Ghosts of Vimy Ridge by William Longstaff |
“People see
ghosts, they see images of their mothers, they see dead comrades,” Canadian
historian Tim Cook reports from his archival research of First World War
letters and diaries.* For example, Sergeant Frank S. Iriam’s description of the
Western Front, taken from his memoir, In
the Trenches 1914-1918, provides one such account of the supernatural:
This
part of the line had a weird and gruesome look that seemed to whisper of death
and devastation. The very ground here seemed to speak and the night wind seemed
to pluck at your sleeves and counsel you beware. You could feel the pulse of
the thousands of the dead with their pale hands protruding through the mud here
and there and seeming to beckon you .... You could feel the presence of something
not of this earth. Akin to goblins.**
Winifred Letts,
an Anglo-Irish writer who served as a VAD and a masseuse for wounded soldiers, published
a collection of war poetry in 1916 titled Hallow-e’en
and Poems of the War. “Halloween,
1915,” describes those on the home front who welcome the “ghosts of our
well-beloved dead.” A previous post on this blog also discusses the popularity of spiritualism
during the First World War. Letts’ poetry
includes numerous references to the spirit world; one example is her twilight-lit,
melancholic poem “If Love of Mine.”
If Love of Mine
If love of mine
could witch you back to earth
The lawn
dew-drenched, the first stars glimmering,
The moon a
golden slip of seven nights’ birth.
If prayer of
mine could bring you it would be
To this
wraith-flowered jasmine-scented place
Where shadow
trees their branches interlace;
Phantoms we’d
tread a land of fantasy.
If love could hold
you I would bid you wait
Till the pearl
sky is indigo and till
The plough show
silver lamps beyond the hill
And Aldebaran†
burns above the gate.
If love of mine
could lure you back to me
From the rose
gardens of eternity.
—Winifred Letts
In her poem “Loss,”
Letts writes, “In losing you I lost my sun and moon / And all the stars that
blessed my lonely night.” The poem concludes, “I lost the master word, dear love, the clue /That
threads the maze of life when I lost you.”
It wasn’t only
the dead who were lost; survivors also often found themselves buried by grief and
adrift in cultural changes resulting from the war. In 1957, Letts described
herself as “a period piece, a has-been, totally unknown to this generation.”††
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* Tristan
Hopper, “Soldier diaries tell of ghosts intervening in First World War,” National Post, 28 May 2014, https://nationalpost.com/news/soldier-diaries-tell-of-ghosts-intervening-in-first-world-war-canadian-historian,
Accessed 27 Oct. 2018.
** Glenn R. Iriam,
“Ypres Salient,” In the Trenches
1914-1918, eBookIt, 2011.
† Aldebaran (or
Alpha Tauri) is the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus (it is the
red star that marks the bull’s eye). The
“plough” named in the previous line alludes to one of the most famous
constellations in the night sky, known in the United States as “the Big Dipper.”
†† Bairbre O’Hogan,
“Winifred M. Letts,” Herstory, http://www.herstory.ie/news/2017/8/8/winifred-letts-playwright-poet-novelist,
Accessed 27 Oct. 2018.
Whether loss occurs through war or disease, it feels the same. Letts' words eloquently express my feelings.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry for your loss -- no words are adequate, but I hope Letts' poem brings some small measure of comfort.
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