WWI soldier's grave, Ohlsdorf Cemetery, Hamburg photo by Beate Felten-Leidel |
“A gash goes through all our lives, and that gash is the war. With a brutal hand it has torn our lives in two.”
—Willibald Hanner, German disabled
veteran of the First World War*
Two million
German soldiers died in World War I, and the International Encyclopedia of the First World War estimates, “Taking
into account those who lost two or more children…at least 1 million [German] parents
grieved for their sons.”** Medical research has found that grief can be literally
heart-breaking; the risk of suffering a heart attack is 21 times greater for individuals in the 24-hour period following
news of a loved one's death than before, and it is 6 times greater in the week following the experience of
grief.†
In 1916, Scottish soldier-poet Joseph Lee published Ballads
of Battle. The slim, author-illustrated volume included the following poem:
The Bullet
Every bullet has
its billet;
Many bullets more than one:
God! Perhaps I killed a mother
When I killed a mother's son.
Many bullets more than one:
God! Perhaps I killed a mother
When I killed a mother's son.
—Joseph Lee
Lee published an even briefer
poem on the same theme in his second collection of war poetry, Work-a-Day Warriors:
Casualty List
(Unofficial)
Maidens and
matrons; mothers o’sons,
How many have
fallen a prey to the guns?
It is impossible to determine how many died of grief during the First World War. Known as the “Black
Watch poet,” Lee and his battalion fought at Festubert,
Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge, and the Battle of Loos. During the war, Lee was one of the more
popular of the trench poets; Ballads
of Battle “was relatively successful at the first run, becoming
increasingly popular as the public started to take note, and eventually three
further prints were run.”†† The London Spectator's review of Lee's war poetry was enthusiastic:
Of
the verse that has come straight from the trenches, the Ballads of Battle, by Lance-Corporal Joseph Lee, of the Black
Watch, are among the very best. In him the “Jocks” have found a true
interpreter. The horror, the exultation, the weariness, and the humour of
trench warfare are here, and at the back of it all the vision of “the little
croft beneath the Ben.”°
Joseph Johnston Lee, 1916 © Dundee University Archive Services |
During the
Battle of Cambrai, Lee was taken prisoner by the Germans. He survived the war and returned to a
career in journalism, dying in Dundee in 1949. His poem “Epitaph,” which appeared in Work-a-Day Warriors (1917), is a fitting
tribute to Scotland’s forgotten war poet:
Epitaph
Where the long
trench twines snake-like
To keep the foe
at bay,
There be the
place to lay me,
And this be what
you say:
Here lieth one who loved all life,
Sunshine and song, and sword and strife;
Sea and storm, and wind and rain,
Breaking bud, and bursting grain,
Pulsing pleasure, and stabbing pain—
Who would, an he could, live all over
again!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Williband
Hanner speech, quoted in Robert Weldon Whalen’s Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939, Cornell
UP, 1984, p. 182.
** Silke
Fehlemann, “Bereavement and Mourning (Germany),” 1914-1918 Online, International Encyclopedia of the First World War,
ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene,
Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 10
Aug. 2014. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10177.
† Elizabeth Mostofsky, Malcolm Maclure, Jane B. Sherwood,
et al. “Risk of acute myocardial infarction after the death of a significant
person on one’s life: The determinants of myocardial infarction onset study,” Circulation
125, 2012, pp. 491-496.
†† Bob Burrows, Fighter Writer, Breedon Books, 2004, p. 84.
° “Literary Supplement: War Time Poems,” 7 October 1916, p.
19.
Short but haunting these poems. War has so many more casualties than the boys killed by guns.
ReplyDeleteThe casualties that are never counted -- thanks for reading and commenting, Patty.
DeleteI have spoken to many people who have lost loved ones to violence and I know the grief never ends. These are insightful, powerful poems.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading and for listening to others who have suffered loss.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete