Remembering the Great War--1917

Edward Thomas
​Photograph: E.O. Hoppe/Corbis. From: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/31/edward-thomas-adlestrop-to-arras-review-jean-moorcroft-wilson

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“[K]illed at Arras on that first day of the battle [April 9] was the British poet Edward Thomas, who so loved the English countryside:
 
​A Private
 
This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France - that, too, he secret keeps.

[Source: Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History]
*****
Douglas Lyall Grant, a British POW in a German prison camp, on 28th January 1917 – “Renewed joy in the morning when it was discovered that two Russians had escaped last night. We wish them all the best of luck and a rapid journey over the frontier. The method of their escape was particularly cunning. Each day Russian orderlies wheel out barrels of refuse to a ground nearby where the pigs are kept. Today two of these barrels had refuse on the top but Russians underneath.”
*****
“The Italian soldiers had not illusions about a swift breakthrough [at the 10th Battle of the Isonzo, beginning 10 May 1917]. Among their many jingles was the verse:
 
Il General Cadorna
Ha scritta alla Regina
'Se vuoi veder Trieste,
Compra una cartolina.'"

Gilbert translates: "General Cadorna / Has written to the Queen, / 'If you want to see Trieste, / Buy a picture postcard." [Source: Gilbert, The First World War]
*****
Elias Canetti in the first volume of his memoirs: “I was twelve when I got passionately interested in the Greek wars of liberation, and that same year, 1917, was the year of the Russian Revolution. Even before his journey in the sealed freight car, people were speaking about Lenin living in Zurich [where Canetti lived with his mother]. Mother, who was filled with an insatiable hatred of the war, followed every event that might terminate it. She had no political ties, but Zurich had become a center for war opponents of the most diverse countries and tendencies.

Once, when we were passing a coffeehouse, she pointed at the enormous skull of a man sitting near the window, a huge pile of newspapers lay next to him; he had seized one paper and held it close to his eyes. Suddenly, he threw back his head, turned to a man sitting at his side and fiercely spoke away at him. Mother said: ‘Take a good look at him. That’s Lenin. You’ll be hearing about him.’ We had halted, she was slightly embarrassed about standing like that and staring…, but his sudden movement had struck into her, the energy of his jolting turn towards the other man had transmitted itself to her … I was … astonished at Mother’s immobility. She said: ‘Come on, we can’t just stand here,’ and she pulled me along…..

She never the called the war anything but ‘the killing.’ Since our arrival in Zurich, she had talked about it very openly to me; in Vienna, she had held back to prevent my having any conflicts at school. ‘You will never kill a person who hasn’t done anything to you,’ she said beseechingly; and proud as she was of having three sons, I could sense how worried she was that we too might become such ‘killers’ some day. Her hatred of war had something elemental to it: Once, when telling me the story of Faust, which she didn’t want me to read as yet, she disapproved of his pact with the devil. There was only one justification for such a pact: to put an end to the war. You could even ally yourself with the devil for that, but not for anything else.”—Elias Canetti, The Tongue Set Free
*****
In Memoriam
Private D. Sutherland killed in action in the German trench, May, 16, 1916, and the others who died [published in 1917]
 by E.A. Mackintosh
 
So you were David’s father,
And he was your only son,
And the new-cut peats are rotting
And the work is left undone,
Because of an old man weeping,
Just an old man in pain,
For David, his son David,
That will not come again.

Oh, the letters he wrote you,
And I can see them still,
Not a word of the fighting,
But just the sheep on the hill
And how you should get the crops in
Ere the year get stormier,
And the Bosches have got his body,
And I was his officer.

You were only David’s father,
But I had fifty sons
When we went up in the evening
Under the arch of the guns,
And we came back at twilight--
O God! I heard them call
To me for help and pity
That could not help at all.

Oh, never will I forget you,
My men that trusted me,
More my sons than your fathers’,
For they could only see
The little helpless babies
And the young men in their pride.
They could not see you dying,
And hold you while you died.

Happy and young and gallant,
They saw their first-born go,
But not the strong limbs broken
And the beautiful men brought low,
The piteous writhing bodies,
They screamed “Don’t leave me, sir”,
For they were only your fathers
But I was your officer.

[Source: Winter of the World]

Editor’s note: “Young officer-poets who wrote about their men often used the language of love poetry…. Mackintosh had carried the badly wounded Sutherland out of a German trench, pursued by the enemy, but the man had died before he could be got to safety.”
 
Here's my own take on that bloody year.
 
Days of 1917
​
On the eighth day God looked
and the world was mad. 
He sent forth a pouter pigeon,
saying, Alight in a poor

out of the way place, maybe
southern Appalachia,
then fly around the world,
flitting up and down,

and tell me if any cling
to tatterdemalion faith.
Shall I release the waters
of another flood?

Perched above brick-red plots
she sees men and women scratch
the dirt like hungry biddies, sees
drivers and wagons

hauling chestnut bark
lined up at a tannery,
a line of barefoot women
selling them apple brandy--

they call it corpse-reviver,
gall-breaker, gum-tickler,
milk of the wild cow,
​pain drowner:

Pigeon calls it wife-beater
and bust-head. She takes flight,
the world below snorts
and bites its stall: fire coals

belch from sawmill boilers,
the bristling Atlantic scrapes
its tusks against Hatteras.
She flies eastward, over seas

spattered with white caps
and periscopes and bodies
of sailors who once swaggered
and cussed like gods.

She reaches a guarded mount,
turns inland, and skims over
Polygon Wood, racing ahead
of a creeping barrage

inundating no-man’s land
with fire. She hovers over Tommies
engulfed by mustard gas,
over Jerries out of sight

who suffocate in mud,
though once they could swim
the length of a pond
on one deep breath. 

Here and there a comrade
dies to rescue one
he loves, a padre
breathes life into one

who is losing hope.
The pigeon looks up to heaven.
They’re drowning themselves
ready enough. You can hold off.