Promise of Peace                        Flanders 1917

                             by Theodore Nelson Newham

                             Teritorial Force 6591

This poem was read over and over again in the dugouts, estaminets, caves and trenches. The troops never seemed to get tired of hearing it. They laughed a bit over the scarlet red poppy.

Cornflower and buttercup, poppy and pimpernel,

Saffron and scarlet, emerald and white

Serpentine ditches crowned with profusion

Of beautiful flowers which dazzle the sight

With colour reapiendent of every shade

From brilliant scarlet to the dearest jade

And over all reigning and bating the breath

That red-petall’ed poppy, the symbol of death

Mile after mile the tortuous trenches,

Fill’d with peculiar nauseous stenches,

Broken in parts by haphazard shell,

Knee-deep in mud, exuding a smell,

We shall never forget if out years number more

Than the pounds of dull clobber our shoulders bore.

And dominant, dazzling, of poisonous breath,

That red-petall’ed poppy, the symbol of death.

Mile after mile of rain-sodden ditch,

Hundredweights with every hitch

Of strappings and pack. A rifle which slips

Unhappy moments from shoulder to hips,

Catching in everything ev’thing, plaster’d with mud,

Its muzzle a vulgar mouth, crammed full of food.

Lurching from side to side clutching at clay,

Backwards and forward, feet slipping away

“Go easy in front, for Gods sake go slow”

Why the hell aren’t we halting I’d like to know.

That light footed fool at the head of the line

Of hard breathing mules, of wallowing swine

Tell him to halt or he’ll bloody well find

That bullets of lead can be shot from behind

That leaders have died from an unknown hand

When first they embark’d on no-mans-land

“5 minutes halt’ ….so I’d jolly well think,

good God, how this blasted mud does stink.

My boots are mud oozing at ev’ry hole,

What can you expect when you crawl like a mole

Under roads along ditches thro’ rivers of clay

Which the rain has been swelling the previous day?

“prepare to advance”, oh hell what a game.

And millions of idiots doing the same.

Mud biting our boots eyes smarting with sweat,

The chassery trench we shall never forget.

Five solid hours without easing our kit,

When we suddenly came to the end of it.

Our hearts trembl’d slightly at what we beheld.

We’d emerg’d on a town which the Germans had shell’d

Then the French, then the Germans time and again,

‘Till no roof was left to keep out the rain.

No roof could we see, wherever we gaz’d,

Ev’ry villa and inn to the ground was raz-d.

Bare, broken and shapeless as teeth of a man,

Who has long overstepped his allotted span.

Shatter’d the trees, without life or leaf,

Gaunt, fearful and hopeless, in silent relief.

And there, in the midst, of poisonous breath,

And black-hearted, red poppies the symbol of death.

Crawl’d into a cellar, sank down on our pack:

With one desire only to ease our bent back,

Began eating what food remained of our store,

Munching dry bread and biscuit as never before,

In our lives as we tackl’d well flavors dish

While, ever above us, that slow-sweeping swish,

Of some resolute shell intent upon dying,

If but it could leave some British son lying,

A maim’d broken body, unable to move,

Or return to the land for whose honor he strove.

We listened intently, knowing something of this,

Anxiously noting the serpent-like hiss,

The sorrowing sigh, as beyond us it spread

The moan of a living soul leaving its dead.

When it had pass’d, more freely draw breath,

More than ever impressed by the nearness of death.

That night we were snip’d ev’ry yard to the line,

Where our efforts were needed to help in a mine.

Shouldering great planks, while quick-firer snaps

Follow’d us as we stumbled our way thro the saps.

Sloshing through water, squelching thro mire,

We swore at the army, the load and the fire.

Still, our courage was good, for we realised not,

There was death in the air, ev’ry snap was a shot.

The dawn broke serenely silver and blue,

The seaforth’s with patience obey’d the “stand to”

And quietly waited lest allemande make

An attempt our resisting entrenchments to break.

A lift of the brow, a glance of the eye,

Precisely to note where the hand-grenade lie,

With bayonet fixed and a round in the breach,

Three comforting weapons within easy reach.

The far-distant roar of a far-distant gun,

And close over our heads whistl’d number one.

There’s no chance of mistaking the song of a shell,

The sickening swish of the herald of hell;

Then the main body follow’d not go as you please,

In desultory numbers in twos and threes,

But a blood-thirsty, slithering, murderous mob,

All out for a killing and loving the job.

We crawl’d into a hole, disappointingly small.

Half-laughing, half-fearful of what might befall,

Knowing nothing of what it were better to do,

We lay there a-wondering and fearful we two.

We knew how to polish our buttons and boots,

We knew how to brush the foul mud from our suits,

We knew how to shoulder our rifles, look bold.

But to save our gross bodies we’d never been told.

We knew that a sentry asleep would be shot,

And agreed that if found so deserv’d what he got,

But we thought they might us have given the tip,

Where to shelter ourselves when the guns let rip.

“you’re not safe in there” a corporal Scott,

so we outside and follow’s along at a trott

to a part of the line where the parapet stood,

more solidly built where the trench was good.

Earth spouted like fountains from out of the ground,

Wherever a roaring shell billet had found

Pale yellowish green, dull black smoke and white,

In succession to rapid for following sight,

The crashing the bursting, the rending of steel,

A deafening din causing senses to reel.

Then our guns replied and what with the twain,

We thought we would never have silence again.

To see one’s friends crouching like rats in a gutter,

A-whispering, lips parted, strain’d faces, such utter,

Unknowing bewilderment the image of faces,

One has lov’d and has laugh’d at in all sorts of places,

Grips tight at the heart, but we couldn’t help laughing,

For all of the allemande’s terrible strafing

There’s some kind of humor in horrible pain,

In contortion of faces subject to strain.

The bursting of shells overhead, on the ground,

Combin’d with trench-mortars bowel rending sound,

Crackling machine-guns aero-planes hum,

Gigantic upheavals, pandemonium;

Surely no creature could dare and survive,

This vomit of hell, deaths invisible drive.

Yet, out of the dread no-mans-land up towards the sky,

Rose a lark on the wing, singing merrily.

(this actually happened apparently it was not particularly unusual)