The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry (29 page)

loophole
See
trench
.

Loos
A town approximately twenty-three kilometres north-east of
Ypres
. In the secondary phase of a major Allied offensive on the Western Front in autumn 1915, the British First Army's six divisions attacked and captured Loos on 25 September, but were thrown back on 13 October. The offensive cost the British Expeditionary Force 50,000 casualties.

Lord Derby's scheme
A voluntary recruitment scheme instigated by the Director of Recruiting, Lord Derby (1865–1948), in July 1915. ‘Derby Men' enlisted in the army and served for just one day, before returning to their civilian occupations to await being called up according to age and occupation.

lyddite
See
shell
.

Mametz Wood
Four kilometres north-east of
Albert
and the scene of heavy fighting during the early days of the
Somme
Offensive in July 1916.

Menin Road
The main road leading east from
Ypres
and the scene of some of the heaviest fighting by the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, particularly during the First and Third Battles of Ypres.

mess-tins
Square metal tins used by soldiers for washing and eating.

Miraumont
A village two kilometres north-east of Grandcourt, which remained in German hands during the
Somme
Offensive, being captured by the British only in February 1917. The village is split into two sections by the river
Ancre
.

Mons
A city approximately sixty-five kilometres south-west of Brussels and close to the border of France. Mons was the site of the first major engagement for the British Expeditionary Force in August and September 1914, as well as the site of the closing battles of the war.

mustard gas
A heavy yellow poisonous gas and blistering agent, dichlorodiethylsulphide, first used by the Germans against the Russians at Riga in September 1917. Its effects on the eyes, throat and lungs were devastating, and it possessed an unfortunate tendency to remain in
shell
holes and then be dispersed by later shelling.

NCO
Non-commissioned officer – anyone above the rank of
private
, and below the rank of second lieutenant in the British army.

no man's land
The space between opposing
trenches
, so called because it belonged to ‘no man'.

Old Contemptibles
The survivors of the regular army who fought in the earliest battles of the war, before the introduction of volunteers or
conscripts
. So called because of the
Kaiser
's alleged comment that he was being opposed by a ‘contemptible little army'.

Ovillers
A village on the
Somme
battlefront approximately four
kilometres north-east of
Albert
, used mainly for soldiers'
billets
.

parados
See
trench
.

parapet
See
trench
.

Passchendaele
A wood and village eleven kilometres east-northeast of
Ypres
. The ridge at Passchendaele was the last objective taken in the Third Battle of Ypres, and has since been used as a synonym for this battle.

phosgene
Carbonyl chloride, an extremely poisonous and colourless gas, first used by the Germans on 31 May 1915 against Russian troops in Bzura and Rawka in Poland. Only a small amount was needed to render a soldier ineffective, and it killed its victims within forty-eight hours.

Picardie/Picard/Picardy
An area of France that includes the
Aisne
, Oise and
Somme
regions, and the scene of the majority of the fighting by the British Expeditionary Force during the war.

private
The lowest rank in the British army.

redoubt
A temporary fortification, typically square or polygonal in shape, without flanking defences.

respirator
A gas mask.

rifle
The bolt-head is the sliding piece of the breech mechanism of a rifle, into which a cartridge – a metal case containing propellant explosive and a bullet – is placed. The foresight is the front sight of the rifle, through which the user must look in order to pinpoint his target accurately. The rifle-thong is the strap attached to the rifle, used to carry it over the shoulder. The stock is the butt of the rifle.

rum ration
A tradition adopted from the navy, whereby soldiers were issued with a daily quantity of rum.

Saint-Eloi
A town in
Flanders
, four kilometres south of
Ypres
on the Ypres–Messines Road.

salient
An area where the
line
bulges out towards the enemy and therefore often has to be defended from three sides at once.
The most famous salient surrounded the town of
Ypres
in Belgium, which was destroyed during the war.

sap
See
trench
.

Senlis
A village on the river Nonette, a tributary of the Oise, fifty-one kilometres north of Paris and ten kilometres east of Chantilly, frequented by troops on rest.

shell
An explosive projectile, fired from a large gun and often containing the high explosive lyddite. Shells were often known by their size or weight, as in the case of ‘five-nines', ‘twelve-inch', ‘six-inch' and ‘eighteen-pounders', or were given nicknames such as ‘whizz-bang' or ‘crump' because of the noise they made. ‘Jack Johnsons' were named after the African-American boxer Jack Johnson (1878–1946), because of their power and the black smoke they made on detonation.

shell shock
First diagnosed in 1914, shell shock was the generic name given to the psychological disturbance caused by prolonged exposure to active warfare. Frequently expressed through physical symptoms such as muteness and paralysis of the limbs, it was so called because it was believed to be caused by exposure to the vacuum created by
shells
exploding nearby.

shot
A coarse, non-explosive lead bullet.

shrapnel
Shell
fragments thrown out by an explosion.

six-inch
See
shell
.

Somme
The river Somme flows through northern France to the English Channel and is 240 kilometres long. Concentrated on the eastern part of the river, the Somme Offensive took place between 1 July and 18 November 1916 and is remembered for the 60,000 British casualties sustained on the first day, of which 20,000 were fatalities. The battle was the largest and most sustained offensive by the British Expeditionary Force during the war.

stock
See
rifle
.

tank
Tanks were first used during the latter stages of the
Somme
Offensive, at Delville Wood on 15 September 1916. Also called ‘landships', they were supplied by the British navy and were given the code name ‘tank' because of their resemblance to water carriers.

Tommy
The traditional nickname of the British soldier, derived from ‘Thomas Atkins', the name used in specimen official forms in the nineteenth century.

traversing
Firing a rifle or shelling horizontally in a sweeping motion.

trench
A model trench was just under two metres deep, with duckboards of narrow slatted wood covering the ground. The sides of the trench were known as breastworks, the side facing the enemy being the parapet and the rear side being the parados. The parapet had a raised fire-step on which a soldier stood to fire his weapon. The trench was protected by barbed wire and by walls of sandbags containing loopholes, narrow slits through which soldiers could fire or look. Saps were narrower trenches which extended into
no man's land
and were used primarily for communication. A dugout was a roofed shelter dug into the sides of the trench, and was also known ironically as a ‘funk-hole'.

twelve-inch
See
shell
.

Vlamertinghe
A village five kilometres west of
Ypres
which suffered many heavy bombardments throughout the war.

whizz-bangs
See
shell
.

wire
Work in the
trenches
often consisted of repairing or laying barbed wire in
no man's land
, usually at night.

Yp r e s
A Belgian town on the Western Front, heavily contested by both sides and eventually destroyed as a result. The three battles of Ypres took place between 31 October and 17
November 1914, 22 April and 25 May 1915, and 31 July and 10 November 1917. Known as ‘Wipers' in soldiers' slang.

[Arthur] St John Adcock
was born in London in 1864. After working as a lawyer, he became a full-time writer in 1893. He was made acting editor of
The Bookman
in 1908, and succeeded to the editorship in 1923. He died in 1930.

‘The Silence' first appeared in
Collected Poems of St. John Adcock
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1929).

Richard Aldington
was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1882 and was educated at Dover College and at University College, London. He volunteered in 1914, but was rejected on medical grounds. He successfully enlisted in May 1916 and served in France from November 1916, initially in the ranks of the 11th Devonshire Regiment before becoming an NCO in the 6th Leicestershire Regiment. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd Royal Sussex Regiment in November 1917, only to be severely gassed and shell-shocked in the following year. One of the founders of the Imagist Movement in poetry, he had a successful post-war career as a poet, novelist and biographer, and
Death of a Hero
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1929) and
Roads to Glory
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1930) are fictionalized accounts of his war experiences. He died in 1962.

‘Bombardment', ‘In the Trenches' and ‘Soliloquy II' were first published in
Images of War
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1919). ‘Reserve' appeared in
Images of Desire
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1919).

Martin Armstrong
was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1882 and was educated at Charterhouse and at Pembroke College,
Cambridge. A writer before the war, he enlisted as a private in the 28th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment (The Artists' Rifles), was commissioned in the following year in the Middlesex Regiment, and went on to serve on the Western Front. After the war he worked as a literary journalist, short-story writer, novelist and anthologist. He died in 1974.

‘Before the Battle' appeared in
The Bird-Catcher and Other Poems
(London: Martin Secker, 1929).

Herbert Asquith
was born in London in 1881 and was educated at Winchester College and at Balliol College, Oxford. The son of Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916, he was called to the Bar in 1907. Receiving a commission in the Royal Marine Artillery at the end of 1914, he served as a second lieutenant with an anti-aircraft battery in France before being wounded in June 1915 and sent home. In June 1916 he joined the Royal Field Artillery and returned to France, ending the war with the rank of captain. He died in 1947.

‘The Volunteer' appeared in
The Volunteer and Other Poems
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1915).

Maurice Baring
was born in London in 1874, the fourth son of Lord Revelstoke, and was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the diplomatic service and then became a foreign correspondent for
The Times
and the
Morning Post
. During the war he worked in military intelligence as a secretary and interpreter and was attached to the Royal Flying Corps headquarters in both France and England. At the close of the war he had achieved the rank of major, and he was awarded an OBE for his wartime services. He had a successful post-war career as a novelist, dramatist, translator and critic. His
R.F.C. H.Q., 1914–1918
(London: G. Bell & Sons, 1920) is an account of his wartime experiences. He died in 1945.

‘August, 1918' appeared in
Poems: 1914–1919
(London: Martin Secker, 1920).

Pauline Barrington
was born in Philadelphia in 1876 and worked for most of her life as a secretary, while at the same time contributing poetry, short stories and reviews to various magazines. The date of her death is unknown.

‘Education' appeared in
Poems Written During the Great War 1914–1918: An Anthology
, ed. Bertram Lloyd (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1918).

Laurence Binyon
was born in Lancaster in 1869 and was educated at St Paul's School and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry. He worked in the British Museum's Department of Printed Books until 1916, when he went to the Western Front as a Red Cross orderly. After the war he returned to the British Museum, and in 1932 he became keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings. He was a prolific author, publishing widely on oriental art and producing many collections of poetry. He died in 1943.

‘For the Fallen' appeared in
The Winnowing-Fan: Poems on the Great War
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1914). ‘The Sower' appeared in
The New World
(London: Elkin Matthews, 1918).

Edmund Blunden
was born in London in 1896 and grew up in Yalding in Kent. Educated at Christ's Hospital and at Queen's College, Oxford, he joined the 11th Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment (1st South Downs) as a second lieutenant on the outbreak of the First World War. He fought on the Somme and at Ypres, winning the Military Cross and eventually being promoted to full lieutenant. After the war he held several academic posts, including professorships of English Literature at Tokyo University, at the University of Hong Kong and at Oxford
University, and he won the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1956. His war experiences are recounted in
Undertones of War
(London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1928). He died in 1974.