ANZAC day 2015 - Wilfred Owen; Siegfried Sassoon

Into April and almost ANZAC day once more – an Australian remembrance of the blunder at Gallipoli and how the Turks kicked our arses all the way back to Bondi.  Oh alright then, it’s a celebration of historic events that defined us for who we are as a nation and epitomises the ‘Aussie’ spirit of mateship, true grit and cheerful perseverance in the face of struggle and adversity – there!  Of course few of the poor beggars who took part in Gallipoli would have appreciated that.  Normally at ANZAC day I’m looking for a Naval poem to post – the Navy being my background and tradition.  But this year happens to be the 100^th anniversary of when Australian and New Zealand troops were put ashore at Gallipoli, so I thought it might be more fitting to revisit favourite poems that come out of the great war (WW1) – poets like Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, Blunden, Rosenberg, Graves …..  Reading these guys makes you appreciate how the art of poetry can capture a moment in time and make it as moving and stark as any artist’s painting or cameraman’s photo – more so I believe, because it is through the arrangement of words forming our civilised tongue that common emotion is stirred within us most strongly.  That’s how I feel about Wilfred Owen’s, Dulce Et Decorum Est.  Wilfred was English and must have been a man of true grit – he enlisted in 1915 (2^nd Lieutenant), treated for shellshock, sent back to the UK, returned to France and the front line in 1918 and was killed in action on the fourth of November (one week before Armistice Day).  Wilfred Owen was strongly influenced and mentored by another great WW1 poet, Siegfried Sassoon.  He and Sassoon met when Wilfred was being treated for shellshock in the UK.  Both these poets tell of how life really was at the front, in the trenches – pull no punches; a strong protest against war which is in contrast to some of the patriotic fervour written at the start of the war by poets such as Rupert Brooke and Edward Thomas.  The title of the poem, Dulce Et Decorum Est forms part of a more complete quote given in the last line – “The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, (The old Lie: It is sweet and right to die for your country.).  Literal translation of the title?  Sweet and Right/Fitting/Honourable/Glorious it is!

 Dulce Et Decorum Est

(Wilfred Owen – 1893 to 1918)

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through

    sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood shod.  All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

 

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …..

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

 

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes

Writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, -

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen has not chosen the title of his poem by accident – way back around 50 BC a Roman poet named Horace coined the phrase in one of his Odes, III.2.13.  The quote was also inscribed on the wall of the chapel of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1913 (wonder if it’s still there?).  I reckon Wilfred must have sat in that chapel as a young, raw officer, reflected on those words; perhaps romantically embraced them at the time and then spat them back bitterly when he had a taste of reality of war on the western front.

Two things in a poem for me – ‘content’ and ‘construction’.  Dulce Et Decorum Est satisfies my need for content – clear that it’s about a company of soldiers making their way out of the front line to a rest area (“towards our distant rest began to trudge”) when they come under a chlorine or mustard gas attack.  Standard procedure is for somebody to yell “Gas! Gas!” (expelling air from their lungs so as not to breathe it in).  This alerts others to put their gas masks on (“…. fumbling, Fitting the clumsy helmets ….”).  One man is slow to react and is overcome by the gas before getting his mask on (“…. someone  …flound’ring like a man in fire or lime …”).  The effect of the gas is horrific (“… guttering, choking, drowning.  The blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs …”).  Another reference to gas masks is in the second stanza (“ ..through the misty panes and thick green light,”).  This is the poet looking through the green tinted glass that was fitted to WW1 style gas masks.  “Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines …” tells us that the soldiers have moved beyond the range (“outstripped”) of the enemy artillery firing 5.9 calibre shells.

I have to admire the construction of this poem also.  Look at the rhyme structure – it supports the presentation of two sonnets – the first one speaks of action in the present tense (the poet is there as things are happening).  The second sonnet puts the poet at a distance from the horror.  He’s having nightmares about what he’s experienced and they are full of sights and sounds of the human body in tortured death.  Oh there is no glory (“… tell with such high zest …”).

Now my link to Wilfred Owen and Australian soldiers in WW1 was formed last year when I was fortunate to visit Ypres in Belgium.  Many Australian soldiers fought and died defending that town in the five battles of Ypres (some 36000 killed or wounded).  Plus many more UK and Commonwealth troops marched out of Ypres on their way to the front crossing an ancient bridge and moat at a place called Menin Gate.  After the war, a memorial was erected there to commemorate the names of over 54000 men who died and have no known graves (bodies not identified or found).  The names of the soldiers are carved on the stone walls.  Menin Gate is now a very popular tourist attraction.  Something I found out while researching for this post (which tells me now that it’s good to do your study before going on holiday), prior to WW1 there were two stone lions guarding the Menin Gate (not there now).  They were removed to prevent them being damaged during the war, and then after the war they were donated to Australia and now sit at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra – how about that; visited there many times but I’ve never noticed them lions.  Also, if you are going to visit Menin Gate (being a poetry lover), research beforehand the origin of Latin quotes carved on the external walls of the memorial.

Having walked down the road to Menin Gate to witness a ceremony of the last post, I wanted to write my observations, my thoughts, feelings – I thought the emotion would be ‘moving’, ‘reverent’ – and I’m sure it could have been except for the millions of other people who seemed to be jostling desperately to be a survivor.  And then I thought, I guess this is akin to the WW1 western front experience – go with it!  So I wrote, At Menin Gate 2014.  The first line of Wilfred Owen’s poem gave me my first line, “Stretched craning like goons at an accident site.”

 

The opening ceremony for the Menin Gate memorial was held in 1927.  At that time the English poet, Siegfried Sassoon wrote a poem titled, On Passing the New Menin Gate.  I include it here as an extra because it is such an emotional, strong protest on how he, a soldier who experienced the war feels betrayal and insult by those who sent young men to wasteful slaughter, and then try to honour it through a pile of stones built in an arch (“ ..ever an immolation (sacrifice) so belied (failed to act up to)”).

 

 

 

  On Passing the New Menin Gate

(Siegfried Sassoon – 1886 to 1967)

 

Who will remember, passing through this Gate,

The unheroic Dead who fed the guns?

Who shall absolve the foulness of their fate, -

Those doomed, conscripted, unvictorious ones?

Crudely renewed, the Salient holds its own.

Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp;

Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone,

The armies who endured that sullen swamp.

 

Here was the world’s worst wound.  And here with pride

‘Their name liveth for ever,’ the Gateway claims.

Was ever an immolation so belied

As these intolerably nameless names?

Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

2014.  September – we meet up with our UK friends and do a motoring tour of Europe.  First stop is Ypres (Leper).  I’m done over by what I can only describe as the ‘touristification’ of significant sites, the bus loads of camera snappy visitors.

 

At Menin Gate 2014

 

Stretched craning like goons at an accident site.

Bodies pressed tip toe skittish as meerkats,

we cuss arriving late for taps at the Menin Gate.

Now a mob has amassed in ignorance already,

amidst this lurking, baffling smell of horseshit,

but for the horse, there appears to be not one.

Two Romanians roll loose tobacco and stare at women.

School girls on foreign excursion flirt in frayed shorts,

run away and giggle from youths

become weary with walls

which they know are meant to be sad,

but really man, what can ya do?

And the Japanese girls comprehend nothing at all.

Then a trumpet rustles it to silence and look.

And from the silence as many lit iPhone screens

on sticks,

rise irreverent to capture something on facebook –

You went to Ypres, what was it like?

And casting around at the common eyed curiosity,

a sense of dull pity dawns, this

the surviving DNA?

While the best of mankind’s seed went to waste?

Spilled in the fields of Flanders,

And all up over the walls of the Menin Gate?

                                                                                                                 J. O. White

 

 

Les Murray - Troop Train Returning

There’s as much reflection in the going to war as there is in the coming home.  And this is how I would like to introduce a poet I admire and one of Australia’s greatest contemporary poets, Les Murray.  Les is a prolific writer who has written more than most people could ever wish to achieve.  Though for all of that, he is a controversial figure in Australian literature.  He’s made himself that way by being outspoken, critical of academics in the literary world, critical of the city upper-class throughout Australia’s history, champion of the battling country folk, the marginalised, the oppressed.  I see parallels between Les’s view on the world and that of Charles Bukowski – both appear to come from deprived, difficult child-hoods.  Except in Les Murray’s case, a truly gifted intellect took him on to university and established academic success.  Les Murray writes great descriptive poetry through which the exact use of words and perfect turn of phrase paints an emotional image of the scenes he describes in his writing.  Les grew up in the country, near Taree in New South Wales.  Consequently, many of his poems are set in the bush and rural surroundings.  His poem, Troop Train Returning is fitting for our ANZAC day remembrance.  It describes the mood of Aussie soldiers, the survivors of WWII, on the final leg of returning to homes out west to pick up their lives, wheat belt towns, sheep, cattle farms and properties.  What’s amazing about this poem, is that Les Murray obviously wrote it from imagination, not personal experience.  And he wrote it when he was a young man (maybe influenced by the cinemascope, picture theatre news reels of his day).  Anybody who has driven the miles, followed the rail tracks, the telephone lines, crossed the cattle grids linking outback towns like, Dalby, Walgett, Winton, Mildura, Cloncurry, Quilpie or Hay will know that Les has nailed it in, Troop Train Returning.

 

Troop Train Returning

Les Murray (1938 – )

 

Beyond the Divide

the days become immense,

beyond our war

in the level lands of wheat,

the things that we defended are still here,

the willow-trees pruned neatly cattle-high,

the summer roads where far-back bullock drays

foundered in earth and mouldered into yarns.

From a ringbarked tree, as we go cheering by

a tower and a whirlwind of white birds,

as we speed by

with a whistle for the plains.

On kitbags in the aisle, old terrors doze,

clumsy as rifles in a peacetime train.

 

Stopped at a siding

under miles of sun,

I watched a friend I mightn’t see again

shyly shake hands, becoming a civilian,

and an old Ford truck

receding to the sky.

 

I walk about.  The silo, tall as Time,

casts on bright straws its coldly southward shade.

 

All things are spaced out here

each in its value.

the pepper-trees beside the crossroads pub

are dim with peace,

pumpkins are stones

in fields so loosely green.

 

In a little while, I’ll be afraid to look

out for my house and the people that I love,

they have been buried in the moon so long.

 

Beyond all wars

in the noonday lands of wheat,

the whistle summons shouters from the bar,

refills the train with jokes and window noise.

this perfect plain

casts out the things we’ve done

as we jostle here, relaxed as farmers, smoking,

held at this siding

till the red clicks green.

 

My contribution to this post is also written from imagination – imagination of a young man who went to war from a Queensland country town but did not return.  Jimmy Oliver (QX13185) was my grandmother’s young brother.  He enlisted with the 8^th Division, 2/10 Field Regiment, fall of Singapore, prisoner of war, died in Sandakan, Borneo, a mere five months before the Japanese surrendered.  My poem has no title, but it comes from my mother as a little girl recalling a time when Jimmy visited the farm on leave.  I can only imagine his pride and excitement of having already tasted city life beyond the Pioneer Valley and now off to adventure overseas ………

 

1941, Friday, 3rd January          The Commanding Officer received a telephone communication.  All pre-embarkation leave must be completed by the 21^st January

 

They sent Fred and me home on leave

together,

five days, two days

travel time,

I went to visit mum and dad’s grave

before taking the rail motor to Finch Hatton,

looked so forward to catching up,

me in my dress uniform,

and the world beyond

cane paddocks and scrub,

never realized before,

how warm feeling,

distant

kerosene lamp glow gives,

at night from a farm window,

far off,

seems out of touch now,

comfortable and beckoning,

but regretful,

when you know the true brightness.

After only a day

I was eager to get back,

Jess and Rachael talked into the night,

Steve doesn’t understand

or George

I think May was proud of me,

the night stayed at their place

on the Gargett farm,

poor Les itching to get into it,

said my final good-byes.....

                                                   J. O. White

 

 

Eric Bogle - ANZAC Day

Eric Bogle

In Australia we’ve got our ANZAC day remembrance coming up (25^th April) – that was the day in 1915, WWI, when Australian and New Zealand troops were put ashore at dawn on a narrow, pebbly beach at Gallipoli, Turkey, to get shot to pieces by the Turks and to commence what would turn out to be a tragic and failed attempt planned by British generals to capture the Dardanelles and open up a sea route to Russia.  Of course there were far more British and French troops committed to the campaign than Aussies and Kiwis, but it’s considered a defining moment in our nations’ psyche (the psyche of the white nation, that is) because it was the first time we fought as a Commonwealth nation, and the legend of the ANZAC was born.  ANZAC day today, is a remembrance of all conflicts and the ultimate sacrifice some have made and continue to make for world peace. We have a public holiday, and as it turns out everybody finds a uniform or military connection lurking somewhere in their family history.  And tradition tries to re-enact what that first larrikin band must have done when they went off to war.  So there’s the dawn service where people get out of bed hours before normal and gather at the town local cenotaph to reflect on the preparation of equipment; the conspiracy; the muffled rowing.  Coastal town people may gather on their steep headland or bluff above a rocky beach to see the horizon form; the outline of men-of-war; the heavy, awkward boats coming slowly in from the enemy’s perspective.  Then when the daylight strengthens to expose them, the people retreat to the local Returned Services Club (every town and suburb has one), where canteen ladies serve up warming breakfasts bacon and eggs just like they would if they were on the troop ships today and their boys were going over the side.  And with breakfast there’s a serving of rum.  Rum, because that’s what the ANZACs would have had, a tot of rum from the Navy, to comfort, to warm, to calm nerves, to give courage.  The stories get louder and the yarns begin and carry on to the mid-morning ANZAC day parade and back into the Club and more drinking – because that’s what the ANZACs would have done when they were on leave in Egypt.
I’m being irreverent.  There are many poems written about Gallipoli.  Most of them approach the subject with tragedy and loss.  But my favourite piece is set to a song by Eric Bogle, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.  The words are poignant and capture the naivety of a young country’s involvement in a useless campaign.  An anti-war poem?  Some see it that way.  But I see it not as a total protest against war, but as a protest on poor military planning, poorly planned battles, poor leadership, hopeless, useless campaigns, against senseless slaughter (on both sides).  In our time unfortunately, there is the reality of evil and terror in our world and the necessity for good people to stand up and enter into conflict.  The unifying spirit of Gallipoli also embodies sacrifice, mateship, perseverance ………
I include the lyrics to, And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda.  A lot of artists have done their version of the song - one of my favorites is the Irish Tenors. Look up the song on youtube - listen to Eric Bogle himself, and Slim Dusty also.

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

Eric Bogle – song 1971

 

When I was a young man I carried my pack

And I lived the free life of a rover

From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback

I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son

It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done

So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun

And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda

As we sailed away from the quay

And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers

We sailed off to Gallipoli

 

How well I remember that terrible day

How the blood stained the sand and the water

And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay

We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter

Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well

He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells

And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell

Nearly blew us right back to Australia

But the band played Waltzing Matilda

As we stopped to bury our slain

We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs

Then we started all over again

 

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive

In a mad world of blood, death and fire

And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive

But around me the corpses piled higher

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit

And when I woke up in my hospital bed

And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead

Never knew there were worse things than dying

For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda

All around the green bush far and near

For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs

No more waltzing Matilda for me

 

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed

And they shipped us back home to Australia

The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane

Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay

I looked at the place where my legs used to be

And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me

To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the band played Waltzing Matilda

As they carried us down the gangway

But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared

Then turned all their faces away

 

And now every April I sit on my porch

And I watch the parade pass before me

And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march

Reliving old dreams of past glory

And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore

The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war

And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"

And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda

And the old men answer to the call

But year after year their numbers get fewer

Some day no one will march there at all

 

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda

Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me

And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong

Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?