French WWI illustrator, Ernest Gabard |
The term “weather
front” originated during the First World War, the name coming directly from the
battle fronts of the war.* Life in the trenches was miserable, and soldiers
on all sides fought the weather. At times it seemed as if the rain would never
end, and some believed “that God was unleashing a second Deluge to extinguish
the madness of his creatures.”** The constant rainfall is described by German
soldier Erich Maria Remarque in his novel All
Quiet on the Western Front:
Behind
us lay rainy weeks—grey sky, grey fluid earth, grey dying. If we go out, the rain at once soaks through
our overcoat and clothing;--and we remain wet all the time we are in the
line. We never get dry….Our hands are
earth, our bodies clay, and our eyes pools of rain.***
Men drowned in
the mud, died of exposure, and suffered the agonies of trench foot. British
poet Edmond Blunden wrote of a world engulfed by rain:
Mute
misery lapses into trickling rain,
That
wreathes and swims and soon shuts in our world.†
The truth of the
war was never easily shared with loved ones on the home front. French soldier-poet Noël
Garnier’s “Still Raining” exposes the tender lies that both a mother and a son share
as they attempt to reassure one another with the comforting small
talk of the weather.
Still Raining
To my father, whose ‘motherly’ letters
were always ‘fine weather’
‘How like the
dead we look, in the glisten
of early,
inevitably raining, dawn…
It rained all
yesterday, and the day before,
it’s been
raining, day and night, the whole War!
We look so like
the dead, in their misery.’
French soldier writing letter |
‘The sun was
out…’ – When? I can’t remember…
last year… or
the year before, perhaps?
Yesterday? –
Rained harder than ever!
Or else I’ve just forgotten… Can’t remember:
I didn’t get a letter.
How lucky you
are to have a mother –
the weather’s
always fine in mothers’ letters,
and, in your
replies, it’s always sunny;
the poor dear
things would be so upset
if you didn’t
always say ‘It’s sunny.
‘No, I’ve not
been cold, and today
there’s a
swallow twittering away.
I tell you,
spring has well and truly come –
Yes, that
naughty winter’s gone away,
that worried you
so much, my dearest Mum!’
– Sweet
pleasure, so to lie to those you love,
with the words
of every day, the only ones
we truly
understand, which never change
and never lose,
as they journey on, the love
they bring from
the lips that gave them shape.
—Noël Garnier, translated by Ian Higgins
Rain has blurred the world, its grey shroud wrapping the dead and the living alike in a veil of darkness and gloom. But language holds the power to shape an alternative reality, and there is “sweet pleasure” in lies that recall and recreate simple exchanges of intimacy, love, and home. Garnier’s own mother had died in childbirth when he was a young boy, but he was close to his father, a pharmacist from the village of Fréjus.
While the poem
defends the lies of war between soldiers and their families, Noel Garnier was unwilling
to lie about the waste and evils of the war itself. In 1920, he published his volume of pacifist war
poetry, Le don de ma Mère. Shortly
thereafter, the French Minister of War "issued
an edict withdrawing the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and the
Croix de Guerre from the young French poet, Noel Garnier, because of certain
socialistic tendencies which have been evident in his verse of late."†††
Garnier had been
awarded military honors for his actions during the war, during which time he
had written his poems while “on permission and on repos, but he kept them to
himself.”•
After the war
when the poet had been stripped of his medals, an editorial appeared in The Nation that included his original
citation for exceptional bravery:
M.
Garnier, Noel, second lieutenant in the 11th regiment of hussars,
attached to the 15th battalion of chasseurs, is named to the order
of the Legion of Honor, with the rank of knight: A young second lieutenant
transferred at his own request from the cavalry to a battalion of chasseurs.
Volunteered to establish communication between two companies placed, on
September 14, in a very delicate position; struck by three bullets in the thigh
and one in the arm, very seriously wounded, he succeeded in dragging himself
across the ground to fulfil his mission.
Had himself carried on a stretcher to his chef de corps and before mentioning his wounds gave a detailed
report on his reconnaissance. Proved a
heroism which will never be surpassed.
Two citations. PETAIN••
Garnier’s poetry
was viewed as such a threat to the good of France that it negated the heroism
of his military service. In the end, French authorities determined that the
poet’s words spoke louder than his actions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Louis Barthas, Poilu: The World War I
Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, translated by Edward Strauss, Yale, 2014,
p. 27.
*** Erich Maria
Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front translated
by A.W. Wheen, Ballantine, 1982, pp.
286-287.
† Edmund
Blunden, “Third Ypres,” The Poems of
Edmund Blunden, Cobden-Sanderson, 1930, p. 153.
†† Bartas, Poilu, p. 27.
†††“First Aid to
Socialism,” Life Magazine, vol. 76,
no. 1974, 2 Sept. 1920, p. 410.
• The Drifter, “In
the Driftway,” The Nation, vol. 111, 10
Nov. 1920, p. 532.
•• The Drifter, “In
the Driftway,” p. 532.
Good poem to prove that the English do not have a monopoly on an obsession with weather - I suspect that all soldiers in the field have such a thing as it influences both the fight and the R & R equally. Northern France and Flanders are totally different places depending on the weather today for any battlefield visitor - for the troglodytic trench dweller the affect must have been amplified massively with good summer weather being a trial in the front line. the removal of Garnier's gallantry award was scandalous but his citation is imperishable proof of his bravery. I have been blessed with good weather on my last 3 visits to the Western Front - sunbathing in the Grand Place Ypres in November! - a degree of luck that I did not deserve but was thankful for . Ian
ReplyDeleteBlessed indeed, Ian! "Troglodytic trench dweller" -- you and Fussell have found the perfect metaphor to suggest the misery when it is still raining, still raining, still raining.
DeleteCan you tell us please where to find the original French poem by Garnier as I love to read the original language as well as the translation. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou might try Ian Higgins'"Anthology of First World War French Poetry" (1996, Univ. of Glasgow).
ReplyDelete