Voices of Silence (10 page)
Authors: Vivien Noakes
How It Takes You
When the Zepps above us hover,
They’ve a curious effect,
And make people take to cover
In a way you don’t expect.
Papa sits in the cellar
With the Pommery and Schweppes,
For he says it helps a feller
When he has to dodge the Zepps.
And the children in the store-room
Play the deuce with the preserves,
And eat on till they’ve no more room,
Just to fortify their nerves.
And uncle, though a dug-out,
Has no notions all the same,
For he takes his flask and rug out
To our best cucumber frame.
While aunty,
à la
Hubbard,
To avoid a chance mishap,
Seeks for safety in the cupboard
With the poodle and a wrap.
And Sis a sight to kill is,
For when Zepps are in the wind,
She gets up and puts on frillies
Of a most provoking kind.
Yes, when Zepps above are strafing,
And the bombs begin to blaze,
You see all your friends behaving
In a lot of funny ways.
[I know a blithe blossom in Blighty]
I know a blithe blossom in Blighty
Whom you (I’m afraid) would call flighty
For when Zepps are about
She always trips out
In a little black crêpe de chine nighty.
Model Dialogues for Air-Raids
(A few specimen conversations are here suggested as suitable for the aerial conditions to which we have been subjected. The idea is to discourage the Hun by ignoring those conditions or explaining them away. For similar conversations in actual life blank verse would not of course be obligatory.)
I
A.
Beautiful weather for the time of year!
B.
A perfect spell, indeed, of halcyon calm,
Most grateful here in Town, and, what is more,
A precious gift to our brave lads in France,
Whose need is sorer, being sick of mud.
A.
They have our first thoughts ever, and, if Heaven
Had not enough good weather to go round,
Gladly I’d sacrifice this present boon
And welcome howling blizzards, hail and flood,
So they, out there, might still be warm and dry.
II
C.
Have you observed the alien in our midst,
How strangely numerous he seems to-day,
Swarming like migrant swallows from the East?
D.
I take it they would fain elude the net
Spread by Conscription’s hands to haul them in.
All day they lurk in cover Houndsditch way,
Dodging the copper, and emerge at night
To snatch a breath of Occidental air
And drink the ozone of our Underground.
III
E.
How glorious is the Milky Way just now!
F.
True. In addition to the regular stars
I saw a number flash and disappear.
E.
I too. A heavenly portent, let us hope,
Presaging triumph to our British arms.
IV
G.
Methought I heard yestere’en a loudish noise
Closely resembling the report of guns.
H.
Ay, you conjectured right. Those sounds arose
From anti-aircraft guns engaged in practice
Against the unlikely advent of the Hun.
One must be ready in a war like this
To face the most remote contingencies.
G.
Something descended on the next back-yard,
Spoiling a dozen of my neighbour’s tubers.
H.
No doubt a live shell mixed among the blank;
Such oversights from time to time occur
Even in Potsdam, where the casual sausage
Perishes freely in a
feu de joie
.
V
J.
We missed you badly at our board last night.
K.
The loss was mine. I could not get a cab.
Whistling, as you’re aware, is banned by law,
And when I went in person on the quest
The streets were void of taxis.
J.
And to what
Do you attribute this unusual dearth?
K.
The general rush to Halls of Mirth and Song,
Never so popular. The War goes well,
And London’s millions needs must find a way
To vent their exaltation – else they burst.
J.
But could you not have travelled by the Tube?
K.
I did essay the Tube, but it was stuffed.
The atmosphere was solid as a cheese,
And I was loath to penetrate the crowd
Lest it should shove me from behind upon
The electric rail.
J.
Can you account for that?
K.
I should ascribe it to the harvest moon,
That wakes romance in Metropolitan breasts,
Drawing our young war-workers out of town
To seek the glamour of the country lanes
Under the silvery beams to lovers dear.
Owen Seaman
Beasts and Superbeasts
(A German zoologist has discovered in German New Guinea a new kind of opossum to which he proposes to give the name of
Dactylopsila Hindenburgi
.)
At the Annual convention of the Fishes, Birds and Beasts,
Which opened with the usual invigorating feasts,
The attention of the delegates of feather, fur and fin
Was focussed on a wonderful proposal from Berlin.
The document suggested that, to signalise the feats
Of the noble German armies and the splendid German fleets,
Certain highly honoured species, in virtue of their claims,
Should be privileged in future to adopt Germanic names.
To judge by the resultant din, the screams and roars and cries,
The birds were most ungrateful and the quadrupeds like-wise;
And the violence with which they ‘voiced’ their angry discontent
Was worthy of a thoroughbred Hungarian parliament.
The centipede declared he’d sooner lose a dozen legs
Than wear a patronymic defiled by human dregs;
And sentiments identical, in voices hoarse with woe,
Were emitted by the polecat and by the carrion crow.
The rattlesnake predicted that his rattle would be cracked
Before the name
Bernhardii
on to his tail was tacked;
And an elderly hyæna, famed for gluttony and greed,
Denounced the suffix
Klucki
as an insult to its breed.
Most impressive and pathetic was the anguish of the toad
When he found the name
Lissaueri
had on him been bestowed;
And a fine man-eating tiger said he’d sooner feed with S
HAW
Than allow the title
Treitschkei
to desecrate his jaw.
But this memorable meeting was not destined to disperse
Without a tragedy too great for humble human verse;
For, on hearing that
Wilhelmi
had to his name been tied,
The skunk, in desperation, committed suicide.
C.L. Graves
The New Armies go to France
The Canadians, the New Armies begin to leave for France, trench life
As soon as war was declared, young men from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa volunteered to fight. Meanwhile, Kitchener’s New Armies began to arrive in France in 1915. After crossing the Channel, they might experience a further period of intensive training at the Base Camp at Étaples before being transported in cattle trucks, marked ‘HOMMES 40 CHEVAUX 8’, to the railhead, from where they marched, heavily laden, often many miles to the line.
The usual routine was for men to spend four days in the front line and four days in reserve in billets behind the line, then, after two weeks or so, to have six days’ rest away from the fighting area, although these times varied according to conditions. While in reserve, the troops carried out fatigues, carrying supplies up into the line or acting as covering parties; these times were often more exhausting than when they were in the front line.
The line itself consisted of three lines of trenches – front line, support and reserve – linked by communication trenches built on a zigzag pattern to break the trajectory of enemy fire; the trenches were often given the names of familiar streets from home. The front-line trench was protected by earthworks forming a parapet, further built up with earth-filled sandbags. Against the front wall a firestep was constructed to enable men to view no man’s land, the strip of ground that separated the British and German trenches, which could be anything from 25 yards to half a mile wide. Immediately in front of the trench, barbed wire entanglements were laid. The floor of the dugout was covered with wooden duckboards, but shelter was primitive. Dugouts and fox holes, built into the wall of the trenches, were rarely elaborate constructions. This was different from the German lines, where more carefully constructed dugouts – often cut deep into the chalk downs – gave not only greater protection but also a sense of permanence. The British authorities discouraged this, for the men were meant to realise that they were holding their positions only temporarily and that the line would soon move on again.
The day began and ended with ‘stand-to’, when the men lined the parapet, for this was the time most vulnerable to enemy attack. The first task once daylight had come was the cleaning and inspection of rifles, after which the men were given a tot of rum. Some of the day was spent cleaning up or sleeping, and much of it was spent waiting for something to happen – the discomfort and tedium were endless. Most of the work was done at night as men went out under cover of darkness into no man’s land to reconnoitre or to repair the wire. There was constant sniping, and shelling by ‘Jack Johnsons’ – heavy shells that were named after a celebrated black American boxer because they created a dense black smoke when they exploded – and ‘Minnies’, the formidable German trench mortar or
Minenwerfer
. Even in quiet parts of the line, a thousand-strong battalion could expect to lose thirty men a month from sniping, shelling or sickness.
The plague of the trenches was rats, which multiplied and grew fat on the unburied dead, though there were also the beauties of birds, particularly the skylark, and of trench flowers.
Canadians
With arrows on their quarters and with numbers on their hoofs,
With the trampling sound of twenty that re-echoes in the roofs,
Low of crest and dull of coat, wan and wild of eye,
Through our English village the Canadians go by.
Shying at a passing cart, swerving from a car,
Tossing up an anxious head to flaunt a showy star,
Racking at a Yankee gait, reaching at the rein,
Twenty raw Canadians are tasting life again!
Hollow-necked and hollow-flanked, lean of rib and hip,
Strained and sick and weary with the wallow of the ship,
Glad to smell the turf again, hear the robin’s call,
Tread again the country road they lost at Montreal!
Fate may bring them dule and woe; better steeds than they
Sleep beside the English guns a hundred leagues away;
But till war hath need of them lightly lie their reins,
Softly fall the feet of them along the English lanes.
Will H. Ogilvie
To a Bad Correspondent in Camp
To Lieutenant John Samp,
26th Regiment,
The Canadian Camp,
East Sandlingborne, Kent
(Or anywhere else about England that the Regiment may have been sent).
Dear John, – All your kith
And your kin (counting me)
Are dissatisfied with
The scant treatment that we
Have received in the matter of letters since your transport in June put to sea.
One brief note as you sailed
Thanking me for the socks,
And the picture-card mailed
From the Liverpool docks,
With two sheets to your mother from Reading, haven’t busted the old letter-box.
Now, if nothing is back
Of your taciturn way
But congenital lack
Of the right thing to say,
Here’s a little set form for your letters which you’re welcome to use day by day: –
D
EAR
M
OTHER
, [
Aunt, Cousin
] –
I take a pen in hand
In more health than I was in
When not so much tanned
By our open-air marches and drillings in this fine soldier-fashioning land.
For some twenty-four hours,
You’ll be happy to know,
We’ve had plenty of showers
[
Blizzards, sunshine, or snow –
The third item won’t do for the nighttime, but with long English days it may go
].