REMEMBRANCE
WHEN YOU GO HOME TELL THEM OF US AND SAY, FOR YOUR TOMORROW WE GAVE OUR TODAY
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this is of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
Lieutenant Rupert Brooke Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division
Died 23rd April 1915 Aged 27
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae Royal Canadian Medical Corps
Died of pneumonia 1918
Anthem For Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle ?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all ?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Lieutenant Wilfred Own, M.C. 2nd Manchester Regiment
Killed in action 4th November 1918. Aged 25.
From An Outpost
I've tramped South England up and down
Down Dorset way, down Devon way,
Through every little ancient town
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
I mind the old stone churches there,
The taverns round the market square,
The cobbled streets, the garden flowers,
The sundials telling peaceful hours
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
The Meadowlands are green and fair
Down Somerset and Sussex way,
The clover scent is in the air
Down Somerset and Sussex way.
I mind the deep-thatched homesteads there
The noble downlands, clean and bare.
The sheepfolds and the cattle byres,
The blue wood-smoke from shepherd's fires
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
Mayhap I shall not walk again
Down Dorset way, down Devon way,
Nor pick a posy in a lane
Down Somerset and Sussex way.
But though my bones, unshriven, rot
In some far distant alien spot,
what soul I have shall rest from care
To know that meadows still are fair
Down Dorset way, down Devon way.
Sergeant Frederick Coulson 12th London Regiment
A few weeks before he died, Coulson wrote to his father: "If I should fall do not grieve for me. I shall be one with the wind and the sun and the flowers."
Died of wounds 8th October 1916. Aged 27.
The Cross of Wood
Not now for you the glorious return
To steep Stroud valleys, to the Severn leas
By Tewksbury and Gloucester, or the trees
Of Cheltenham under high Cotswold stern.
For you no medals such as others wear -
A cross of bronze for those approved brave -
To you is given, above a shallow grave,
The Wooden Cross that marks you resting there.
Rest you content, more honourable far
Than all the Orders is the Cross of Wood,
The symbol of self-sacrifice that stood
Bearing the God whose brethren you are.
Lieutenant Cyril Winterbotham 1/5th Gloucestershire Regiment
Killed in action 27th August 1916. Aged 29.
In Memoriam
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 got 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 that 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 fathers
But I was your officer.
Lieutenant Ewart Mackintosh, M.C. 4th Seaforth Highlanders
Killed in action 21st November 1917. Aged 24.
I Tracked A Dead Man Down A Trench
I tracked a dead man down a trench,
I knew not he was dead.
They told me he had gone that way,
And there his foot-marks led.
The trench was long and close and curved,
It seemed without an end;
And as I threaded each new bay
I thought to see my friend.
At last I saw his back. He crouched
As still as still could be,
And when I called his name aloud
He did not answer me.
The floor-way of the trench was wet
Where he was crouching dead;
The water of the pool was brown,
And round him it was red.
I stole up softly where he stayed
With head hung down all slack,
And on his shoulders laid my hands
And drew him gently back.
And then, as I had guessed, I saw
His head, and how the crown -
I saw then why he crouched so still,
And why his head hung down.
Lieutenant Walter Lyon 9th Royal Scots
Killed in action 8th May 1915. Aged 28.
A dead British soldier in a trench, Guillemont, September 1916
If We Return
If We Return, will England be
Just England still to you and me ?
The place where we must earn our bread ?
We, who have walked among the dead,
And watched the smile of agony,
And seen the price of Liberty
Which we have taken carelessly
From other hands. Nay, we shall dread,
If we return.
Dread lest we behold blood-guiltily
This land that men have died to free,
oh, English fields shall blossom red
For all the blood that has been shed
By men whose guardians are we,
If we return.
2nd Lieutenant Frank Harvey, D.C.M.
1/5th Gloucestershire Regiment
1888 - 1957
Known Unto God
Never again the tears will flow
From eyes that cannot see,
Only dead men here so who will know
Their world that used to be.
Never again birds in their sky,
No song of life to sing,
No dead men's lips will make reply
Their pain, no scream will bring.
Never again will memories fall
Upon their unnamed graves,
For mercy will no dead men call
Of silence they are slaves.
Never again that infernal hell,
The peace will now deceive;
Only dead men here so who can tell,
And anyway who would believe.
Stephen D.W. Lewis.
Who Made The Law ?
Who made the Law that men should die in shadows ?
Who spake the word that blood should splash in lanes ?
Who gave it forth that gardens should be bone-yards ?
Who spread the hills with flesh, and blood, and brains ?
Who made the Law ?
Who made the Law that Death should stalk the village ?
Who spake the word to kill among the sheaves,
Who gave it forth that death should lurk in hedgerows,
Who flung the dead among the fallen leaves ?
Who made the Law ?
But who made the Law ? the Trees shall whisper to him:
"See, see the blood - the splashes on our bark !"
Walking the meadows, he shall hear bones crackle,
And fleshless mouths shall gibber in silent lanes at dark.
Who made the Law ? At noon upon the hillside
His ears shall hear a moan, his cheeks shall feel a breath,
And all along the valleys, past gardens, croft, and homesteads,
HE who made the Law,
He who made the Law,
He who made the Law
shall walk along with Death.
WHO made the Law ?
Leslie Coulson (see From An Outpost)
Dulce et Decorum est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like old hags, we cursed through the 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 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 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 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
Gethsemane
The Garden called
Gethsemane
In Picardy it was,
And there the people came to see
The English soldiers pass.
We used to pass -- we used to pass
Or halt, as it might be,
And ship our masks in case of gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
The Garden called Gethsemane,
It held a pretty lass,
But all the time she talked to me
I prayed my cup might pass.
The officer sat on the chair,
The men lay on the grass,
And all the time we halted there
I prayed my cup might pass.
It didn't pass -- it didn't pass --
It didn't pass from me.
I drank it when we met the gas
Beyond Gethsemane.
Rudyard Kipling