When war was
declared in July of 1914, many thought it would be over by Christmas. But by the spring of 1917, as new offensives
began yet again on the Western Front, the Great War seemed as if it might never
end.
Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory provides
numerous first-hand accounts of those who became known as the Neverendians; in
the summer of 1917, one British officer used an elaborate mathematical formula of
past battle gains to calculate that at its current rate, the war would continue
for another 180 years.* The size and scope
of the war had become incomprehensible.
Alexander (Alec)
Waugh was the older brother of the British novelist Evelyn Waugh. He trained at
the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and in 1917 was commissioned as
a lieutenant in the Dorset Regiment.
Posted to the Somme and Passchendaele, he was captured near Arras on March
28, 1918 and spent the remainder of the war in German prisoner camps.
Waugh’s poem “The
Other Side” argues that perhaps the only ones who can understand war are those
who cannot speak of it: the dead.
The Other Side
There are not
any, save the men that died,
Whose minds have
probed into the heart of war.
Sometimes we
stumble on a secret door
And listening
guess what lies the other side.
Sometimes a
moment’s sudden pain
Flings back the
veil that hangs between
Guessing and
knowing; then lets it fall again
Before we
understand what we have seen.
In and out
everywhere,
Distorted in a
twisted glass,
Fragmentary
visions pass.
We try to fit
them one with another,
Like a child
putting a puzzle together,
When half the
pieces are not there.
Out of a dim
obscurity
Certain things
stand plain and clear,
Certain things
we are forced to see,
Certain things
we are forced to hear.
A subaltern
dying between the lines,
Wondering why.
A father with
nothing left of life
But the will to
die.
A young girl
born for laughter and spring,
What is one
woman more or less
To men who’ve
forgotten everything?
A thin line
swinging forward to kill,
And a man driven
mad by the din.
Music-hall songs
about “Kaiser Bill”
And “the march
through the streets of Berlin.”
Grey-beards prattling round a fire
Grey-beards prattling round a fire
Of the good the war has done.
Three men
rotting upon the wire;
And each of them
had a son.
A soldier who once
was fresh and clean
Blind to what
will be and what has been,
Only aware that
he must not think.
In the pulpit a
parson preaching lies,
Babbling of
honour and sacrifice.
Fragments
flutter in and out,
Christ! what is
it all about?
--Alec Waugh, Hampstead. March, 1917
The poem’s first
lines suggest that war can never be wholly understood, but can only be grasped
in fragmentary glimpses and distorted impressions. Yet the mood turns in the fourth stanza with
the assertion that “out of a dim obscurity” there are truths that must be seen
and heard, certain things that “stand plain and clear.”
The poem’s power
comes from this list of “certain things” as it presents eight memorable scenes. A junior officer
dies, leaving his father with no reason to live; a young girl is abandoned,
likely a victim of rape or a prostitute, used by men who have “forgotten
everything.” Men’s bodies rot upon the wire in No Man’s Land, while soldiers who
survive either cope with the horrors of war through mindless drinking or lose
their minds as they suffer the effects of shell-shock. Meanwhile, elderly men on
the home front discuss the “good a war has done”; ministers of the church preach
on the glory and honor of the conflict, and soldiers themselves sing choruses
that mock the enemy and proclaim their own imminent victory.
There is no
resolution. The last line “Christ! what is it all about?” offers only further ambiguity:
does the poem close with a frustrated curse or a plea to God for answers?
Waugh’s poetry
is seldom read today, but in December of 1918, the Bookman published the essay “Poets in Khaki,” which reviewed the
work of 44 soldier poets. Citing “Cannon
Fodder” and “The Other Side,” St. John Adock said that Waugh’s poems “strip the
romance of war to the bone.” Adock included Waugh as one of “Three poets who I
think do represent as faithfully and potently as any the later, essentially
modern attitude towards war.” The other two writers singled out for this praise
were Gilbert Frankau and Siegfried Sassoon.**
Sassoon also
struggled to grasp the purpose and meaning of the war, and his remembrance of
the days following the opening of the Somme offensive resonate with Waugh’s ideas
in “The Other Side”:
“I leant on a wooden bridge, gazing down
into the dark green glooms of the weedy little river, but my thoughts were
powerless against unhappiness so huge. I couldn't alter European history, or
order the artillery to stop firing. I could stare at the War as I stared at the
sultry sky, longing for life and freedom and vaguely altruistic about my
fellow-victims. But a second-lieutenant could attempt nothing -- except to
satisfy his superior officers; and altogether, I concluded, Armageddon was too
immense for my solitary understanding.”
-- Memoirs of an Infantry Officer.
*Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford
University Press, 2000), see pages 71-74.
**St. John Adock, “Poets in Khaki,” Bookman (Volume 55, Christmas 1918), page 98. T.S. Eliot also reviewed Waugh’s volume of poetry in the Egoist, but was less impressed, writing, “Mr Waugh…would appear to have been influenced by some older person who admired Rupert Brooke” (August 1918, page 99).
**St. John Adock, “Poets in Khaki,” Bookman (Volume 55, Christmas 1918), page 98. T.S. Eliot also reviewed Waugh’s volume of poetry in the Egoist, but was less impressed, writing, “Mr Waugh…would appear to have been influenced by some older person who admired Rupert Brooke” (August 1918, page 99).
I enjoyed this post very much. Thank you. I recently saw that Claggett Wilson watercolor - it was included in the the exhibit World War One and American Art currently at the NY Historical Society.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the sense of the neverending war I'm reminded of the Bairnsfather cartoon "Nobbled" that Fussell also mentions:
"'Ow long are you up for, Bill?"
"Seven years."
"Yer lucky ----, I'm duration."
Thanks for reading and responding. I saw Claggett Wilson's art when the exhibit was in Philadelphia -- haunting, wasn't it? And thanks for the great connection with the Bairnsfather cartoon - so many shared the fear that the war might never end, and so it's wonderful to see it extend to popular cartoons.
ReplyDeleteFascinating to learn that STD's were more common that trench foot. Sad to hear that women were so poorly treated and blamed for the follies of men. Things haven't changed much today when women are subjected to things like campus rapes and are blamed for it.
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