Star Shells over No Man's Land |
Much has been written about the comradeship that soldiers
found in the trenches of the Great War. In an example shared on this blog,
Henry Lamont Simpson writes “Friendship is the greatest gift God sends— /All
men were brothers to me,/ Most were my friends….” (“Going In”). And in Wilfred Owen’s last letter to his
mother, Owen assured her, “Of this I
am certain -- you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as
surround me here.”
Yet war also
intensified soldiers’ sense of estrangement and alienation. Second Lieutenant John
Allan Wyeth wrote “Night Watch” sometime between August 25th and
September 5th of 1918, while
training with the American First Army in France, about forty miles south of
Verdun.
(Tronville-en-Barrois)
Autumn and dusk—a band far off plays I—
ain’t got nobo—dy and nobo—dy cares for me.
Already autumn here in this new part
of France—the garden has a bitter reek!
How lonely stars look in a changing sky—
I turn the lights on so as not to see.
Already late for my night watch to start.
Silence too strong for anything to creak.
The night is very wide—the room turns sly,
and things keep still to watch what there may be
back of my tight shut eyes and secret smile.
Are you there?—and like the heart of God my heart
is vast with love and pain and very bleak—
O France, be still in here a little while.
—John Allan
Wyeth
As he readies himself for the long solitude of night watch,
the poem’s speaker faintly hears a tune far off in the distance. The popular song
“I ain’t got nobody,” also known as “I’m so sad and lonely,” was copyrighted in
1915, and it mirrors the soldier’s mood (it can be listened to here). As others sing, he sits apart in a
silence so strong that it forces him even further into himself.
John Allan Wyeth |
Whatever it is that the soldier has seen thus far in the
war, he wills himself to forget it and shuts his mind to thoughts that clamor
for attention behind his “tight shut eyes and secret smile.” The reality that
lies before him can be no worse than what he has already endured, and he
projects the desperate loneliness he feels onto everything around him, even the
stars in the night sky.
The only thought that escapes is the ambiguous question, “Are
you there?” Is the man speaking to God? A friend who died in battle? Someone
from home? No reply is given, and so the soldier answers his own question, asking only for a small moment of stillness, a rest from the bleakness that threatens
to overwhelm him.
Wyeth may be the most
underappreciated American poet of the First World War. Critics who admire his autobiographical war
sonnets note his ability to mix tones, textures, languages, and dialects as he
writes of the “cultural dislocation of the AEF in its trek across Western
Europe.”* Other Wyeth poems shared on
this blog include “The
Transport,” and “Picnic: Harbonnières
to Bayonvillers.” A deep loneliness echoes
just beneath the surface of nearly all Wyeth's war writing.
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* Dana Gioia, “The Unknown Soldier: An Introduction to the Poetry
of John Allan Wyeth,” in John Allan Wyeth’s This
Man’s Army, University of South Carolina Press, 2008, p. xxv.
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