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