And what is war?

Lt. Arthur Greg, Quarry Bank archive, NT

On April 23, 1917, 2Lt Arthur T. Greg was killed in aerial combat over St. Quentin, France. He was twenty-two. Assigned to the 55th Squadron Royal Flying Corps, Greg was returning from a bombing raid when his DH4 bomber was attacked by German Albatros DIII scouts (it is likely that one of the German pilots was Hermann Göring). Greg’s plane crashed behind British lines at Ervillers, but he had been fatally wounded, and his observer Robert William Robson died of wounds nearly a month later.*

Upon receiving the news of Greg’s death, his fiancée, Marian Allen, began to write of her grief and loss. In 1918, she published a short collection of poems, The Wind on the Downs, dedicating it to “A.T.G.” Her poem “And what is war” appears near the end of the volume.

 And what is war? one said; what of its story?
    A mustered host, a noble battle-throng,
A tale of valour, and a tale of glory,
    Of vanquished enemies and righted wrong?

That is war, we say, but not that only; 

    It is a rising water, deep and wide,
Which washes some away, and leaves some lonely, 

Greg's grave in France,
Quarry Bank archive, NT

    Like driftwood, stranded by the ebbing tide.

War is the passing gleam of eager faces,
    An understanding that makes young men wise
A growing stillness, many empty places,
   A haunted look that comes in women’s eyes;

Unquestioned duty, youthfulness and laughter,
    Sometimes a sudden catching of the breath,
A sure, swift knowing what may follow after—
   Withal a gay indifference to death;

The sound of laughing voices disappearing,
    The marching of a thousand eager feet,
Passing, ever passing out of hearing,
    Echoing, ever echoing down the street;

A sudden gust of wind, a clanging door,
And then a lasting silence—that is war.
              —Marian Allen

 Most of the poems in Allen’s The Wind on the Downs are melancholy and ache with loss, but they attempt to resolve grief into hopeful purpose with lines such as “Beautiful in death as life” (“May-flies”), “Crossing the silent river, there to find / Host upon host their comrades glorified, / Saluting them upon the other side” (“Charing Cross”), and “For you death was a sudden-passing glory” (“Beyond the Downs”).

But “What is war?” questions traditional reassurances that link combat deaths with courage and glory. War may be valorous and noble, but we are reminded that it is also a dark and drowning flood that sweeps all before it. War leaves in its wake empty places, haunted eyes, barred entries, and interminable stretches of silence.

In August of 1918, Irish poet Katharine Tynan, writing for the Bookman, offered a short review of Wind on the Downs, describing it as “a collection of poems of a wistful beauty. It has scarcely outstanding qualities, but it cries its sorrowful music at your ear and you are fain to listen. It is drenched with the colours and fragrance of English country.”**

For Marian Allen, the river gliding beneath the trees, the song of the lark, still pools of water, and winds from the sea were all reminders of the love she had lost.

Marian Allen and Arthur Greg,
Quarry Bank archive, NT

For more on Marian Allen and her poetry, see the post on this blog "Stronger than Death."

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* “Arthur Tylston Greg, Cross & Cockade International Forum, post by NickForder, 22 June 2009, https://www.crossandcockade.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=58&title=arthur-tylstOn-greg
** Katharine Tynan, “Songs in War Time,” Bookman, August 1918, pp. 152–153.

Stronger than death

Arthur T. Greg

“Love is stronger than death” reads the epitaph on the headstone of Captain Arthur Tylston Greg, buried at Jussy Communal cemetery in France. Shortly after the First World War was declared in August of 1914, Arthur Greg left his law studies at Oxford and eagerly joined the British army. Serving with the Cheshire Regiment near Ypres, Belgium, he was seriously wounded when shot in the jaw in the spring of 1915. 

Recovering from his injuries, Greg rejoined the military and applied to the Royal Flying Corps. By April of 1917, he had been certified as a pilot and returned to France to join the 55 Squadron.  Less than one month later, on April 23^rd of 1917, returning from a bombing mission on an ammunition factory, Arthur Greg’s squadron was attacked by German aircraft.  Among the German pilots was Herman Goering, the WWI ace who would survive to lead the Nazi Party and found the Gestapo in WWII.  Greg’s plane was shot down, and although he crash-landed near St. Quentin, both he and his mechanic died of their wounds.

In 1918, Arthur’s sweetheart, Marian Allen, published a slim book of poetry, The Wind on the Downs. The poems chronicle Marian’s grief; “Out in a gale of fallen leaves” was written six months after Greg’s death. 

Out in a gale of fallen leaves,

Where the wind blows clear through the rain-soaked trees,

Where the sky is torn betwixt cloud and blue

And the rain but ceases to fall anew:

And dead leaves, in bud on your April flight,

Will whisper your name to the wind to-night

And the year is dying in which you died

And I shall be lonely this Christmas-tide.

            Hyde Park, October

                       

Wind howls in an October gale, dead leaves scrape across the ground, and rain drums down in a London park, yet in the sounds of an autumn storm, the speaker of the poem hears only the whisper of her dead lover’s name. The sight of the drifting leaves is a poignant reminder that just a short time ago when spring buds on the trees heralded new growth, the young airman too was alive and full of promise. Now, like the leaves, he also has fallen from the torn sky. 

In another poem from Wind on the Downs, Marian Allen remembers Arthur Greg and their happy past as she struggles to reconcile memory with the future that lies before her:

I like to think of you as brown and tall,

As strong and living as you used to be,

In khaki tunic, Sam-Brown belt and all,

And standing there and laughing down at me.

Because they tell me, dear, that you are dead.

Shared laughter has been replaced by an echoing silence, and her memories are shadowed by his loss. Recalling their war-time farewell in another poem, Allen writes, “His footsteps echoed down the path to die.” As autumn deepens and gives way to the bleakness of winter, there is some comfort in knowing that the year in which Arthur Greg died is also ending. And yet she starkly acknowledges the emptiness that stretches before her: “And I shall be lonely this Christmas-tide.”  

Marian Allen went on to write and illustrate several books for children; she returned to Oxford where she died in 1953.  She never married.