Tag: Remembrance Day

The Song of the Dying Gunner AA1 by Charles Causley

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Oh mother my mouth is full of stars
As cartridges in the tray
My blood is a twin-branched scarlet tree
And it runs all runs away.

Oh ‘Cooks to the galley’ is sounded off
And the lads are down in the mess
But I lie down by the forrard gun
With a bullet in my breast.

Don’t send me a parcel at Christmas time
Of socks and nutty and wine
And don’t depend on a long weekend
By the Great Western Railway line.

Farewell, Aggie Weston, the Barracks at Guz,
Hang my tiddley suit on the door.
I’m sewn up neat in a canvas sheet
And I shan’t be home no more.

[HMS Glory, 1945]

This is an appropriate poem for Remembrance Day.

Charles Causley (1917– 2003) was a Cornishman, born and bred, and apart from his years in the navy during the second world war, spent most of his life working there as an English teacher, writing poetry in his spare time.

He was unusual among poets of the world wars in that he served in the ranks, rather than as an officer. The Song of the Dying Gunner AA1 appeared in his first collection in 1951 and a line from the poem gives the book its title, Farewell, Aggie Weston. The poem can be seen as a more modern version of Kipling’s Barrack Room Ballads. It is also an interesting contrast to Henry Newbolt’s heroic naval ballads.

The “AA 1” in the title tells us that the speaker is an anti-aircraft gunner, first class. In the last verse, “Aggie Weston” refers to the sailors’ hostels founded by Dame Agnes Weston, “Guz” was Plymouth and a “tiddley suit” was a seaman’s best uniform, kept for shore leave.

Now that You Too Must Shortly Go by Eleanor Farjeon

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

First World War poetry used to mean poems written by men who had served as soldiers on the Western Front. The work of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenburg and others concentrated on conditions on the battlefield and the terrible consequences of combat for those involved.

More recently, the definition has widened, helped by Andrew Motion’s 2003 anthology, to include poems written by women that deal with bereavement and the situation on the home front.

So here, in the run-up to Remembrance Day is a poignant poem about the moment when a couple must part which speaks for itself, really. It is by Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965), later a prolific author for children and perhaps best known today for the words to the hymn Morning has Broken.

Now that You Too Must Shortly Go by Eleanor Farjeon

Now that you too must shortly go the way
Which in these bloodshot years uncounted men
Have gone in vanishing armies day by day,
And in their numbers will not come again:

I must not strain the moments of our meeting
Striving for each look, each accent, not to miss,
Or question of our parting and our greeting,
Is this the last of all? is this—or this?

Last sight of all it may be with these eyes,
Last touch, last hearing, since eyes, hands, and ears,
Even serving love, are our mortalities,
And cling to what they own in mortal fears:—
But oh, let end what will, I hold you fast
By immortal love, which has no first or last.

The Gardener by Rudyard Kipling

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

I’m always aware, writing these pieces, that I’m trying to point people in the direction of stories, novels and poems they may not have read. I try to avoid spoilers as much as I can for that reason. I’m faced with a bit of a quandary here, because it’s difficult to say anything at all about The Gardener by Rudyard Kipling without giving away too much and spoiling the effect of reading it for the first time.

I’ll just say that this 1925 story of first world war bereavement is one of Kipling’s most powerful. It’s quite short for a Kipling story of this period, only about fifteen pages, and this concentrates the effect. Any selection of his best stories tends to include it, and rightly so, I think.

It was collected in volume form in Debits and Credits, Kipling’s first collection to be published after the war had ended. This also contains the stories in which members of a masonic lodge help each other to overcome the psychological scars of the conflict. One of these is the mysterious A Madonna of the Trenches. I don’t think it was an accident that The Gardener was placed at the end of the volume. 

Kipling was a successful man both artistically and financially, but his life was touched by tragedy. His daughter Josephine died of pneumonia at the age of six in 1899. His only son John was posted as missing at the 1915 battle of Loos and his body was not found during Kipling’s lifetime. Kipling later worked for the Imperial War Graves Commission. The Gardener came out of his experience of the war and its aftermath.

There’s a sense in this story that Kipling is speaking to all those who had lost relatives on the western front. One can only imagine what it can have been like to read it when it was first published, in a world where everyone knew somebody who had lost someone.

We can be sure that the details of the visit to the Belgian cemetery are accurate. Kipling lays the scene before us with cinematic detail, the thousands of wooden crosses yet to be replaced by gravestones. How can the main character possibly find the grave she is looking for?

The last page or so of this story packs an emotional punch ensuring that once read, it will never be forgotten. Indeed, the meaning of the story depends on a single word on that last page, which inspires the immediate desire to re-read it, to make sure that one has understood correctly.

Kipling introduced many phrases to the English Language; even now he scores quite highly in a list of quotations. It’s often the case that people know the words but not who wrote them.

How many people know that he was responsible for the poignant inscription that is still visible on so many gravestones in France and Belgium?

“A Soldier of the Great War. Known unto God.”

Corporal Stare by Robert Graves

The Good ReaderLeave a comment

Following on from my previous post, it appears that Remembrance Day events will now be allowed to go ahead this coming Sunday, as long as they are outdoors and follow social distancing rules. Don’t they usually take place outdoors anyway? I suppose the point is that no church services can take place.

So here is another poem from one of the poets most closely associated with the first world war. It was written in 1917. Graves later gave a more detailed account of the real life incident that inspired the poem in his famous prose memoir, Goodbye to All That. He writes there: “Ghosts were numerous in France at that time”.

Corporal Stare by Robert Graves

Back from the line one night in June,
I gave a dinner at Bethune —
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal
Money could buy or batman steal.
Five hungry lads welcomed the fish
With shouts that nearly cracked the dish;
Asparagus came with tender tops,
Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops.
Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook,
“They’ll put this in the history book.”
We bawled Church anthems in choro
Of Bethlehem and Hermon snow,
With drinking songs, a jolly sound
To help the good red Pommard round.
Stories and laughter interspersed,
We drowned a long La Bassée thirst —
Trenches in June make throats damned dry.
Then through the window suddenly,
Badge, stripes and medals all complete,
We saw him swagger up the street,
Just like a live man — Corporal Stare!
Stare! Killed last May at Festubert.
Caught on patrol near the Boche wire,
Torn horribly by machine-gun fire!
He paused, saluted smartly, grinned,
Then passed away like a puff of wind,
Leaving us blank astonishment.
The song broke, up we started, leant
Out of the window-nothing there,
Not the least shadow of Corporal Stare,
Only a quiver of smoke that showed
A fag-end dropped on the silent road.