Sad streets of war

Village of Festubert, Photo Visa Paris

One hundred years ago, soldier-poet Edmund Blunden visited what remained of the village of Festubert in northern France.  A year earlier, on May 15th of 1915, the British had attacked Festubert in their first night attack of the war.  In the ten-day struggle that followed, the number of British dead and wounded grew to over 16,500, while the Germans suffered over 5,000 casualties.

Blunden’s poem “Festubert, 1916” isn’t about that attack.  Instead, the poem captures the moment a full year later when a battle-worn soldier visits the desolate village.  In the quiet of the ruins, he hears the echoes of men who fought and died; he is a silent witness to the fluttering grey rags of their decaying uniforms and the rusted remains of their discarded rifles.    

Festubert, 1916

Festubert ruins of church and dressing station,
Canada Dpt of National Defence PA004450

Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day,
I sit in solitude and only hear
Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay,
The lost intensities of hope and fear;
In those old marshes yet the rifles lie,
On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags,
The very books I read are there—and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags

Its wounded length from those sad streets of war
Into green places here, that were my own;
But now what once was mine is mine no more,
I seek such neighbours here and I find none.
With such strong gentleness and tireless will
Those ruined houses seared themselves in me,
Passionate I look for their dumb story still,
And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree.
--Edmund Blunden

These are the first two stanzas of Blunden’s longer poem (the entire poem can be read here), and they include some of my favorite lines from the poetry of the Great War:

and I
Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags
Its wounded length from those sad streets of war

The poem echoes with lonely exhaustion, and in its images we feel the heaviness of grief and empty loss. “Festubert, 1916” solemnly testifies to an inescapable truth: no matter how the war ends, the world will be forever changed.