Of War

This year, 2014, marks 100 years since the beginning of WW1.  The 'war to end all wars'. We still live with the fact of war, and I want to collect some of the art and poetry born of war, or created to commemorate those who have died in conflict.

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I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.  I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it possible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.  I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.  I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.  On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practised on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise. 

Statement made to his commanding officer by 2nd Lt. S. L. Sassoon, Military Cross, 3rd Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, explaining his grounds for refusing to serve further in the army.

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Afterbirth - Clare Pollard

Pain is lonely. It is nothing to do with goodness.  The night you were born, I barely thought of love: I could not think beyond pain's edges, how it moved in a steady shudder through me, looting and burning; How words decomposed in my mouth to brute noise. I was naked, on all fours. I was shitting. There was a lull and blood plop-plopped on the floor. Was it mine or yours? There was a you, you  locked in a struggle with me, mortal and writhing to be out. Then your fierce squall, the caul's net, you clambering blind to my breast - my tiny beautiful foe, blood-smeared. The vast placenta slopped out, raw and ugly, and the pain went, we slipped its trap, we clung to each other in a truce. 

'You're safe now', I lied, I couldn't help it, though they said you were a boy and we know what sons are for. They will tell you that war  is the same kind of suffering, the kind you must endure to get to love, our wanted world, but I do not want it without you.  You can't have been made just to be unmade, all these slow months, these sleepless nights, as you gnaw my spluttering breast, grow drip by drip, your slender fingers; your sweet, wet mouth - and death is so relentless, so grim, what use is it to you? It's mud that fills the throat. 

It's 3am. Your warm head flops to my chest. Out there our guns bang, a boy slumps  blood- smeared, clambering blind, he cannot think beyond war's edges, and a shudder moves steadily to his mother as the world squanders his body: its painstaking work. 

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Otto Dix - Wounded Veteran, 1922

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Otto Dix - Self portrait as a Soldier (Selbstbildnis als Soldat) 1914

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Suicide In The Trenches - Siegfried Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crimps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go

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My Boy Jack - Rudyard Kipling

"HAVE you news of my boy Jack? " Not this tide. "When d'you think that he'll come back?"  Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Has any one else had word of him?" Not this tide.  For what is sunk will hardly swim,  Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

"Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?"  None this tide, Nor any tide, Except he did not shame his kind---  Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide.

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C.R.W Nevison, Paths of Glory 

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Spectra, by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda to commemorate the fallen. Lights Out Event, London, 2014

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The Mad Woman of Douai - William Orpen

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Ypres Salient At Night - Paul Nash

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D-Day, A Soldier Remembers

Roland R. Ruiz

As I walk into this field of valor, in the early morning hours I think of the many fine and brave soldiers, who lie beneath the ground With multitudes of painted crosses, to mark their sacred graves Thoughts slowly fill my mind, June 6th, 1944, I remember only so well The scare and terror of that day remains etched within my heart I try to forget the screams of death, that passed before my eyes But the scenes remain so ivivid and clear, even after all these years D-Day resided so deep in me, there’s nothing I can do To rid me of the dreams, which haunts me, n the twilight of my years The sand, the water, the blood, mixed with the sounds of death Caused me to pray to God, to forgive my mortal sins

I remember following my Sarge, into the water, on that early misty morn Just as we reached Utah Beach a bullet struck his helmet,spinning him around Showing me a bloody stump, that used to be his head To this young innocent country boy, who just turned 19 two days before Within seconds, leaving me no choice, I suddenly became a man As I raced past his lifeless shell, knowing at any moment My life could end as well, somehow I survived through this violent hell And went on to fight in other battles, until the bitter end Every so often I make this tip, to see my fallen comrades And each time as I return, I leave a piece of me, between the blood soaked sands

As I approach my eighty first year, I know this will be my last trip To see my fallen friends, so I’ll walk slowly through this hollowed field And say a final goodbye to all these gallant soldiers Who gave their lives for God and country, as only heroes can

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'Burning Books' Artist Unknown (1939-1945) 

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Last Post - Carol Ann Duffy

  In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud...

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home -

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now to die and die and die.

Dulce - No - Decorum - No - Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too -

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert -

and light a cigarette.

There''s coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queueing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly write it backwards,

then it would.

[warpoems]

A Conversation between Wilfred Owen and Carol Ann Duffy

"An Unseen" by Carol Ann Duffy

I watched love leave, turn, wave, want not to go, depart, return; late spring, a warm slow blue of air, old-new. Love was here; not; missing, love was there; each look, first, last.

Down the quiet road, away, away, towards the dying time, love went, brave soldier, the song dwindling; walked to the edge of absence; all moments going, gone; bells through rain

to fall on the carved names of the lost. I saw love's child uttered, unborn, only by rain, then and now, all future past, an unseen. Has forever been then? Yes, forever has been.

"The Send-Off" by Wilfred Owen

Down the close darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard, Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.

Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went. They were not ours: We never heard to which front these were sent;

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beating of great bells In wild train-loads? A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, May creep back, silent, to village wells, Up half-known roads

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Photographer - Carol Ann Duffy

In his darkroom he is finally alone

with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.

The only light is red and softly glows,

as though this were a church and he

a priest preparing to intone a mass.

Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays

beneath his hands which did not tremble then

though seem to now. Rural England. Home again

to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,

to fields which don't explode beneath the feet

of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger's features

faintly start to twist before his eyes,

a half formed ghost. He remembers the cries

of this man's wife, how he sought approval

without words to do what someone must

and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black-and-white

from which his editor will pick out five or six

for Sunday's supplement. The reader's eyeballs prick

with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.

From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where

he earns his living and they do not care.

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Here Dead We Lie - A.E. Houseman

Here dead we lie  Because we did not choose  To live and shame the land  From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,   Is nothing much to lose,  But young men think it is,  And we were young.

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To My Daughter Betty - T.M. Kettle

In wiser days, my darling rosebud, blown To beauty proud as was your Mother’s prime. In that desired, delayed, incredible time, You’ll ask why I abandoned you, my own, And the dear heart that was your baby throne, To die with death. And oh! they’ll give you rhyme And reason: some will call the thing sublime, And some decry it in a knowing tone. So here, while the mad guns curse overhead, And tired men sigh with mud for couch and floor, Know that we fools, now with the foolish dead, Died not for flag, nor King, nor Emperor, But for a dream, born in a herdsmen shed, And for the secret Scripture of the poor.