-stories-battlefields/1928931002/

https://eu.echo-pilot.com/story/news/2021/06/01/memorial-day-ceremony-held-cedar-hill-cemetery-greencastle/7491417002/

P.S. When the Peace Treaty was signed in Versailles in 1919, Australian artist, writer and poet Will Dyson (1880 – 1938) drew this cartoon entitled “Peace and Future Cannon Fodder”  

Source:

https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=P0497