Christmas 1917: What our weary hearts desire

Aline Kilmer with Kenton, c. 1909
(Joyce Kilmer House & New Brunswick Historical Society)

Joyce Kilmer was a rising American poet, famous for his 1913 poem “Trees” when he decided to leave his writing career, volunteering to fight in the First World War. Thirty-years-old with four small children and a fifth on the way, Kilmer enlisted in April 1917, despite being exempt from service due to his status as a family man. According to biographer John Covell, when Kilmer was asked how his wife Aline felt about his decision to join the fight, he answered, “She’s game.”*

Aline Kilmer, alone and expecting their fifth child, was left to care for their four young children, one of whom was dying. Their daughter Rose Kilmer, born November 15, 1912, had “suffered an attack of infantile paralysis” as a very young child, and despite the care of specialists, the little girl died at home, on September 9, 1917, just shy of her fifth birthday. According to a published obituary, the tragedy occurred “as her father was preparing to go South with his regiment.”**

Less than three weeks later, on September 29, 1917, Aline gave birth to their third son, Christopher. Her husband set sail for France with his regiment on October 31, 1917. 

As Aline Kilmer prepared for Christmas that year, she wrote a poem that describes quiet moments of melancholy and memory, juxtaposed with a season of bustling good cheer. 

Rose Kilmer's grave,
Elmwood Cemetery, New Brunswick NJ

Christmas

“And shall you have a Tree,” they say,
“Now one is dead and one away?”

Oh, I shall have a Christmas Tree!
Brighter than ever it shall be;
Dressed out with coloured lights to make
The room all glorious for your sake.
And under the Tree a Child shall sleep
Near Shepherds watching their wooden sheep.
Threads of silver and nets of gold,
Scarlet bubbles the Tree shall hold,
And little glass bells that tinkle clear.
I shall trim it alone but feel you near.
And when Christmas Day is almost done,
When they all grow sleepy one by one,
When Kenton’s books have all been read,
When Deborah’s climbing the stairs to bed,

I shall sit alone by the fire and see
Ghosts of you both come close to me.
For the dead and the absent always stay
With the one they love on Christmas Day.
—Aline Kilmer

The poem continues to resonate with those who suffer the loneliness of the season, whether because of the absence or death of loved ones. “Christmas” was first published in the Catholic periodical Messenger of the Sacred Heart in January of 1918 and was included in Aline Kilmer’s first book of poetry, Candles That Burn (1919). That volume is dedicated “To Joyce” — her husband was killed by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Marne on July 30, 1918. 

Aline Kilmer lived until 1941. On her gravestone in Stillwater, New Jersey, are inscribed lines from her poem “Sanctuary”: 

Kilmer's original grave is on the right

There all bright passing beauty is held forever
Free from the sense of tears, to be loved without regret
There we shall find at their source music and love and laughter,
Colour and subtle fragrance and soft incredible textures:
Be sure we shall find what our weary hearts desire.

Joyce Kilmer is buried in France at the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery.  

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* Cited in Peter Molin’s “Aline Kilmer: When the War Poet’s Wife is a Poet Too,” in Beyond Their Limits of Longing, Milspeak, 2022, p. 111.

** “Dr. F.B. Kilmer Loses His Granddaughter” on the Find A Grave website (article most likely from a New Brunswick, NJ newspaper). 

Rouge Bouquet

Rouge Bouquet Memorial Service, Fighting 69th, March 1918

On March 7, 1918 in a wood in France near Baccarat, German shellfire buried 21 American soldiers. The men of the regiment were unable to rescue their comrades immediately due to the heavy artillery bombardment, and by the time they were able to excavate those who had been trapped, 19 had died—only two soldiers of the Fighting 69^th were rescued alive.

Serving with the Irish heritage regiment was one of the best-known writers and poets in America: Joyce Kilmer (known for his poem “Trees,” written before the war). Immediately after the tragedy, Kilmer composed a poem to honor those who had died, and “The Woods Called Rouge-Bouquet” was read at their memorial service. Less than five months later, it was again read over Kilmer’s grave by the regiment’s famous chaplain, Father Duffy. First published in The Stars and Stripes military newspaper on August 16, 1918, the poem included here differs slightly from the version anthologized in collections of Kilmer’s poetry.

The Woods Called Rouge-Bouquet

I.

In the woods they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave today,

Built by never a spade or pick

Yet covered by earth ten meters thick.

There lie many fighting men,

Dead in their youthful prime,

Never to laugh nor love again

Or taste of the summer time.

Joyce Kilmer's original grave

For death came flying through the air

And stopped his flight at the dugout stair,

Touched his prey—

 And left them there—

Clay to clay.

He hid their bodies stealthily

In the soil of the land they sought to free,

And fled away.

Now over the grave abrupt and clear,

Three volleys ring:

And perhaps their brave young spirits hear:

The bugle sing:

Go to sleep—

Go to sleep—

(Taps sounding in distance)

II.

There is on earth no worthier grave

To hold the bodies of the brave

Than this place of pain and pride

Where they nobly fought and nobly died.

Never fear but in the skies

Saints and angels stand

Smiling with their holy eyes

On this new-come band.

St. Michael’s sword darts through the air

And touches the arrival on his hair,

As he sees them stand saluting there,

His stalwart sons;

And Patrick, Bridget and Columbkill

Rejoice that in veins of warriors still

The Gael’s blood runs.

And up to Heaven’s doorway floats,

From the wood called Rouge Bouquet,

A delicate cloud of bugle notes

That softly say:

Farewell—

Farewell—

(Taps sounding in distance)

L’ENVOI.

Comrade true,

Born anew,

Peace to you;

Your soul shall be where the heroes are,

And your memory shine like the morning-star,

Brave and dear,

Shield us here—

Farewell!

            —Joyce Kilmer

Joyce Kilmer

At times, the rhythm of the poem echoes that of the American bugle call played at military funerals, and the Stars and Stripes reported that during the first reading of the poem at the men’s funeral, “Taps” could be heard echoing “from a distant grove.”* When the poem was read at Kilmer’s funeral, a friend of the poet’s reported, “those who were there told me the tears streamed down the face of every boy in the regiment.”**

When the U.S. entered the war in the spring of 1917, Kilmer was thirty-years old with four children, and his wife was pregnant with their fifth. Yet Kilmer was not drafted, but volunteered to join the American Expeditionary Force. The couple’s young daughter Rose, who had been paralyzed since 1913, died just weeks before Kilmer departed for France with his unit in 1917, and he left for war in mourning before ever reaching the front lines. In one of his last letters home, Kilmer shared with the Reverend Edward F. Garesché how the war had changed him:

I have written very little—two prose sketches and two poems—since I left the States, but I have a rich store of memories.  Not that what I write matters—I have discovered, since some unforgettable experiences, that writing is not the tremendously important thing I once considered it.  You will find me less a bookman when you next see me, and more, I hope, a man…. Pray for me, dear Father, that I may love God more and that I may be unceasingly conscious of Him—that is the greatest desire I have.***

Aline Kilmer

After his death, Joyce Kilmer’s wife, Aline, published her first collection of poetry in 1919,  dedicating Candles that Burn to her husband.  It includes her poem “In Spring”:

I do not know which is worse when you are away:

   Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain

And then when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall

   The thought that perhaps you may never come back again; 

Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,

   Sparkling newly all in the dear spring weather,

When with a heart that is torn apart by pain

   I walk alone in ways that we went together.

            —Aline Kilmer

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* “The Woods Called Rouge-Bouquet,” The Stars and Stripes, 16 Aug. 1918, p. 6.

** Alexander Woolcott letter, quoted in Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters in Two Volumes, Volume One: Memoir and Poems, edited with a memoir by Robert Cortes Holliday, George H. Doran, 1918, p. 100.

*** Joyce Kilmer to Rev. Edward F. Garesché, quoted in Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters in Two Volumes, Volume One: Memoir and Poems, edited with a memoir by Robert Cortes Holliday, George H. Doran, 1918, p. 90.

Masked and Alone

Raoul Lufbery

Born in France to an American father and French mother, Raoul Lufbery is one of the most famous American pilots of the First World War, an ace with at least 17 combat victories.  Early in his military career, he served in the Philippines as a rifleman in the U.S. Army from 1907 – 1909, but when war broke out in Europe, he joined the French Foreign Legion and trained as a pilot. Lufbery flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, and after American joined the war, he was commissioned in the U.S. Army Air Service, where he instructed new pilots, among them Eddie Rickenbacker.

According to American pilot Bert Hall, Lufbery “rode the skies like a fighting demon” and “was always looking for a good scrap.”* Hall also described Lufbery as “a mushroom hound,” for “Every time it rains, he goes out and gathers some mushrooms.  The French say he is going on a reconnaissance des champignons.”**

To Edwin C. Parsons, another pilot with the Escadrille who frequently flew as his wingman, Lufbery was “one of the most tragically outstanding figures of the war in the air.” In his memoir, Parsons wrote,

To me, Luf was one of the great mysteries of the war.  No man alive can truthfully say that he knew him.  I ate, slept, drank and fought beside him for months on end.  I discussed combat tactics and played bridge and went on binges with him…. I was in daily contact with a figure of flesh and blood, but know him? Not a chance.  In contrast to him, the Sphinx was a child’s primer.  He kept his real self shut up like a clam in a shell.  He was a man seemingly devoid of fear or, in fact, emotion of any kind.  But what a man he was in the air!  He had forgotten more about combat flying than most men ever knew.”***

 Lufbery was killed on May 19, 1918 in circumstances that are still debated: he either jumped from his burning plane or, while trying to clear a jam in his machine gun, was thrown from the cockpit when the plane flipped. 

To a Young Aviator

When you go up to die

Some not far distant day,

I wonder will you try

Unidentified Pilot, by Eric Kennington
National Museums of Scotland

To tear your mask away,

And look life in the eyes

For once without disguise?

Behind your mask may hide

What treacherous, covered fires!

What hidden torturing pride!
What sorrow, what desires!

Whatever there may be

There will be none to see.

Yet I think when you meet

Death coming through the skies,

Calmly his face you’ll greet,

Coldly, without surprise;

Then die without a moan,

Still masked although alone.

            —Aline Kilmer

Although it’s highly unlikely that the poem was written specifically for Lufbery, “To a Young Aviator” is an apt memorial for him and all the pilots of the First World War.  The poem captures the cool courage of the fliers, as well as the solitary loneliness of the job.

Aline Kilmer

Aline Kilmer is almost unknown today as a writer. Her husband was the American poet Joyce Kilmer (best known for his poems “Trees” and “The Rouge Bouquet”).  Joyce enlisted in the A.E.F. in April of 1917, but just weeks before he left for France, the couple’s daughter Rose died in early September of 1917.  Left with four small children and mourning the loss of her eldest daughter, Aline Kilmer would also have been well-acquainted with death and loneliness.  In early 1918, she wrote another poem:

In Spring

I do not know which is worse when you are away:

Long grey days with the lisping sound of the rain

And then when the lilac dusk is beginning to fall

The thought that perhaps you may never come back again;

Or days when the world is a shimmer of blue and gold,

Sparkling newly all in the dear spring weather,

When with a heart that is torn apart by pain

I walk alone in ways that we went together.  

Joyce Kilmer was killed by a sniper at the Second Battle of the Marne on July 30th, 1918. 

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* Bert Hall, One Man’s War: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, H. Holt, 1929, pp. 135, 144. 167. 

** Hall, One Man’s War, p. 167.

*** Edwin C. Parsons, The Great Adventure: The Story of the Lafayette Escadrille, Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1937, pp. 72-73.